as a natural protector, guide, and friend
whose advice and cooperation ought to be invoked. The United States was
accordingly asked to take part in the assembly--not to concert military
measures, but simply to join its fellows to the southward in a solemn
proclamation of the Monroe Doctrine by America at large and to discuss
means of suppressing the slave trade.

The Congress that met at Panama, in June, 1826, afforded scant
encouragement to Bolivar's roseate hope of interAmerican solidarity.
Whether because of the difficulties of travel, or because of internal
dissensions, or because of the suspicion that the megalomania of the
Liberator had awakened in Spanish America, only the four continental
countries nearest the isthmus--Mexico, Central America, Colombia, and
Peru--were represented. The delegates, nevertheless, signed a compact
of "perpetual union, league, and confederation," provided for mutual
assistance to be rendered by the several nations in time of war, and
arranged to have the Areopagus of the Americas transferred to Mexico.
None of the acts of this Congress was ratified by the republics
concerned, except the agreement for union, which was adopted by
Colombia.

Disheartening to Bolivar as this spectacle was, it proved merely the
first of a series of calamities which were to overshadow the later years
of the Liberator. His grandiose political structure began to crumble,
for it was built on the shifting sands of a fickle popularity. The
more he urged a general acceptance of the principles of his autocratic
constitution, the surer were his followers that he coveted royal honors.
In December he imposed his instrument upon Peru. Then he learned that
a meeting in Venezuela, presided over by Paez, had declared itself in
favor of separation from Colombia. Hardly had he left Peru to check this
movement when an uprising at Lima deposed his representative and led
to the summons of a Congress which, in June, 1827, restored the former
constitution and chose a new President. In Quito, also, the government
of the unstable dictator was overthrown.

Alarmed by symptoms of disaffection which also appeared in the western
part of the republic, Bolivar hurried to Bogota. There in the hope
of removing the growing antagonism, he offered his "irrevocable"
resignation, as he had done on more than one occasion before. Though the
malcontents declined to accept his withdrawal from office, they insisted
upon his calling a constituti