The overthrow of Spanish rule and the birth of new republican governments in northern South America at the beginning of the nineteenth century were in large part the work of one man-Simon Bolivar. Bolivar was not only the soldier who built a patriot army from a small band of exiles and led them victoriously across Venezuela and down the spine of the Andes as far as Potosi; he was also the statesman who framed the new republics that sprang to life after the defeat of the Spanish and who called the Congress of Panama in hopes of making real his dream of uniting all the South American republics...