1620
The Mayflower Compact
Storm-blown north of their charter, the Pilgrims agreed — before they ever stepped ashore — to govern themselves by laws made for the common good. Forty-one men signed it aboard ship in Provincetown Harbor. It was a small act, but a radical one: government founded on the consent of the governed, more than a century before 1776.
We … covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic … to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws … as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good.
Why it still matters
Every time a town holds a meeting and votes on its own rules, it echoes this idea: that the right to be governed begins with the agreement to govern together.