Part 155

"The Colombian States occupy the first place in the history of South American independence. … The Colombian States were first in the struggle because they were in many ways nearest to Europe. It was through them that intercourse between the Pacific coast and Europe was mainly carried on: Porto Bello and Carthagena were thus the main inlets of European ideas. Besides, there was here constant communication with the West Indies; and government, population and wealth were less centralised than in the more important viceroyalties of Mexico and Peru. The Indians of New Granada had always been a restless race, and the increase of taxation which was resorted to for the defence of the coast in the war with Great Britain (1777-1783) produced discontents among the whole population, both red and white. … The French Revolution, coming soon afterwards, was another link in the chain of causes. … In Venezuela, which the industry of its inhabitants had raised from a poor mission district to a thriving commercial province, the progress of modern ideas was yet faster. … The conquest of Trinidad by England in 1797 gave a new turn to the movement. … It was from Trinidad that the first attempts were made to excite the Spanish colonists to revolution. Francis Miranda, by whom this was done, was a type of many other men to whom is due the credit of leading the South American peoples to independence. He was a native of Caraccas, and when a young man had held a French commission in the American War of Independence. On his return to Venezuela in 1783 he found the populace, as we have already mentioned, in an excited state, and finding that he was suspected of designs for liberating his own country, he went to Europe, and again attached himself to the French service. … Being proscribed by the Directory, he turned to England, and … when the war [between England and Spain] broke out afresh in 1804, and England sent out an expedition to invade Buenos Ayres, Miranda believed that his opportunity was come. In 1806, by English and American aid, he sailed from Trinidad and landed with 500 men on the coast of Venezuela. But the 'Colombian Army,' as Miranda named it, met with a cool reception among the people. His utter inability to meet the Spanish forces compelled him to retreat to Trinidad, nor did he reappear on the continent until after the revolution of 1810. The principal inhabitants of Caraccas had been meditating the formation of a provisional government, on the model of the juntas of Spain, ever since the abdication of the king [see SPAIN: A. D. 1807-1808]; but it was not until 1810, when the final victory of Napoleon in Spain appeared certain, that they made a decisive movement in favour of independence. Spain, for the time at least, was now blotted out of the list of nations. Acting, therefore, in the name of Ferdinand VII., they deposed the Spanish colonial officers, and elected a supreme junta or council. Similar juntas were soon established in New Granada, at Santa Fe, Quito, Carthagena, and the other chief towns of the Viceroyalty … and the fortune of the patriot party in new Granada, from their close neighbourhood, was closely linked with that of the Venezuelans. The Regency of Cadiz, grasping for itself all the rights and powers of the Spanish nation, determined to reduce the colonists to subjection. They therefore declared the port of Caraccas in a state of blockade, as the British government had done in the previous generation with that of Boston; and, as in the case of Boston, this resolution of the Regency amounted to a declaration of war. … A congress of all the provinces of Venezuela now met at Caraccas, and published a declaration of independence on the 5th of July, 1811, and those of Mexico and New Granada soon followed. … The powers of nature seemed to conspire with the tyranny of Europe to destroy the young South American Republic. On the 26th of March, 1812, Venezuela was visited by a fearful earthquake, which destroyed the capital [Caraccas] and several other towns, together with 20,000 people, and many others perished of hunger and in other ways. This day was Holy Thursday; and the superstitious people, prompted by their priests, believed this awful visitation to be a judgment from God for their revolt. The Spanish troops, under Monteverde, now began a fresh attack on the disquieted Venezuelans. Miranda, who on his return had been placed at the head of the army, had in the meantime overrun New Granada, and laid the foundation of the future United States of Colombia. But the face of affairs was changed by the news of the earthquake. Smitten with despair, his soldiers now deserted to the royalists; he lost ground everywhere; the fortress of Puerto Cavello, commanded by the great Bolivar, then a colonel in the service of the Republic, was surrendered through treachery. {485} On the 25th of June Miranda himself capitulated, with all his forces; and Venezuela fell once more into the hands of the royalists. Miranda himself was arrested, in defiance of the terms of the surrender, and perished in an European dungeon, as Toussaint had perished a few years before. … Monteverde emptied the prisons of their occupants, and filled them with the families of the principal citizens of the republic; and Caraccas became the scene of a Reign of Terror. After Miranda's capitulation, Bolivar had gone to New Granada, which still maintained its independence, and entered into the service of that republic. Bolivar now reappeared in a new character, and earned for himself a reputation in the history of the new world which up to a certain point ranks with that of Washington. Simon Bolivar, like Miranda, was a native of Caraccas. … Like Miranda, he had to some extent learned modern ideas by visiting the old world and the United States. When the cruelties of Monteverde had made Venezuela ripe for a new revolt, Bolivar reappeared on his native soil at the head of a small body of troops from the adjacent republic. The successes which he gained so incensed the royalists that they refused quarter to their prisoners, and war to the death ('guerra a muerte') was proclaimed. All obstacles disappeared before Bolivar's generalship, and on the 4th of August, 1813, he publicly entered Caraccas, the fortress of Puerto Cavello being now the only one in the possession of the royalists. Bolivar was hailed with the title of the liberator of Venezuela. He was willing to see the republic restored; but the inhabitants very properly feared to trust at this time to anything but a military government, and vested the supreme power in him as dictator (1814). The event indeed proved the necessity of a military government. The defeated royalists raised fresh troops, many thousands of whom were negro slaves, and overran the whole country; Bolivar was beaten at La Puerta, and forced to take refuge a second time in New Granada; and the capital fell again into the hands of the royalists. … The War of Independence had been undertaken against the Regency; and had Ferdinand, on his restoration to the throne in 1814, shown any signs of conciliation, he might yet have recovered his American provinces. But the government persisted in its course of absolute repression. … New Granada, where Bolivar was general in chief of the forces, was the only part where the insurrection survived; and in 1815 a fleet containing 10,000 men under General Morillo arrived off Carthagena, its principal port. … Carthagena was only provisioned for a short time: and Bolivar, overpowered by numbers, quitted the soil of the continent and went to the West Indies to seek help to relieve Carthagena, and maintain the contest for liberty." Obtaining assistance in Hayti, he fitted out an expedition "which sailed in April from the port of Aux Cayes. Bolivar landed near Cumana, in the eastern extremity of Venezuela, and from this point he gradually advanced westwards, gaining strength by slow degrees. In the meantime, after a siege of 116 days, Carthagena surrendered; 5,000 of its inhabitants had perished of hunger. Both provinces were now in Morillo's hands. Fancying himself completely master of the country, he proceeded to wreak a terrible vengeance on the Granadines. But at the news of Bolivar's reappearance, though yet at a distance, the face of affairs changed. … His successes in the year 1817 were sure, though slow: in 1818, after he had been joined by European volunteers, they were brilliant. Bolivar beat the royalists in one pitched battle after another [Sagamoso, July 1, 1819, and Pantano de Bargas, July 25]: and at length a decisive victory was won by his lieutenant, Santander, at Boyaca, in New Granada, August 1, 1819. This battle, in which some hundreds of British and French auxiliaries fought on the side of liberty, completely freed the two countries from the yoke of Spain."

_E. J. Payne, History of European Colonies, chapter 16._

ALSO IN: _C. S. Cochrane, Journal of a Residence in Colombia, volume 1, chapters 6-8._

_H. Brownell, North and South America Illustrated, pages 316-334._

_C. Cushing, Simon Bolivar (North American Review, January, 1829, and January, 1830)._

_H. L. V. D. Holstein, Memoirs of Bolivar, chapters 3-20._

_Major Flintner, History of the Revolution of Caraccas._

COLOMBIAN STATES: A. D. 1819-1830. The glory and the fall of Bolivar. Dissolution of the Colombian Federation. Tyranny under the Liberator, and monarchical schemes.

Three days after the battle of Boyaca, Bolivar entered Bogota in triumph. "A congress met in December and decided that Venezuela and Nueva Granada should form one republic, to be called Colombia. Morillo departed for Europe in 1820, and the victory gained by Bolivar at Carabobo on June 24, 1821, decided the fate of Colombia. In the following January General Bolivar assembled an army at Popayan to drive the Spaniards out of the province of Quito. His second in command, General Sucre, led an advanced guard, which was reinforced by a contingent of volunteers from Peru, under Santa Cruz. The Spanish General Ramirez was entirely defeated in the battle of Pichincha, and Quito was incorporated with the new republic of Colombia."

_C. R. Markham, Colonial History of South America (Narrative and Critical History of America, volume 8, chapter 5)._

"The provinces of New Granada and Venezuela, together with the Presidency of Quito, now sent delegates to the convention of Cucuta, in 1821, and there decreed the union of the three countries as a single state by the name of the Republic of Colombia. The first Colombian federal constitution was concocted by the united wisdom of the delegates; and the result might easily have been foreseen. It was a farrago of crude and heterogeneous ideas. Some of its features were imitated from the American political system, some from the English, some from the French. … Bolivar of course became President: and the Republic had need of him. The task of liberation was not yet completed. Carthagena, and many other strong places, remained in Spanish hands. Bolivar reduced these one by one, and the second decisive victory of Carabobo, in 1822, finally secured Colombian freedom. The English claim the chief share in the battle of Carabobo: for the British legion alone carried the main Spanish position, losing in the feat two-thirds of its numbers. The war now fast drew to its close. The republic was able to contest with the invaders the dominion of the sea: General Padilla, on the 23rd of July, 1823, totally destroyed the Spanish fleet: and the Spanish commander finally capitulated at Puerto Cavello in December. {486} All these hard-won successes were mainly owing to the bravery and resolution of Bolivar. Bolivar deserves to the full the reputation of an able and patriotic soldier. He was now set free … to render important services to the rest of South America: and among the heroes of independence perhaps his name will always stand first. But Bolivar the statesman was a man very different from Bolivar the general. He was alternately timid and arbitrary. He was indeed afraid to touch the problems of statesmanship which awaited him: but instead of leading the Colombian people through independence to liberty, he stubbornly set his face against all measures of political or social reform. His fall may be said to have begun with the moment when his military triumphs were complete. The disaffection to the constitution of the leading people in Venezuela and Ecuador [the new name given to the old province of Quito, indicating its position at the equator] in 1826 and 1827, was favoured by the Provincial governors, Paez and Mosquera; and Bolivar, instead of resisting the disintegration of the state, openly favoured the military dictatorships which Paez and Mosquera established. This policy foreshadowed the reign of absolutism in New Granada itself. Bolivar … had now become not only the constitutional head of the Colombian federation, but also the military head of the Peruvian republics [see PERU: A. D. 1820-1826, 1825-1826, and 1826-1876]: and there can be no doubt that he intended the Colombian constitution to be reduced to the Peruvian model. As a first step towards reuniting all the South American nations under a military government, Paez, beyond reasonable doubt, with Bolivar's connivance, proclaimed the independence of Venezuela, April 30th, 1826. This practically broke up the Colombian federation: and the destruction of the constitution, so far as it regarded New Granada itself, soon followed. Bolivar had already resorted to the usual devices of military tyranny. The terrorism of Sbirri, arbitrary arrests, the assumption of additional executive powers, and, finally, the suppression of the vice-presidency, all pointed one way. … At length, after the practical secession of Venezuela and Ecuador under their military rulers, Congress decreed a summons for a Convention, which met at Ocaña in March, 1828. … The liberals, who were bent on electoral reform and decentralization, were paralyzed by the violent bearing of the Bolivian leaders: and Bolivar quartered himself in the neighbourhood, and threatened the Convention at the head of an army of 3,000 veterans. He did not, however, resort to open force. Instead of this, he ordered his party to recede from the Convention: and this left the Convention without the means of making a quorum. From this moment the designs of Bolivar were unmistakable. The dissolution of the Convention, and the appointment of Bolivar as Dictator, by a junta of notables, followed as a matter of course; and by the 'Organic decree' of August 1828, Bolivar assumed the absolute sovereignty of Colombia. A reign of brute force now followed: but the triumph of Bolivar was only ephemeral. … The Federation was gone: and it became a question of securing military rule in the separate provinces. A portentous change now occurred in Ecuador. The democratic party under Flores triumphed over the Bolivians under Mosquera: and Paez assured his chief that no help was to be expected from Venezuela. At the Convention of Bogota, in 1830, though it was packed with Bolivar's nominees, it became clear that the liberator's star had set at last. … This convention refused to vote him President. Bolivar now withdrew from public life: and a few months later, December 17, 1830, he died broken-hearted at San Pedro, near Santa Martha. Bolivar, though a patriot as regarded the struggle with Spain, was in the end a traitor to his fellow citizens. Recent discoveries leave little doubt that he intended to found a monarchy on the ruins of the Spanish dominion. England and France, both at this time strongly conservative powers, were in favour of such a scheme; and a Prince of the House of Bourbon had already been nominated to be Bolivar's successor."

_E. J. Payne, History of European Colonies, chapter 16._

"About one month before his death, General Bolivar, the so-called 'Liberator' of South America, wrote a letter to the late General Flores of Ecuador, in which the following remarkable passages occur, which have never before been published in the English language: 'I have been in power for nearly 20 years, from which I have gathered only a few definite results: 1. America, for us, is ungovernable. 2. He who dedicates his services to a revolution, plows the sea. 3. The only thing that can be done in America, is to emigrate. 4. This country will inevitably fall into the hands of the unbridled rabble, and little by little become a prey to petty tyrants of all colors and races.'"

_F. Hassaurek, Four Years among Spanish-Americans, chapter 12._

ALSO IN: _J. M. Spence, The Land of Bolivar, volume 1, chapter 7._

_E. B. Eastwick, Venezuela, chapter 11 (Battle of Carabobo)._

COLOMBIAN STATES: A. D. 1821-1854. Emancipation of slaves.

The abolition of slavery in the three republics of New Granada, Venezuela and Ecuador was initiated in the Republic of Colombia, while it embraced them all. "By a law of the 21st of July, 1821, it was provided that the children of slaves, born after its publication in the principal cities of the republic, should be free. … Certain revenues were appropriated to the creation of an emancipation fund in each district. … Aside from a certain bungling looseness with which almost all Spanish-American laws are drawn, it [the act of 1821] contains some very sensible regulations, and served to lay a solid foundation for the work of emancipation, since completed by the three republics which then constituted Colombia." In Ecuador the completion of emancipation was reached in 1854.

_F. Hassaurek, Four Years among Spanish-Americans, pages 330-333._

COLOMBIAN STATES: A. D. 1826. The Congress of Panama.

"The proposition for assembling this body emanated from Bolivar, who, in 1823, as president of Colombia, invited the governments of Mexico, Peru, Chile, and Buenos Ayres, to form a confederacy of the Spanish-American states, by means of plenipotentiaries to be convened, in the spirit of classic analogy, in the isthmus of Panama. To this invitation the governments of Peru and Mexico promptly acceded, Chile and Buenos Ayres neglected or declined to be represented in the assembly, for the reasons which we shall presently state. {487} This magnificent idea of a second Achæan League seized on the imaginations of many speculative and of some practical men in America and Europe, as destined to create a new era in the political history of the world by originating a purer system of public law, and almost realizing Bernardin de Saint Pierre's league of the modern nations. In its original shape, it was professedly a plan of a belligerent nature, having for its main object to combine the revolutionized states against the common enemy. But time was required for carrying it into effect. Meanwhile the project, magnified by the course of events, began to change its complexion. The United States were invited to participate in the Congress, so as to form an American policy, and a rallying point for American interests, in opposition to those of Europe; and, after the discussions which are so familiar to all, the government of the United States accepted the invitation, and despatched its representatives to Panama. … In the interval, between the proposal of the plan and its execution, Central America was added to the family of American nations, and agreed to take part in the Congress. At length, after many delays, this modern Amphictyonic Council, consisting of plenipotentiaries from Colombia, Central America, Peru and Mexico, assembled in the city of Panama, June 22, 1826, and in a session of three weeks concluded various treaties; one of perpetual union, league, and confederation; others relating to the contingents which the confederates should contribute for the common defence; and another for the annual meeting of the Congress in time of war. Having thus promptly despatched their private affairs, the assembly adjourned to Tacubaya in Mexico, on account of the insalubrious climate of Panama, before the delegation of the United States had arrived; since when it has justly acquired the epithet of 'introuvable,' and probably never will reassemble in its original form. Is there not a secret history of all this? Why did Chile and Buenos Ayres refuse to participate in the Congress? Why has it now vanished from the face of the earth? The answer given in South America is, that Bolivar proposed the assembly as part of a grand scheme of ambition,—ascribed to him by the republican party, and not without some countenance from his own conduct,—for establishing a military empire to embrace the whole of Spanish-America, or at least an empire uniting Colombia and the two Perus. To give the color of plausibility to the projected assembly, the United States were invited to be represented; and it is said Bolivar did not expect, nor very graciously receive, their acceptance of the invitation."

_C. Cushing, Bolivar and the Bolivian Constitution (North American Review, January, 1830)._