In 1826 Simon Bolivar stood at the zenith of his glory and power.
No adherents of the Spanish regime were left in South America to
menace the freedom of its independent states. In January a
resistance kept up for nine years by a handful of royalists
lodged on the remote island of Chiloe, off the southern coast of
Chile, had been broken, and the garrison at the fortress of
Callao had laid down its arms after a valiant struggle. Among
Spanish Americans no one was comparable to the marvelous man who
had founded three great republics stretching from the Caribbean
Sea to the Tropic of Capricorn. Hailed as the "Liberator" and the
"Terror of Despots," he was also acclaimed by the people as the
"Redeemer, the First-Born Son of the New World!" National
destinies were committed to his charge, and equestrian statues
were erected in his honor. In the popular imagination he was
ranked with Napoleon as a peerless conqueror, and with Washington
as the father of his country. That megalomania should have seized
the mind of the Liberator under circumstances like these is not
strange.

Ever a zealous advocate of large states, Bolivar was an equally
ardent partisan of confederation. As president of three
republics--of Colombia actually, and of its satellites, Peru and
Bolivia, through his lieutenants--he could afford now to carry
out the plan that he had long since cherished of assembling at
the town of Panama, on Colombian soil, an "august congress"
representative of the independent countries of America. Here, on
the isthmus created by nature to join the continents, the nations
created by men should foregather and proclaim fraternal accord.
Presenting to the autocratic governments of Europe a solid front
of resistance to their pretensions as well as a visible symbol of