Meanwhile the constituent congress of the new republic of Colombia had met at Cucutá, a town near the limits of Venezuela and New Granada. It was composed entirely of civilians and lawyers and proved to be radically republican and opposed to Bolivar's anti-democratic theories. Though a centralised government was adopted, congress rejected the life presidency and hereditary senate, and abolished the military dictatorship by providing that the commander-in-chief, when on active service, should leave his political functions in the hands of the vice-president. Bolivar made a pretence of declining the presidency, but yielded to the importunities of congress and continued in command of the army on the terms proposed, stipulating, however, that he be allowed to organise as he saw fit the provinces he might conquer in the rest of South America.
The Spaniards now held only Puerto Cabello and Cumaná, but no progress was made toward driving them out of these positions during the remainder of 1821, nor until after Bolivar had, early in 1822, left for the south to co-operate with Sucré in the conquest of Quito. In October Cumaná surrendered to Bermudez, but from Puerto Cabello Morales led an expedition which reconquered Maracaibo and Coro. He was unable to hold them and the defeat of his squadron on Lake Maracaibo in July, 1823, forced him to surrender. On the 8th of November Puerto Cabello was taken by assault and the long war for Venezuela's independence was over.
In 1822 Bolivar departed bent on the conquest of Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, leaving a New Granadan vice-president as ruler of the great Colombian republic, of which Venezuela was merely one division. The massacres and sackings of ten bloody years had depopulated and impoverished Venezuela, and the cost of maintaining the army and aiding Bolivar in his foreign contests drained its exhausted resources. The educated Creoles, especially powerful in the agricultural regions near the coast, saw no place for themselves in Bolivar's centralising system. They wanted to control the offices in their own localities, and did not relish the establishment of a bureaucracy in which appointments and promotions would be settled at Bogotá. The predominant radical French ideas added force to the sentiment of local independence. The theorists were offended by Bolivar's manifest predilection toward aristocratic forms and the favours which he granted the clergy. Most dangerous of all, jealousy of the Liberator was rife among the generals.