by Petra Newman

Created on: December 29, 2008   Last Updated: December 31, 2008

"We arouse and arrange our memories to suit our psychic needs." (Michael Kammen, professor of American History and Culture at Cornell University)

When our forefathers left England, they also left behind their culture and political icons. America as a young republic had no history or heroes. From Michael Kammen's book (Mystic Chords of Memory) explains that "repudiation of the past left Americans of the young republic without a firm foundation on which to base a shared sense of their social selves." A new national story was needed to fill the void; Americans needed an icon to symbolize who they were. Revolutionary leaders declined the mythical transformation. Their belief to be raised above others would be undemocratic. Their reluctance to create self-identity through national identity left a vacuum which slowly filled with the image of Christopher Columbus.

America is filled with icons and symbols, many of which are flawed and misunderstood beliefs. The facts behind the fiction are lost in an ambiguous haze of patriotism and perceived national identity. Christopher Columbus is an important figure in this pantheon of American myth. His status is representative not of his own accomplishments, but the self-perception of the society which raised him to his pedestal in American gallery of heroism.

"The association between Columbus and America took root in the imagination" In the eighteenth century, "People had even more reason to think themselves in distinct American terms." (Nobel, 250) American's found their history and hero in Christopher Columbus. After the Revolution Columbus, became an iconic name an avatar. His name was written in poems and literature as in Phillis Wheatly's 1775 innovation, the poetic device "Columbia" became a symbol of both Columbus and America. In 1792, King's College of New York changed its name to Columbia and the new capital in Washington was subtitled District of Columbia.

"It is not hard to understand the appeal of Columbus as a totem for the new republic and the former subjects of George 111. Columbus had found the way of escape from the Old World tyranny. He was the solitary individual who challenged the unknown sea, as triumphant Americans contemplated the dangers and promise of their own wilderness frontier . . . as a consequence of his vision and audacity, there was now a land free from kings, vast continent for new beginnings. In Columbus the new nation without its own history and mythology found a hero from the distant past, one

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