Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 02.djvu/353

 COLUMBUS

COLVER

show any feeling of brotherhood toward his fel- loAsr men. He returned to Spain in the t^vo cara- vels, the Santa Maria having been %\Tecked, and after a stormy voyage the Xinn alone cast anchor in the harbor of Tagus and reached Palos, March 15, 1493. The same day the Pinta, which had parted company from the Nina days before, reached port. His journey through Spain to Barcelona was the triumjihal march of a hero, and while his first expedition had cost him seven years of tireless effort, his second was the spon- taneous outpouring of ships, men and money to an extent that embarras.sed the explorer, and his success engendered a sjjirit of avarice and ambi- tion for power before unnoticed in his character. On Sept. 25, 1493, he sailed with seventeen ships and 1700 men on his second voyage and made a settlement in EspaSola, leaving it under charge of his brother Bartholomew, after having estab- lished a reign of terror which made huu gener- ally hated by the Spaniards ; and of the natives of the island, nearly one-third met an inhuman death during the first two years. He discovered the Windward islands, Porto Rico and Jamaica, and returning reached Cadiz June 11, 1496, under a cloud of criminating charges made by his comiDanions of the expedition. The Francis- cans who went to the island to establish the church found the colonists enthusiastic over their deliverance from the rule of Columbus, and both the Benedictines and Dominicans gave sim- ilar testimony of the inhumanity of the Spanish admiral whose course caused the annihilation of the native races of the Antilles. He was re- ceived by the colonists with outsjioken opposi- tion. The Spanish commissioners sent by the king to investigate charges against him felt jus- tified in putting both Columbus and his brother in chains and sending them to Spain. It was ■during this return voyage that he is credited with refusing to be relieved of his manacles with the words, " No, I wiU wear them as a memento of the gratitude of princes." The king dis- claimed authorizing the arrest but was no doubt dissatisfied with the small returns from the ex- peditions, and while he released hini and allowed him four caravels with which to continue his explorations in the new-found archipelago, it was only with the hope of the possible discovery of the gold which was the object of his patron- age. Columbus reached San Lucan, Nov. 7, 1504, where he was detained several months. Sufl;er- ing from sickness he returned to Sj^ain where his claims were ignored by the king and he was stripped of all honors and left to suffer for the necessities of life. He died on Ascension day in a small apartment of No. 7 Calle de Colon. His remains were buried in the Franciscan con- vent in Valladolid, afterward removed to the

convent of Los Cuevas, Seville, in 1536 were taken thence with the remains of his son Diego with extravagant ceremony, and finally reached Santo Domingo about 1541 and were placed at the right of the altar within the cathedral. In 1795 the Spanish authorities, acting with the Duke of Veragua, determined to remove the remains to Havana and they were presumably placed in the cathedral of Havana with great pomp, although there is no evidence to disprove the assertion that the ashes removed and which found sepul- chre in the cathedral of Havana were those of his son Diego Colon. He died without knowing the value or extent of his chance discovery. In 1892 the whole world joined with America and Spain in the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the landing of Columbus on American soil, "the opening of the gates " of a new world to civilization. The pomp of the occasion in New York city was unprecedented in the history of military and civic procession, and the presence of exact reproduction of the caravels Santa Maria, Pinta and Xina, built in Spain, transported across the Atlantic over the route originally sailed by Columbus and finally exhibited on the lake at Chicago to the visitors at the Columbian exposi- tion in 1893, created intense interest. See TTie Life of Columbus by Washington Irving (1828), and by Justin Winsor (1891). Columbus died in Valladolid, Spain, May 20, 1506.

COLVER, Nathaniel, clergyman, was born in Orwell, Vt., May 10, 1794; son of the Rev. Nathan- iel Colver, a pioneer Baptist clergyman, who removed to Champlain, N.Y., where the son ac- quired his elementary education. In 1809 he removed with the family to West Stockbridge, Mass., where he studied for the ministry. He served churches at Clarendon, Vt., and Fort Cov- ington, Kingsbury, Fort Ann and Union Village, N.Y. In 1839 he was called to Boston, Mass., where, with Timothy Gilbert, he organized the church afterward known as Tremont Temple. He labored in that church with a success unique in the history of the Boston pulpits until 1852, when he took charge of the church at South Abington. He was j^astor of the First Baptist church, Detroit, Mich., from 1853 until 1856, when he became pas- tor of the First church in Cincinnati, Ohio, and while in the latter citj' organized a class of young men and instructed them regularly in theology. He was pastor of the Tabernacle, afterward the Second Church, Chicago, 1861-67; founded in Richmond, Va., the Colver institute for educat- ing young colored men for the ministry, was its president from 1867 until 1870, when he returned to Chicago and made the beginning toward the organization of tlie Richmond theological semi- nary, in which he declined the chair of doctrinal theology, Denison university conferred upon