Letters from an American - October 12, 2025

Episode Date: October 13, 2025

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October 12th, 2025. On October 9th, President Donald J. Trump's office issued an official proclamation, declaring Monday, October 13th, Columbus Day. The proclamation says the day is one on which Our nation honors the legendary Christopher Columbus, the original American hero, giant of Western civilization and one of the most gallant and visionary men to ever walk the face of the earth. This Columbus Day, we honor his life with reverence and gratitude, and we

pledge to reclaim his extraordinary legacy of faith, courage, perseverance, and virtue from the left-wing arsonists who have sought to destroy his name and dishonor his memory. The The proclamation goes on to present a white Christian nationalist version of American history, with much more emphasis on Christianity than Trump's previous similar proclamations. It claims that Columbus was guided by a noble mission to discover a new trade route to Asia, bring glory to Spain, and spread the gospel of Jesus Christ to distant lands. Upon his arrival, it says, he planted a majestic cross in a mighty act of devotion, dedicating the land to God and setting in motion America's

proud birthright of faith. Guided by steadfast prayer and unwavering fortitude and resolve, it goes on, Columbus's journey carried thousands of years of wisdom, philosophy, reason, and culture across the Atlantic into the Americas, paving the way for the ultimate triumphs, of Western civilization less than three centuries later on July 4, 1776. Then the proclamation turns to Maga's complaints about modern revisions of this triumphalist history, saying, outrageously, in recent years, Christopher Columbus has been a prime target of a vicious and merciless campaign to erase our history, slander our heroes and attack our heritage. Our nation, the proclamation says, will now abide by a simple truth.

Christopher Columbus was a true American hero, and every citizen is eternally indebted to his relentless determination. This proclamation completely misunderstands the 15th century world of expanding European maritime routes that entirely reworked world trade, including trade in human beings, and the role of Italian mariner Christopher Columbus, who worked for Spain's monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, in that expansion. It also misses what historians call the Colombian Exchange,

the transfer of plants and animals between the Americas and the old world, Europe, Asia, and Africa, after Columbus's first land. in the Bahamas in 1492. That exchange went both ways and transformed the globe, but its effect on the Americas was devastating. When Columbus and his sailors discovered the New World, they brought with them both ideologies and germs that would decimate the people's living there.

Estimates of the number of native people living in North America and South America in 1490s. in 1490 very widely, but there were at least as many as 50 million and possibly as many as a hundred million. In the next 200 years, displacement, enslavement, war, and especially disease, would kill about 90% of those native peoples. Most historians see the destruction of America's indigenous peoples as the brutal triumph of European white men over those they perceived to be inferior. Historians are not denigrating historical actors or the nation when they uncover sorted parts of our past. Historians study how and why societies change. As we

dig into the past, we see patterns that never entirely foreshadow the present, but that give us ideas about how people in the past have dealt with circumstances that look similar to circumstances today. If we are going to get an accurate picture of how a society works, historians must examine it honestly, seeing the bad as well as the good. With luck, seeing those patterns will help us make better decisions about our own lives, our communities, and our nation in the present. History is different from commemoration. History is about what happened in the past, while commemoration is about the present.

We put up statues and celebrate holidays to honor figures from the past who embodies some quality we admire. The Columbus Day holiday began in the 1920s, when a resurgent Ku Klux Klan tried to create a lily white country by attacking not just black Americans, but also immigrants, Jews, and Catholics. This was an easy sell in the 20s since government leaders during the First World War had emphasized Americanism, and demanded that immigrants reject all ties to their countries of origin. From there it was a short step for native-born white American Protestants to see anyone different from themselves as a threat to the nation. The clan attacked the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization.

Clan members spread the rumor that one became a leader of the Knights of Columbus by vowing to exterminate Protestants and to torture and kill anyone upon orders of Catholic leaders. To combat the growing animosity toward Catholics and racial minorities, the Knights of Columbus began to highlight the roles these groups had played in American history. In the early 1920s, they published three books in a Knights of Columbus Racial Contributions series, including the gift of black folk by pioneering black sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois. They also turned to an old American holiday. Since the late 1860s, Italian Americans in New York City had celebrated a Columbus

Day to honor the heritage they shared with the famous Italian explorer. In the 1930s, the Knights of Columbus joined with media mogul Generoso Pope, an important Italian-American politician in New York City, to rally behind the idea of a national Columbus Day. In 1934, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aware of the need to solidify his new Democratic coalition by welcoming all Democratic voters, proclaimed Columbus Day, October 12th, a federal holiday. In 1971, the day became unfixed from a date. It is now the second Monday in October. The nights intended for Columbus Day to honor the important contributions of immigrants and Catholics to American society. But in the 1960s, a growing focus on the lives and experiences of indigenous Americans

forced a reckoning with the choice of Columbus as a standard bearer. Currently, 17 states and the District of Columbia use the official holiday to celebrate indigenous history. Some Oklahoma tribal members simply use the day to honor their tribe. As society changes, the values we want to commemorate shift. In the 1920s, Columbus mattered to Americans who opposed the Ku Klux Klan because celebrating an Italian defended a multicultural society. Now, though, he represents the devastation of America's indigenous people at the hands of European colonists who brought to North America and South America germs and a fever for gold and God. It is not left-wing arson, to want to commemorate a different set of values

than the country held in the 1920s. What is arson, though, is the attempt to skew history to serve a modern-day political narrative. Rejecting an honest account of the past makes it impossible to see accurate patterns. The lessons we learn about how society changes will be false, and the decisions we make based on those false patterns will not be grounded in reality.

And a society grounded in fiction, rather than reality, cannot function. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead in Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss. Thank you. Thank you.