Lafayette was deeply respectful, almost adoring in his praise. As far as he was concerned, Bolívar had accomplished more than Washington; he had freed his people in far more difficult circumstances. North America’s revolutionaries had been uniformly white, after all; and their values had been shared ideals, their faith overwhelmingly Protestant. In South America, on the other hand, Bolívar had cobbled liberty from a gallimaufry of peoples and races; and he had done so by “sheer dint of talent, tenacity, and valor.”
