Colombian Presidents [pp. 117-127]

Colombian Presidents.
mained but to reorganize Nueva Granada into a republic by itself, with a new
constitution. This was done in I83I
and I832, and nothing shows more clearly how largely the people of this section
of the disrupted confederation had been
with Santander, than the fact that he
returned as soon as he heard of the death
of Bolivar, and was at once elected the
first president under the new order of
things. Thus ended the first republic
of Colombia.
Santander was a man of skill in civil
affairs, and the reduced territory now
under his administration presented afar
more simple problem of administration
than had the tripartite confederation
Bolivar had dealt with. Accordingly, he
succeeded, as Bolivar had not done, in
bringing about peace and order. Even
though his insistence upon recognizing
a great part of the public debt created in
the war for independence was displeasing
to a party of repudiation so strong that
they defeated him at the next election,
there was no revolutionary resistance.
He went quietly out of office at the close
of his four years' term, according to the
provisions of the constitution; and was
succeeded by the candidate of the conservatives. The secession of Venezuela
and Ecuador had done away with the
"Federalists," and the usual lines between the aristocratic and despotic tendency on the one side, and the popular
on the other, had come to divide parties.
The next man of eminence to come to
the presidency was General Tomas Cipriano de Mosquera, who was elected for
the term of I845-48. Mosquera had been
Bolivar's military secretary. In the interval between his administration and
Santander's the country had been in
constant disorder, and showed much tendency toward revolution. His administration was a notable oneand contributed
much to the advancement of the people
in constitutional government. Its chief
distinction was in industrial and intellectual achievement: it granted the fran
chise for the construction of the Panama
railroad, which brought about a complete
revolution in the trade with the nations
bordering on the Pacific; and it paid off
a large portion of the national debt.
After Mosquera went out of office,
Nueva Granada slipped back into the
condition of. perpetual disturbance and
revolution. In I857, at last, a man of
very high ability was elected to the presidency, Doctor Mariano Ospina, the candidate of the conservatives. But Ospina
was not merely the representative of the
conservative party, but personally of
despotic tendencies. In spite of his undoubted ability, his administration only
exasperated the revolutionary tendencies already seething in the country;
and at the end of two years he was violently deposed and thrown into prison.
He managed to escape and went to Guatemala. Here the rule was completely in
the hands of a despotic party, by whom
Ospina was regarded as a person of very
liberal views indeed.
This revolution was in great part the
work of Mosquera; and after the long
and sanguinary war that followed was
over, it was to him. that was due the
scheme of re-organization of the civil
order that was now attempted. The
country was constituted a federal republic under the name of Estados Unidos de
Colombia; and a new constitution was
drawn up for its government, which was
promulgatedin I863. This constitution
was intended, in most patriotic good
faith, to embody the most liberal and
advanced ideas in political and social
science known to the world. No one
doubted the honesty of purpose of the
convention that adopted it, but its extreme radicalism was alarming to the
cautious. It provided for the complete
separation of church and state, freedom
of religious opinion and worship, the suppression of convents, and the confiscation
of church property over and above buildings in actual use for public worship. It
introduced some extreme innovations
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[August,