Chapter 613: Proposal for Establishing a State

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 Territory of Utah has made great progress. The current population of the Territory of Utah 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 population of the Western Mexico Territory exceeds 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 origin.

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 Western Mexico Territory were 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 want to return to Mexico.

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

First, the current border was established 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 West Mexico Territory has always been a quasi-state, the Mexican ethnic group in the West Mexico Territory has been slow to obtain political rights and interests commensurate with its population size.

The Mexicans, with a population of more than 1.3 million, have far fewer political resources than the Western Yankees and Dixies, whose population is less than one million.

The Western authorities have always managed the West Mexico Territory as their homeland, and they had made promises to the Mexican dignitaries in the West Mexico Territory. When the time is right, the West will promote the establishment of the West Mexico Territory, and the dignitaries in the West Mexico Territory will also obtain corresponding political rights and interests.

Now is the time to fulfill these promises.

Whether it is out of 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 of the state assembly election in South Carolina forced Liang Yao and Fremont to postpone the discussion of the preparations for the establishment of states in Utah Territory and West 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 succeeds in seceding from the Union, other southern states will also secede from the Union one after another."

South Carolina is the most hardline slave state and the base camp of extreme slaveholders.

Liang Yao was not surprised that this state was the first to jump out and demand secession from the Union.

To be honest, Virginia is already a moderate state in the South. If John Brown's incident happened in South Carolina, John Brown might have been tortured to death before the trial. Although Virginia also sentenced John Brown to death, at least it was just a procedure and generally acted within the framework of the law.

"The results of the general election came out on November 6, and on November 10, the South Carolina State Assembly passed a resolution to hold a state assembly election a month later to discuss the issue of secession from the Union. The speed was really fast." Fremont sighed after reading the intelligence handed over by Pinkerton.

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

Since the John Brown incident, anti-Northern sentiment in the South has been serious, and Southerners have long since stopped taking the federal government, which ignores the interests of the South, seriously.

Not only is anti-Northern sentiment strong in South Carolina, but Fremont's hometown of Georgia is also a hard-line slave state second only to South Carolina.

Thinking of this, Fremont couldn't help but be a little stunned. Perhaps the next Southern state to announce the cleanup of relations between the state and the federal government would be his hometown of Georgia.