It is fitting and proper that the descendants of the Pilgrims should gather in Plymouth from time to time and give expression to the respect, gratitude and admiration they feel for the Pilgrims. To express sympathy for them for the terrible months they spent crossing the stormy Atlantic, and the added months on shipboard while shelters were being erected on shore for the first winter in a foreign land, when nearly half the company died of scurvy and ship fever, in spite of which not one member gave up and returned to England when the Mayflower sailed.
The Pilgrims believed in the equality of all men before God; they, therefore, made all men equal before the Law. On the Sarcophagus, which contains the remains of some of the Pilgrims, is this inscription:
“This monument marks the first burying-ground in Plymouth of the Passengers of the Mayflower. Here, under cover of darkness, the fast dwindling Company laid their dead; levelling the earth above them lest the Indians should learn how many were the graves. READER, History records no nobler venture for Faith and Freedom than that of this Pilgrim band. In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and cold they laid the foundations of a State wherein every man, through countless ages, should have liberty to worship God in his own way. May their example inspire thee to do thy part in perpetuating and spreading throughout the World the lofty Ideals of our Republic.”
We must admire the Pilgrims for their courage and piety, for their attachment to civil rights and religious liberty in exile, under unhappy conditions.
There was a famine the first year, but no actual starvation as there were wild fowl, shellfish, and berries in abundance, but there was cold and snow, and there were Indians and sickness to cope with.
A great disaster befell the community the second year which seldom seems to be mentioned, but which would have discouraged less resolute souls. The ship Fortune carrying their entire year’s yield of furs and products to England to be sold, was captured by the French as a prize.
The gist of the preface of a book entitled “The Pilgrim Fathers,” by W. H. Bartlett, published in London, England, in 1853, is—
“Of the many heroic emigrations from our island, which have covered the face of the earth, no one is more singular than the band of sectaries driven forth in the reign of James I. In an age when toleration was unknown, they were thrust forth from their native land, thus the harshness of the rulers became the instrument which planted on American shores a mighty republic, the proudest and most powerful offshoot of the mother country, whose institutions, as thus founded, are not without a powerful reaction upon her own.