Social Darwinism was the theory to justify claims of racial superiority.
An appalling of black codes and other racist laws/acts as well as adding the 14th amendment which gave African Americans a vote.
Hope this helps
Christopher Columbus was instructed by the King, and Queen of Spain to travel to the new world in search of valuable natural resources. Columbus had his own inclinations to travel being that the idea that the world was spherical had not yet been a well accepted fact.
