Columbus Hero Or Villain Essay

Columbus: Hero or Villain?

Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492 opening the gate to the western hemisphere and acting as a champion for new world exploration. Columbus’ methods may be questioned to this day but we still observe him as a figure that we study to this day. Now to the important question, Should Columbus Day be abolished or renamed as a federal holiday? First lets go over some brief history.

Christopher Columbus was born in the port city of Genoa Italy in the year 1451. He gained his experience sailing as a teenager on several merchant ships in his area until his ship was attacked off the coast of Portugal by a ship belonging to the Moors. The story goes that the ship sank and the young columbus swam ashore to

the city of Lisbon, Portugal. Afterward deciding to study Cartography along with his brother bartholomew who was a fellow cartographer.
With the knowledge that Columbus accumulated at school he began to dream of a route to reach the eastern world by traveling west, with trade on the rise and the age of exploration on the horizon, it didn’t seem like a bad idea. Long story short Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain made an agreement with Columbus to make his voyage across the atlantic where he eventually hit what he called the West Indies which is the modern day Caribbean. Columbus believed that he had succeeded in his journey and we all know the subsequent events.
So should Columbus Day be replaced as a federal holiday or should we observe Columbus as a hero of the western world.

Lets take a look at the history of the day itself to come to a conclusion on this topic. Columbus Day was first declared a federal holiday in 1968 by President Lyndon Johnson preceding that date in the year 1937 President Franklin Roosevelt declared that every October 12 thereafter would be named Columbus Day. Now why have we as a society decided to form Columbus into the hero persona that we have today? I believe the answer has roots in the late 18th and early 19th century. After The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution and after the revolutionary war there was an America that hosted a society of people trying to find a heritage, a history that did not just blatantly state that they were british colonists. They wanted to claim their own story and there own history that is why Columbus is celebrated as a hero today. These people in search for their own history found a figure and to them a figure that represented leaving behind the old world, a figure that represented leaving the old world in search of something better. These people in search for a history decided that Columbus was a hero for the new world. Little did they know, Columbus stumbled onto the Americas by accident, simply in search of a quicker trade route to the

east.
Columbus really wasn't a hero, he was just a cartographer/sailer that wanted to find that quicker route. When he did stumble on to the Americas by accident he wasn't the first explorer to set foot on the land, he can also be credited with the decimation of the native peoples he encountered on his journey in the caribbean by the spread of disease. It all depends on perspective, to the people of the free world in the late 18th and 19th century Columbus was a hero, he rediscovered or as far as they new discovered there land. To the Europeans at the time of the age of exploration (especially the spanish) Columbus was most likely a hero. And to the native people he encountered, Columbus was definitely the farthest from hero one can possible manage. For my own personal opinion, Columbus was a hero, he wasn’t the first European to set foot on American soil but with the age of exploration around the corner he reopened the new world to the European audience. So why not give him a day.