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

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