Comics, 11-25-20: Thanksgiving

The story of the Pilgrims begins in the early part of the seventeenth century (1600s AD). The Church of England under King James I was persecuting anyone and everyone who did not recognize its absolute civil and spiritual authority. The first Pilgrims were devout Christian rebels. In 1600 England those who challenged the kings ecclesiastical authority and those who believed strongly in freedom of worship were hunted down, imprisoned and sometimes executed for their beliefs.
A group of separatist Christians rejected the Church of England and didn’t want to live under the rule of King James, first fled to Holland and established a community there. After eleven years, about forty of them having heard about this New World Christopher Columbus had discovered, decided to go. They agreed to make a perilous journey to the New World, where they knew they would certainly face hardships, but they did it so they could live and worship God according to the dictates of their own conscience and beliefs.

Led by William Bradford on August 1, 1620 the “Mayflower” ship set sail carrying a total of 102 passengers; now known as Pilgrims. On the journey, Bradford set up an agreement, a contract establishing how they would live once they arrived in the new land. It set forth just and equal laws for all members of the new community, irrespective of their religious beliefs or political beliefs. The revolutionary ideas expressed in the “Mayflower Compact” came from the Holy Bible.

The Pilgrims were a devoutly religious people completely steeped in the lessons of the Old and New Testaments. They looked to the ancient Israelites for their example. And, because of the biblical precedents set forth in Scripture, they never doubted that their experiment would work. They believed in God and that they were in the hands of God. The journey to the New World on the tiny fifty foot sailing ship was long and arduous.

According to Bradford’s detailed journal, there was disease, seasickness and it was wet. It was the opposite of anything you think of today as a cruise today on the open ocean. When they landed in New England in November 1620 AD it was a cold, barren, desolate wilderness. There was no shelter; no inns where they could refresh themselves - there was nothing.
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​The sacrifice they made for freedom was just beginning. During the first winter, half the Pilgrims — including Bradford’s own wife — died of starvation, sickness or exposure. When spring finally came by that time, ​they had met the indigenous people - the Indians who did indeed teach them how to plant corn and other ways to sustain themselves. This is important to understand because this is where modern American history lessons often end. 

​Thanksgiving is actually explained in some textbooks as a holiday for which the Pilgrims gave thanks to the Indians for saving their lives, rather than what it really was. They ultimately gave thanks for to God for sending the Indians, for ending the drought and that so many did survive.

They actually had to enter into contracts with their merchant-sponsors in London, because they had no money on their own. The needed sponsors. The merchants in London were making an investment, and as such, the Pilgrims agreed that everything they produced to go into a common store, or bank, common account, and each member of the community was entitled to one common share in this bank. Out of this, the merchants would be repaid until they were paid off.

All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belong to the community as well. Everything belonged to everybody and everybody had one share in it. It was 'Socialism.' They were going to distribute it equally. Considered the epitome of fairness, sharing the hardship burdens and everything.. Nobody owned anything; it was a commune. Bradford, became the governor of the colony, recognizing that it wasn’t working. It “was as costly and destructive…” His own journals chronicle the reasons it didn’t work: “...got rid of the whole commune structure and assigned a plot of land to each family to work and manage, and whatever they made, however much they made was theirs. They could sell it, they could share it, they could keep it, whatever they wanted to do."

What really happened is they turned loose the power of a free market after enduring months and months of hardship — first on the Mayflower and then getting settled and then the failure of the commune. There was no incentive for anybody to do anything. And as is human nature, some of the Pilgrims were lazy and others worked hard. It didn’t matter because even the people that weren’t very industrious got the same as everyone else. Bradford explained: "The most creative and industrious people had no incentive to work any harder than anyone else… [W]hile most of the rest of the world has been experimenting with socialism for well over a hundred years — trying to refine it, perfect it, and re-invent it — the Pilgrims decided early on.” He decided, “to scrap it permanently.” because it brought out the worst in human nature, it emphasized laziness, it created resentment.

​Resentment sprang up on both sides. So Bradford wrote about this. “‘For this community [so far as it was] was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort.

“For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense,'” without any payment, “‘that was thought injustice.’

Why should you work for other people when you can’t work for yourself? What’s the point? … The Pilgrims found that people could not be expected to do their best work without incentive.

“So what did Bradford’s community try next? They unharnessed the power of good old free enterprise by invoking the undergirding capitalistic principle of private property. Every family was assigned its own plot of land to work and permitted to market its own crops and products. And what was the result? ‘This had very good success,’ wrote Bradford, ‘for it made all hands [everybody] industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.’ …

“Is it possible that supply-side economics could have existed before the 1980s. … In no time, the Pilgrims found they had more food than they could eat themselves. Now, this is where it gets really good, folks, if you’re laboring under the misconception that I was, as I was taught in school. So they set up trading posts and exchanged goods with the Indians. The profits allowed them to pay off their debts to the merchants in London.
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“And the success and prosperity of the Plymouth settlement attracted more Europeans and began what came to be known as the ‘Great Puritan Migration.'” The word of the success of the free enterprise Plymouth Colony spread like wildfire and that began the great migration. Everybody wanted a part of it. There was no mass slaughtering of the Indians. There was no wiping out of the indigenous people, and eventually — in William Bradford’s own journal — unleashing the industriousness of all hands ended up producing more than they could ever need themselves.
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So trading post began selling and exchanging things with the Indians — and the Indians, by the way, were very helpful. Puritan kids had relationships with the children of the Native Americans that they found. This killing the indigenous people stuff, they’re talking about much, much, much, much later. It has nothing to do with the first thanksgiving.
https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2019/11/27/the-real-story-of-thanksgiving/

George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation, October 3, 1789
Thanksgiving Proclamation, 3 October 1789
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-04-02-0091

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