1850 American Gold Tycoon.

Chapter 716: Sighing at the Cotton

"Little Brannan? I didn't expect he was still alive. I haven't heard any news about this guy in all these years. I thought he took the gold and went to Europe with his sister-in-law and nephew. He hid it well and deeply." Liang Yao finally figured out the origins of the so-called mercenary group that defeated him in Northern Kansas.

"This is the letter that General Hawke asked me to give you." Zhang Zhaoyu, deputy commander of the Mexican militia brigade, took out a blood-stained letter from his cowhide briefcase.

After reading Hawke's letter, Liang Yao sighed.

He did feel a bit resentful about Hawke's two betrayals of the team, but now he can let it go.

Hawke did not betray him or the Mexican militia in the end.

The Mexican Militia Brigade was a second-rate militia brigade in the Spanish Army. It was not shameful that it was killed by a joint attack by an elite regular brigade of the Northern Army and an elite mercenary group.

The Mexican militia was not as bad as he imagined. If they were properly trained and got rid of the bad habits of the former Mexican army, they could be useful.

Liang Yao stroked the flag of the Mexican militia brigade that Zhang Zhaoyu brought out after breaking out. Like Hawke's suicide note, the flag was stained with blood.

"As long as the flag is there, the Mexican militia brigade will still be there."

"But all the soldiers were gone. There was an entire militia brigade and an artillery battalion, more than 3,000 people, but in the end only more than 200 people broke through."

Thinking of his comrades who fell in the town of Norton in northern Kansas, and the prisoners of war who were massacred by the Yankees, and how only he and a small number of others survived, Zhang Zhaoyu felt very guilty and self-blamed, and could not help but lower his head.

"Keep your head up!"

Liang Yao stepped forward and stuffed the tattered flag of the Mexican militia brigade into Zhang Zhaoyu's hand.

"What a fuss! You don't act like a soldier at all, you act like a woman!

If you really want to wash away the shame of Northern Kansas and avenge your dead brothers, take this flag and go to western Mexico!

I hope you didn't lose sight of what you learned at West Point!

Six months from now, I want to see a completely transformed Mexican brigade!"

Liang Yao was talking about the Mexican Brigade, not the Mexican Militia Brigade.

Although there is only one word difference between the two, the actual gap is huge.

Not only does the standing brigade have a higher equipment priority, but the soldiers' treatment is twice as good as that of the militia brigade.

In addition, the commander of a standing brigade is a major general, while the commander of a militia brigade is one level lower, a brigadier general.

In other words, if Zhang Zhaoyu can really lead a brand new Mexican brigade, he will have a great chance of becoming a general.

However, Zhang Zhaoyu didn't think about these things now. All he wanted was revenge for Hawk and his brothers who died in North Kansas.

"Yes! Promise to complete the mission!"

Zhang Zhaoyu straightened his chest, took the tattered flag of the Mexican Militia Brigade from Liang Yao, saluted Liang Yao crisply, and left quickly.

After Zhang Zhaoyu left, Liang Yao went to see Hawke's body in person.

In addition to his death in northern Kansas, Hawke also made great contributions to the West during his tenure as Governor of Western Mexico. He was a capable man.

California during the Gold Rush era was itself a big sieve, sifting out many talented people who rose from the grassroots, and Hawke was one of them.

Except that California cannot be compared with Virginia, a state with many talented people in the early days of the founding of the United States, California has produced no less talented people than any other state in the past decade or so.

When Liang Yao arrived at the place where Hawke's coffin was placed, all of Hawke's former partners in the Boston company who could come came.

Robinson covered Hawke's coffin with the White Star flag, then came to Liang Yao and, together with Liang Yao, bowed to Hawke in farewell.

The capital of the Confederacy, 1201 East Clay Street in Richmond, also known as the White House of the South, is a typical Greek Revival-style building.

The triumphant victory on the front did not improve the Confederacy's dire finances and poor people's livelihood.

The president of the Confederacy, Davis, and his cabinet members were all worried about the pay and ammunition for the 100,000 Confederate soldiers on the front line. With the successful separation of the North and the South, the South finally got the tariff autonomy it had always dreamed of.

But the Confederacy received little in the way of tariffs.

The Anaconda Plan implemented by the Northern Union blocked the Confederacy's access to the sea, even though the docks of southern coastal port cities such as New Orleans, Jacksonville, Charleston, Wilmington, and Newport News were overwhelmed with bulk export goods, mainly cotton.

The Confederacy, which had lost control of the sea, could only sigh in despair. They were unable to exchange the white gold for real gold to pay the Confederate troops fighting on the front lines.

Christopher Gustavus Meminger, the Confederacy's finance minister, was the first to break the silence in the president's office: "There is only $98 left in the treasury, which can only sustain our expenses for three weeks at most. It is urgent to open up new sources of revenue."

The US dollars that Megmin mentioned are naturally the Union dollars (Confederate dollars) that were recently issued by the Southern Confederacy.

Currently, the three main currencies in circulation in North America are the U.S. dollar, which are arranged in order of unit face value: the Republic dollar, the Federal dollar, and the Union dollar.

The Alliance Dollar is the least reputable, least recognized, and lowest unit value of the three types of dollars.

The market exchange rate between the Republic dollar and the Federal dollar is 1:1.8, and the market exchange rate between the Republic dollar and the Union dollar is 1:3.7, and there is a trend of continued decline.

The fundamental reason why the three dollar exchange rates are so different is the amount of gold reserves.

There is no need to say much about the American Republic. At present, California and Nevada are still the world's major gold producing areas, and the American Republic has sufficient gold reserves.

Since the Northern Federation's central government and treasury were in the North before the war, it had accumulated considerable gold reserves and foreign exchange (the foreign exchange during this period was in the form of precious metal coins, which could essentially be considered gold (silver) reserves). In addition, the Northern Federation controlled the sea power in the Atlantic Ocean, so trade between the Northern Federation and the outside world could proceed as usual.

Therefore, the value of the federal dollar in the Northern Federation was relatively stable.

The Confederacy had the least gold reserves, and the Southern soldiers were able to win battles one after another on the front lines mainly relying on confiscated Northern Federation assets in the South, donations from the public, and spoils of war on the battlefield.

The military expenditures from the Southern Treasury only accounted for a small part, and only about 36% of the military expenditures of the Southern Army on the front line came from the treasury.

It is true that the wealthy in the South are just as wealthy as those in the North and West.

The wealthy in the south have a lot of gold and foreign exchange, but they belong to others.

Davis did not dare to ask for help from these people. Once he asked for help from them, what Davis would have to consider was not whether he could still sit in the president's seat tomorrow, but whether he could see tomorrow's sun.

98 US dollars. If it was Republic dollars, Davis could have managed to survive for three months if he spent it sparingly. Unfortunately, it was Union dollars, which even the Southern people themselves had a low acceptance rate.

"Don't we still need a lot of cotton, tobacco, and sugar?" Davis seemed a little anxious. "We can mortgage the cotton to foreign banks and borrow money from them."

Davis thought of cotton, the South's greatest pride. He once boasted that although the cotton thread was thin, it was enough to strangle the entire world's economy.

He didn't want to strangle himself before strangling the world's economy.

"I just hosted a banquet for foreign bankers in Richmond yesterday." Meminger sighed helplessly, "European bankers are not interested in the cotton piled up in the port warehouses. They said that cotton that cannot be shipped out of the port is worthless and they are not interested."

He had already thought of mortgaging the South's flagship products for cash.

Unfortunately, few people are interested.

Those European bankers were right. The cotton that could be shipped to Europe was white gold. The cotton lying in the port warehouses was worthless and even had to pay for storage.

In order to reduce losses, many cotton exporters in the south have directly burned the cotton or dumped it into the sea.

"They used to line up and beg us to pick their cotton!" Davis said angrily.

"European bankers are not interested in our cotton, but there is an American banker who is interested in our cotton," Meminger said. "He is waiting outside the White House now."

(End of this chapter)