United States of Colombia
The radical liberals had won the Colombian Civil War (1860–1862), and created the Constitution of Rionegro promulgated on May 8, 1863.
On February 3, 1863 Congress approved the name United States of Colombia for the country.
The new constitution liberalized social and economic policies, proclaiming the freedom to express one's ideas orally or in written form; freedom to work or to organize any business; freedom of the press; freedom to travel through the territory; to enter or to leave it; freedom of education, freedom of religion, freedom of association, and freedom to possess arms and ammunition.
It established a federal system with a central presidency (presidency of the union) for two years and without the possibility of immediate re-election. The election of the president of the union was indirect: each one of the Nine States (Panama, Antioquia, Magdalena, Bolivar, Santander, Boyacá, Cundinamarca, Tolima and the Cauca) would choose their candidates following particular electoral procedures for each state; then, each one of the nine states would deposit a vote to elect the president of the union. The winning candidate was that who had the absolute majority of votes; if an absolute majority was not obtained, the Congress would choose him from the same group of candidates.
Under this decentralized regime, regionalistic feelings reached their ultimate expression.
On May 12, four days after having proclaimed the constitution, the 61 delegates chose Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera to govern for two years until April 1, 1864, the moment at which the new regulations to name a president would start. Mosquera had the anticlerical tone of liberalism, and the conservatives a pro-clerical tone that would continue for many decades.
Read more about this topic: Constitutional History Of Colombia, The Constitution of 1863
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united and/or states:
“The United States is just now the oldest country in the world, there always is an oldest country and she is it, it is she who is the mother of the twentieth century civilization. She began to feel herself as it just after the Civil War. And so it is a country the right age to have been born in and the wrong age to live in.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Because of these convictions, I made a personal decision in the 1964 Presidential campaign to make education a fundamental issue and to put it high on the nation’s agenda. I proposed to act on my belief that regardless of a family’s financial condition, education should be available to every child in the United States—as much education as he could absorb.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“... there is a place in the United States for the Negro. They are real American citizens, and at home. They have fought and bled and died, like men, to make this country what it is. And if they have got to suffer and die, and be lynched, and tortured, and burned at the stake, I say they are at home.”
—Amanda Berry Smith (1837–1915)