1850 American Gold Tycoon

Chapter 606 Proposal for Statehood

The wheel of history did not deviate from its original track. The Republican Party eventually won the election, and Lincoln eventually became the 16th President of the United States.

Liang Yao was pleasantly surprised that the Civic Party came in third place in its first election.

After all, the purpose of the Civic Party's participation in the election is not to win this election, but to accumulate electoral experience, and by the way, use this election to get a glimpse of the Civic Party's political influence in the eastern region.

Facts have proved that after ten years of hard work, the Civic Party still has considerable influence in the eastern region, especially in Texas, Georgia, Ohio, Maryland and other states.

The Civic Party is no longer an unknown local party, but has transformed into a regional party with certain influence across the country.

“On November 10, the South Carolina General Assembly unanimously voted to hold a state legislative election on December 6. According to reliable information provided by our informants, the purpose of South Carolina was to clean up South Carolina from the Union. The relationship between."

After receiving this important information, Pinkerton immediately rode to Wei Xiuju in Sacramento and reported the news of the explosion to Liang Yao.

To clean up the relationship between South Carolina and the Union, to put it bluntly, the slave owners of South Carolina have decided to secede from the federal government.

When Pinkerton reported the news to Liang Yao, Liang Yao was discussing with Fremont the news of establishing two new states.

The two new states they wanted to create were Utah and Western Mexico.

After eliminating the cancer of Mormonism, the Utah Territory has made great progress. The current population of the Utah Territory has reached 150,000, fully reaching the threshold of statehood.

Another new state on the agenda, Western Mexico, was a new territory acquired after the Second Mexican-American War.

Based on the actual situation at that time, California directly incorporated three relatively sparsely populated states in northwest Mexico: Sonora, Chihuahua, and Durango into California's territory.

The remaining four original Mexican states: Sinaloa, Nayarit, Guadalajara, and Colima, with a total area of ​​171,400 square kilometers. Considering the large Mexican population within the jurisdiction, The size of California at the time was difficult to digest. The four states were then merged into the Western Mexico Territory and became a territory.

The Western Mexico Territory has thus become a very special existence in the United States. Its special feature is that as a territory, the Western Mexico Territory has a population of more than one million, which is larger than the population of many eastern states.

After the establishment of the Western Mexico Territory, its territorial governor has always been Torres, the former governor of Licoma, Mexico, recommended to the federal government by Liang Yao.

The western Mexican territories also remained semiautonomous for years under California surveillance.

The population of the Western Mexico Territory is as high as 1.4 million, of which 280,000 are Han Chinese, 40,000 are whites of other ethnic groups, and the remaining 1.12 million are of Mexican descent.

The existence of these millions of Mexicans has made Mexicans the second largest ethnic group in the western region after the Han people.

Fortunately, the Mexican Republican Party is essentially an agricultural country composed of a group of compradors and large landowners with no ambitions and short-sightedness. It has very low cohesion and has not yet formed a modern national consciousness.

In addition, the Mexican authorities suffered two disastrous defeats at the hands of their powerful neighbors in the north within ten years. Not only did they lose troops and territory, but the rulers still had no ambition to make progress and had no intention of returning to their homeland. Instead, they continued to impose exorbitant taxes, causing the Mexican people to completely lose faith in the Mexican authorities. confidence.

After the Western Mexican Territory became a territory of the United States, the western authorities did not implement high-pressure rule and cruel ethnic exploitation policies on the Western Mexican Territory. Instead, they adopted a more tolerant and gentle policy.

After joining the Western Market, Mexicans in the Western Mexico Territory have enjoyed the benefits of the rapid economic growth of the West Coast region to varying degrees from top to bottom. Both wealth and living standards have been improved, and the Western Mexico Territory has also begun industrialization.

In the five or six years since the Western Mexico Territory was annexed to the United States, more railroads, more miles of roads, more factories were opened, and the number and scale of docks built in the Territory of Western Mexico was greater than in the previous thirty years of the Republic of Mexico.

Therefore, the rule of the western region in the Mexican territory is relatively stable, and the Mexicans in western Mexico have slowly accepted the identity of the new nationals, and few people want to return to Mexico.

Furthermore, even if a few Mexicans in the West Mexico Territory dream of returning, it will be impossible.

First, the current border was determined by contract between the Mexican authorities and the United States, and has been recognized by most countries.

Secondly, the direct local rulers are mine owners, factory owners, and plantation owners. The economic interests of these people are highly bound to the western region. If the Mexicans below want to return to the Republic of Mexico, they will be the first to refuse. .

Thirdly, the western military is powerful. During the US-Mexican War, even the Mexican government troops were defeated by the Western Brigade despite their overwhelming numerical superiority, let alone civilians like them with no military background.

Western Mexico is a major supplier of high-quality iron ore to California, and throughout the West.

For a long time, because the Western Mexico Territory has always been a territorial area, the Mexican ethnic groups in the Western Mexico Territory have been unable to obtain political rights commensurate with their population size.

Mexicans, with a population of more than 1.3 million, have far less political resources than the Yankees and Dixies of the West, with a population of less than one million.

The western authorities have always treated the Western Mexico Territory as their own territory, and they also asked for people's commitment from Mexico in the Western Mexico Territory. When the time is right, the West will promote the establishment of a state in the Western Mexico Territory, and the important people in the Western Mexico Territory will also obtain corresponding political rights.

Now is the time to deliver on these promises.

Whether it is due to the need to control local natural resources or human resources, the western authorities cannot ignore the political demands of more than one million people.

The news that South Carolina held a state legislative election forced Liang Yao and Fremont to postpone discussions on preparations for statehood in the Utah Territory and the Western Mexico Territory.

"South Carolina will be the first state to secede from the Union, but it will not be the last." Liang Yao said, "Once South Carolina successfully secedes from the Union, other southern states will also declare their separation from the Union."

South Carolina was a slave state with the toughest attitude and was the stronghold of extreme slaveholders.

Liang Yao was not surprised that this state was the first to ask to secede from the Union.

To be honest, Virginia is already considered a moderate state among southern states. If John Brown's incident had occurred in South Carolina, John Brown might have been tortured to death before his trial. Although the state of Virginia also sentenced John Brown to death, at least it only followed a procedure and generally acted within the framework of the law.

"The results of the general election came out on November 6. On November 10, the South Carolina State Assembly passed a resolution to hold a state assembly election one month later to discuss the issue of secession from the Union. It was really fast enough." Free Monte sighed after reading the information submitted by Pinkerton.

He is a Southerner who had just returned to his home state of Georgia during the election.

Since the John Brown incident, anti-Northern sentiment has become serious in the South, and Southerners have long ceased to take seriously the federal government that ignored the rights and interests of the South.

Not only was anti-Northern sentiment strong in South Carolina, Fremont's home state of Georgia was also the most hardline slave-holding state after South Carolina.

Thinking of this, Fremont couldn't help but feel a little dazed. Perhaps the next southern state to announce a cleanup of the relationship between the state and the federal government would be his home state of Georgia.