1850 American Gold Tycoon.

Chapter 734 The Battle Line Has Been Set

The 1st Cavalry Regiment and the Solon Cavalry Battalion of the Cavalry Brigade were ordered to capture the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

The First Cavalry Regiment and the Soran Cavalry Battalion headed eastward, chasing the enemy northward until the end of the land.

The Northern Union soldiers and civilians in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan had little will to resist, and the 1st Cavalry Regiment and the Solon Cavalry Battalion completed their land grabbing in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with almost no decent resistance.

"Sea! Sea! We've reached the seashore!"

The captain of the Solon Cavalry Battalion, Kekudi, who was wearing the captain's epaulettes, was extremely excited.

"Sea? Have you ever seen a sea so calm? With water so fresh? This is a lake!"

Liang Yeniu dismounted, walked slowly to the lakeside and led the horse to drink some water.

Liang Bison stood at Whitefish Point. He had a rare moment to relax and take in the scenery nearby.

It was Mid-Autumn Festival. Standing on the banks of Lake Superior, every breath I took could feel the coolness of early autumn.

The surface of Lake Superior was shrouded in mist in the early morning, presenting a glassy blue-green color. The arched bedrock in the distance was looming in the morning light, like the back of a giant beast sinking into the water.

As the sun pierced through the clouds, the lake began to glow with a honey-colored halo. A fleet of steamboats flying the American flag plowed through the blue waves of Lake Superior, startling a group of red-necked ducks, which drew silver-gray arcs in the sparkling waves.

Kekudi dismounted after Liang Bison and curiously scooped up some lake water to taste the saltiness.

"It's really light! It's a lake!" Kekudi smacked his lips and sighed as he gazed at the boundless Lake Superior where the water and sky merged into one.

"This lake is even bigger than Lake Taihu. It can hold several Lake Taihus!"

"Don't worry about the size of the lake anymore. Do you see the fleet ahead?" Liang Bison had no intention of appreciating the beautiful scenery by the lake. His attention was all on the fleet passing by Cape Whitefish.

The fleet was a large one, traveling from east to west, and was apparently the last remaining Union resistance escaping Duluth, Minnesota.

It is possible that all the important Yankee officials in Minnesota are on these steamboats.

"I see it, a Yankee ship," Kekudi muttered. "It's a pity that I don't have any guns with me, so I can only stare at them. If I had, I would have fired a few shots to show my respect for the Yankees."

"What a pity. If you could catch or kill them, you could be reinstated as lieutenant colonel." Liang Yeniu glanced at the rank of cavalry captain on Kekudi's shoulder.

At the beginning of the war, Kekudi's military rank was Lieutenant Colonel, commander of the Solon Cavalry Battalion.

On the eve of the Battle of Omaha, he was demoted to a private due to his poor performance in the mission of protecting the railway.

Later, during the battle and the conquest of the Dakotas and Minnesota, he once again earned military merit and was promoted to captain.

"Is there any way to stop them?" After hearing what Liang Yeniu said, Kekudi felt itchy in his heart, and the Yankee fleet not far away became a moving military achievement in his eyes.

"It's too late." Liang Yeniu shook his head helplessly.

"If we want to stop this Yankee steamboat fleet fleeing Lake Superior, we can only go to Sault Ste. Marie on the south bank of the St. Marys River. Our horses can't outrun the steamboats."

The St. Marys River is a river that connects Lake Superior to Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. Sault Ste. Marie is the most important military stronghold along the river.

If this Yankee fleet wanted to leave Lake Superior, Sault Ste. Marie was the only way to get there.

"Then let's take over Sault Ste. Marie. When we go back, you can be the general of the cavalry brigade, and it will be fine for me to continue to be the major of the Solon Cavalry Battalion." After going through so much, Kekudi's character has matured a lot compared to before the war.

At the same time, Ramsay, who was standing on the deck and looking into the distance, also saw the Western cavalry drinking water at Cape Whitefish and expressed the same sentiment.

"It's a pity that all the ship's guns have been removed to reduce weight, otherwise we could fire at the Western cavalry to scare them." At the end of November 1861, the sound of gunfire over the Great Plains gradually became sparse.

The wars in Minnesota and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan were declared over one after another.

Temperatures plummet across the Great Plains as the first snowfall of early winter arrives.

The logistical pressure on the Western Army also increased sharply, and it had to provide coal for coal stoves for heating to the soldiers on the front line.

Even so, the amount of fuel needed for heating on the front line was too large.

The logistics department tried its best but was unable to meet the heating fuel needs of all the soldiers on the front line.

Fortunately, the plains are less developed and have a high vegetation coverage rate, so the frontline troops can cut down trees locally for firewood and use it for heating.

This prevented the tragedy of soldiers freezing to death.

However, most of the soldiers of the Western Army came from the southern part of the Qing Dynasty, especially the Western Army, which was an old elite force. Most of the soldiers and officers came from the three provinces of Guangdong, Fujian and Zhejiang.

The early arrival of winter in the Great Plains still made it difficult for them to adapt, and many soldiers suffered frostbite.

The Western Army had to stop its offensive in order to maintain the existing front line.

At this point, the war in the west and the north came to a temporary end.

The two sides roughly divided the territory along the Mississippi River.

However, in the north, all of Minnesota, northern Wisconsin, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan were under the control of the Western Army.

After a quick tour of Dingbian City and Minneapolis, Liang Yao returned to Omaha before the Mississippi River froze.

At the headquarters in Omaha, Liang Yao met with Minister of Industry Fair and President of the Central Railroad Company Wang Shu.

After the equity restructuring, the Central Railroad Company, formerly the California Railroad Company, has been changed into a state-owned railway with the government holding a 51% stake.

This time, Feier and Wang Shu came to see Liang Yao to report to him about the railway construction in the Great Plains area.

"There are two biggest problems in building railroads in the Great Plains. Funding is only one of them. The lack of cast iron for rails is a more difficult problem than funding."

After entering the house, Fair took off his ear-warming gloves, sat down by the fireplace, and said while flipping through a thick report in his hand.

“During the construction of the Pacific Railroad, three small steel mills were built in Omaha, Des Moines, and Port Daven to provide track iron for the Pacific Railroad.

However, there is a lack of high-quality iron ore locally. The iron ore for these three small steel mills was previously imported from Illinois and Michigan. Currently, the three steel mills are basically shut down due to the lack of stable iron ore channels. "

"Compared to the lack of iron materials needed to build tracks, the labor problem is not a problem," Wang Shu reported after Fair.

"The rails are heavy and bulky, and the Pacific Railway's transportation capacity is already tight. It is not cost-effective to pull rails from the West Coast to build railways in frontier areas, both in terms of cost and efficiency. It is not a long-term solution."

"The long-term plan you mentioned is to build a local steel plant and produce a lot of iron?" Liang Yao asked after thinking for a moment.

When he and Vanderbilt joined forces to build the Pacific Railroad, they received the full support of the federal government and were able to mobilize the industrial resources of the North for their own use.

Now out of the Union, even the meager industrial heritage from the days of the Pacific Railroad has ceased to function.