What did people in Revolutionary America think of Columbus?

Though everyone in 18th-century America — from Native Americans to new arrivals — lived in the legacy of Columbus, they rarely referenced him as a hero or villain. In fact, most Revolutionary Americans thought about Columbus far less often than one might expect today. 

Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) was a European mariner who received Spanish sponsorship for exploratory voyages west across the Atlantic, first reaching the American continents in 1492. The oldest Columbus monument in the United States is the “Columbus Obelisk,” erected in Baltimore in 1792. That same year, a New York club celebrated “the third Century Day,” which is sometimes cited as the first Columbus Day (traditionally Oct. 12, the date Columbus landed on an island in the Bahamas).  

Revolutionary Americans only sometimes mentioned Columbus in historical accounts of the “discovery” of America. Occasionally, he was invoked as a metaphorical pioneer. In 1760, for example, John Adams wrote that “in Metaphysicks, Mr. Locke, directed by my Lord Bacon, has steered his Course into the unenlightened Regions of the human Mind, and like Columbus has discoverd a new World.” More often, though, for many British Americans, Columbus was associated with the then-popular historical conception called the “Black Legend,” which portrayed early Spanish Catholic colonization (especially as opposed to later British Protestant colonization) as exceptionally cruel and violent. 

Nor was the name Columbus used very frequently. Among thousands of British American ships of this time, only one, a Continental Navy vessel, seems to have been christened the “Columbus.” Though editorial writers took on the names of historical and mythological figures all the time, rarely did they sign Columbus as a pseudonym. The name “Columbia,” derived from Columbus and familiar to many today thanks to the District of Columbia, appeared more frequently, usually to evoke the spirit or goddess of the new nation. One writer in 1777 even argued that the country should be named the United States of Columbia to separate it from other historical and contemporary identities. 

In the United States, it was not until the late 1800s and early 1900s, when Italian immigration and intense anti-Italian sentiments grew, that Columbus experienced a popular revival. Though his actual birthplace and ethnicity have long been in question, even recently after DNA studies, many Italians have claimed him as one of their own and used him to assert their presence in America’s story. President Lyndon Johnson signed legislation making Columbus Day an annual federal holiday, with its first occurrence in 1971. Meanwhile, as early as 1977, Native American activists proposed an alternative holiday, Indigenous Peoples Day, commemorating and celebrating Native American culture. Columbus continues to beckon us to consider what it means to be American, often in ways that Revolutionary Americans could not have imagined.