disintegration
of the country. Though the viceroy was deposed and a general Congress
was summoned to meet at the capital, Bogota, efforts at centralization
encountered opposition in every quarter. Only the royalists managed to
preserve a semblance of unity. Separate republics sprang into being and
in 1813 declared their independence of Spain. Presidents and congresses
were pitted against one another. Towns fought among themselves. Even
parishes demanded local autonomy. For a while the services of Bolivar
were invoked to force rebellious areas into obedience to the principle
of confederation, but with scant result. Unable to agree with his fellow
officers and displaying traits of moral weakness which at this time as
on previous occasions showed that he had not yet risen to a full sense
of responsibility, the Liberator renounced the task and fled to Jamaica.

The scene now shifts northward to the viceroyalty of New Spain. Unlike
the struggles already described, the uprisings that began in 1810 in
central Mexico were substantially revolts of Indians and half-castes
against white domination. On the 16th of September, a crowd of natives
rose under the leadership of Miguel Hidalgo, a parish priest of the
village of Dolores. Bearing on their banners the slogan, "Long live
Ferdinand VII and down with bad government," the undisciplined crowd,
soon to number tens of thousands, aroused such terror by their behavior
that the whites were compelled to unite in self-defense. It mattered not
whether Hidalgo hoped to establish a republic or simply to secure for
his followers relief from oppression: in either case the whites could
expect only Indian domination. Before the trained forces of the whites a
horde of natives, so ignorant of modern warfare that some of them tried
to stop cannon balls by clapping their straw hats over the mouths of the
guns, could not stand their ground. Hidalgo was captured and shot, but
he was succeeded by Jose Maria Morelos, also a priest. Reviving the
old Aztec name for central Mexico, he summoned a "Congress of Anahuac,"
which in 1813 asserted that dependence on the throne of Spain was
"forever broken and dissolved." Abler and more humane than Hidalgo, he
set up a revolutionary government that the authorities of Mexico failed
for a while to suppress.

In 1814, therefore, Spain still held the bulk of its dominions.
Trinidad, to be sure, had been lost to Great Britain, and both Louisiana
and West Florida to