1850 American Gold Baron

Chapter 104 The Fury of Texas (3rd update)

Liang Yao stood by the window of the study room, looking down at the city below him.

In his previous life, he had been to San Francisco several times on business trips, and he looked at the empty Golden Gate Strait.

Without San Francisco's iconic building: the Golden Gate Bridge, he always felt that the Golden Gate Bay was missing something.

Build a Golden Gate Bridge?

He is not the first person to have this idea. When the gold rush just started two years ago, someone proposed the idea of ​​building a bridge across the Golden Gate Strait to connect the two sides.

It's just that this idea was too bold and avant-garde, and it became a laughing stock for a while.

In 1850, the annual steel production in the United States was less than 10,000 tons, and the annual pig iron production was less than 600,000 tons.

In the 1930s, the United States spent more than 800,000 tons of steel and took four years to build the Golden Gate Bridge.

In other words, if you want to build the Golden Gate Bridge, regardless of other factors, with the current steel production in the United States, it will take at least eighty years to assemble the steel materials needed to build the Golden Gate Bridge.

Before the second industrial revolution, the idea of ​​carrying out such a huge project was nothing more than a pipe dream.

Even the British Empire, the world's largest industrial power at this time, may not have the strength to build a bridge across Jinshan Bay.

During this period, the main bridges in the United States were still masonry bridges.

"Mr. Liang, long time no see."

Ge Wen walked into the study and came to Liang Yao's side.

"Gwen, you said it would be great if we could build a bridge across the Golden Gate Strait. This bridge will definitely become a landmark building in San Francisco." Liang Yao withdrew his gaze from the Golden Gate Strait.

"Mr. Liang, are you dreaming? If we can build a bridge across the Golden Gate Strait, it will be a miracle in the history of bridges in the world and even in the history of industry."

Ge Wen felt that Liang Yao's ideas were a bit unreasonable. If Ge Wen hadn't known Liang Yao, he would have thought that Liang Yao was a complete lunatic and a delusional person.

"Everything is possible. Sit down, Mr. Graves."

Liang Yao made a gesture of asking him to sit down, and the two of them sat on the sofa and prepared to start talking.

Kony walked into the study with a pot of hot tea, poured a cup of tea for Liang Yao and Ge Wen respectively, and reminded at the same time: "The tea is quite hot, be careful of burns, gentlemen."

"Is this your new servant or assistant?"

Ge Wen pointed at Kony and asked curiously. He always felt that Kony looked a bit familiar, as if he had seen him somewhere, but also seemed like he had never seen him before.

"New assistant." Liang Yao said without thinking.

"This assistant of yours looks a lot like Mr. Vanderbilt. I visited Mr. Vanderbilt when I was passing through Texas."

As if he suddenly remembered something, Ge Wen stroked his forehead and said, no wonder he felt that Liang Yao's newbie looked familiar. He had seen him somewhere. It turned out that this new assistant looked very much like Mr. Vanderbilt.

"He is Commodore Vanderbilt's son Corny, doesn't it look like that?" Liang Yao said with a smile.

"Mr. Vanderbilt's son is working as your assistant?" Gwen's eyes widened and his jaw almost dropped.

"Kony, introduce yourself to Mr. Gervin, no, it should be to Senator Gervin," Liang Yao said to Kony.

"Hello, Senator, nice to meet you, my name is Cornelius Jeremiah Vanderbilt." Corny briefly introduced himself to Gervin.

"Hello, Kony." Gavin shook hands with Kony, but he still had an incredulous expression on his face.

"Gwen, I saw news in the newspaper that the territorial dispute between Texas and New Mexico has not yet been resolved?"

Liang Yao pays much more attention to Texas than other states.

In terms of geographical location, Texas is the closest state to California among all the states in the United States.

In terms of interest demands, as a state that has just joined the United States of America, California has many of the same interests as Texas.

"It was indeed not resolved. Mr. Peter Hansborough Bell of Texas was not satisfied with the compromise bill, and the Texas garrison in New Mexico was not completely withdrawn from Texas.

The smell of gunpowder is still very strong, Mr. Vanderbilt told me."

Gervin took a sip of tea to moisten his throat and continued: "Congress is going to annex the 324,000 square kilometers of land that originally belonged to Texas to the New Mexico region, and Texas will receive $10 million as compensation.

.”

"If I were the governor of Texas, I would not agree to this loss-making deal." Liang Yao can understand Governor Bell's mood.

"Texas is too big, covering more than one million square kilometers. Congress and President Fillmore's cabinet may have allocated 324,000 square kilometers to northwest Texas for the purpose of balancing the states.

Kilometers of land are allocated to the New Mexico region. After all, a state that is too large is not conducive to the unification of the United States." Gervin said.

The new cabinet is a cabinet that is soft on the outside and strong on the inside. Although the new cabinet spares no effort to mediate compromise proposals, all members of the new cabinet firmly support the unification of the United States and will never allow any state to be separated from the territory of the United States.

"Then we can't secede Texas one by one. The free states in the north have a developed economy, and they don't pay more taxes than the southern states. As far as I know, the taxes paid by the slave states in the south are

It accounts for 80 percent of the federal government’s revenue.”

Liang Yao complained for Texas, and Congress and the government clearly favored the north.

"There is nothing we can do about it. The United States needs to maintain internal stability. And if the United States wants to be strong, it must develop industry. American industrial products cannot compete with the British and French. In order to protect the domestic industry, in addition to raising tariffs, the government also provides

Northern factories enjoy tax exemptions and exemptions, but government agencies must have sufficient funds if they want to maintain operations."

That's it for Ge Wen. Liang Yao is so smart that he should understand what he means.

This is a lice on the monk's head. It is obvious that the United States wants to use the scissor gap between northern industry and commerce and the southern plantation economy to develop northern industry.

The United States did not have as vast a colony as Great Britain to harvest wool and develop local industries, so it reached out to the slave states in the south.

But the problem is that the slave states in the South are also part of the United States of America, not colonies of the United States. The United States cannot treat the Southern states like colonies.

In fact, the factory owners in the northern states had long regarded the slave-holding states in the south as their actual colonies, and they not only unscrupulously leaned on the slave-holding states to suck their blood.

He also held the banner of humanitarianism and stood on the moral high ground to condemn the barbarity of slavery in the southern slave states. It can be said that he was right and wrong at the same time.

The factory owners in the north only care about whether their factories can make more profits to expand their factories and recruit more workers. They have no regard for the feelings of the people in the southern states.

The southern slave states made sacrifices for the industrialization of the north, but instead of receiving compensation and rights commensurate with the sacrifices made, the south was further weakened by the north.

The Congress and the federal government have always been sidetracked and failed to level the bowl of water, which has inevitably chilled the hearts of the southern states.

No matter how clever the tactics of Fillmore and his cabinet are, they are only treating the symptoms but not the root cause. The war between the North and the South will still break out sooner or later.

After all, the northern states and southern states of the United States have parted ways since the founding of the country and chose different paths.

As the saying goes, if people have different paths, they will not work together. Even the paths they take are different. How can we talk about being of the same mind and helping each other in the same boat?

Although the path chosen by the North is the right one, industrialization is the only way to make the United States stronger and stronger and complete its grand goal of catching up with France and surpassing England.

But while industrializing, shouldn't the northern factory owners and plutocrats consider the feelings of the southern slave states and be more gentle in their attitudes and methods towards the southern slave states?

"It's not a long-term solution if this continues. You said that Governor Bell has not withdrawn all the troops stationed in New Mexico back to Texas. It must be because the 10 million US dollars promised to Texas have not been received?" Liang Yao said, "

As far as I know, Governor Bell is not an unreasonable person."

He admired Governor Bell's courage to confront the federal government head-on. Texas was connected to the railway network of the United States. When Bell sent troops to New Mexico, he not only had to guard against local armed forces in New Mexico, but also had to deal with threats from the north at any time.

military threat.

Of course, Liang Yao also had the courage of Bell, but he relied on his understanding of history, California's closed geographical environment, and inconvenient transportation conditions to have such courage.

It is not easy for the federal government to invest large-scale troops in California. If it gets into a protracted war in California, the cost will be no less than fighting half of the Mexican War.

The United States, which has just experienced a war, needs to recuperate and recuperate at this time. It will not want to provoke a war in the short term, whether it is a foreign war or a civil war.

Unless the president is the recently deceased President Taylor, who was so confident during the U.S.-Mexico War that he once made bold promises to annex the entire Mexico. This shows that his political level is worrying.

"Indeed, Texas requires a one-time payment of US$10 million in compensation, while Congress and the government advocate payment in installments due to financial constraints." Gervin nodded and continued.

"Originally, neither Congress nor the President had plans to form a new infantry regiment in California. You have three people to thank for being an Army colonel this time."

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(End of chapter)