Colombia for the new Republic. Simón Bolívar became the first President of Colombia, and Francisco de Paula Santander was made Vice President. However, the new republic was unstable and three countries emerged from the collapse of Gran Colombia in 1830 (New Granada, Ecuador and Venezuela). Colombia was the first constitutional government in South America, and the Liberal and Conservative parties, founded in 1848 and 1849 respectively, are two of the oldest surviving political parties in the Americas. Slavery was abolished in the country in 1851. Internal political and territorial divisions led to the dissolution of Gran Colombia in 1830. The so-called
Gran Colombia title of his archive of his revolutionary activities. Simon Bolívar and other Spanish American revolutionaries also used the word "Colombia" in the continental sense. The establishment in 1819 of a country with the name "Colombia" by the Congress of Angostura gave the term a specific geographic and political reference. The Republic of Colombia comprised more or less the former territories of the Viceroyalty of New Granada (1739-1777), which it claimed under the legal principle of "uti possidetis". It united the territories of the former Third Republic of Venezuela, the United Provinces of New Granada, the former Royal Audiencia of Panama