Their difficulties were the same and their aim was the same, but the character of the two men were absolutely and entirely different, for Bolivar was reckless, impatient of advice, and even foolhardy. What Washington was we know.
The South-American came of a distinguished Spanish family, and had been educated as a courtier and as a soldier in the mother-country, though his heart remained always with his own people, and he was among the first to take up arms to set them free. Unless you have seen the country through which he led his men, and have measured the mountains he climbed with his few followers, it is quite impossible to understand the immensity of the task he accomplished. Even to-day a fast steamer cannot reach Callao from Panama under seven days, and yet Bolivar made the same distance and on foot, starting from the South Atlantic, and continuing on across the continent to the Pacific side, and then on down the coast into Peru, living on his way upon roots and berries, sleeping on the ground wrapped in a blanket, riding on muleback or climbing the steep trail on foot, and freeing on his way Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, and finally Peru, the home of the Incas.
The history of this campaign is one too glorious and rich in incident and color to be crowded into a few pages, and the character of its chief actor too varied, and his rise and fall too dramatic, to be dismissed, as it must be here, in a few paragraphs. But every American who loves a hero and who loves a lover—and Bolivar was very much of both, and perhaps too much of the latter—should read the life of this young man who freed a country rich in brave men, who made some of these who were much his senior in years his lieutenants, and who, after risking his life upon many battle-fields and escaping several attempts at assassination, died at last deserted except by a few friends, and with a heart broken by the ingratitude of the people he had led out of captivity.
It is difficult to find out, even in his own country, why the Venezuelans, after heaping Bolivar with honors and elevating him to the place of a god, should have turned against him, and driven him into exile at Santa Marta. Some will tell you that he tried to make himself dictator over the countries which he had freed; others say that it was because he had refused to be a dictator that the popular feeling went against him, and that when the people in the madness of their new-found freedom cried, “Thou hast rid us of kings; be thou king,” he showed them their folly, and sought his old home, and died there before the reaction came, which was to sweep him back once more and forever into the place of the popular hero of South America.
DECORATION OF THE STATUE OF BOLIVAR AT CARACAS, VENEZUELA, DECEMBER 18, 1895, BY AMERICAN RESIDENTS
It was sixteen years after his death that a hero-worshipping friend was brave enough to commission an artist to design a statue to his memory. On the neck of this statue the artist hung the representation of a miniature in the shape of a medallion, which had been given to Bolivar by the family of Washington. On the reverse was a lock of Washington’s hair and the inscription, “This portrait of the founder of liberty in North America is presented by his adopted son to him who has acquired equal glory in South America.”
Some one asked why the artist had stripped from the breast of Bolivar all of the other medals and stars that had been given him by different countries in the hour of his triumph, and the artist answered that he had done as his patron and the friend of Bolivar thought would best please his hero. And ever after that it was decreed that every bust or statue or engraving of the Liberator should show him with this portrait of Washington hanging by a ribbon about his neck; and so you will see in the National Portrait Gallery that while the coats of his lieutenants glitter with orders and crosses, Bolivar’s bears this medal only. It was his greatest pride, and he considered it his chief glory. And the manner of its bestowal was curiously appropriate. In 1824 General Lafayette returned to this country as the guest of the nation, and a banquet was given to him by Congress, at which the memory of Washington and the deeds of his French lieutenant were honored again and again. It was while the enthusiasm and rejoicings of this celebration were at their height that Henry Clay rose in his place and asked the six hundred Americans before him to remember that while they were enjoying the benefits of free institutions founded by the bravery and patriotism of their fore-fathers, their cousins and neighbors in the southern continent were struggling to obtain that same independence.
SIMON BOLIVAR