Excerpt from The Story of the Liberty Bell The Compact which the Pilgrim Fathers signed in the Mayflower, just before the Landing of the Pilgrims, was a wee child of the Great Charter, but it soon grew to be the father of the Declaration of Inde pendence. From this, in turn, descended Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which at last gave freedom to all in the Great Republic, and made the keystone of that government of the people, by the people, for the people, which shall not perish from the earth. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.