The Qing Dynasty is about to end

Chapter 801 Sherman, where is my tank?
In June 1865, in the presidential office of the Federal Building in New York, Lincoln's finger almost poked through the "Report on the Population Census of Western Territories" submitted by California Secretary of State Huntington to the State Department. Secretary of State Seward stood aside, his face flushed, and he looked like he was about to explode.

"Sixty thousand citizens?" Lincoln's voice seemed to be squeezed out from between his teeth. "Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Idaho, and Montana together have sixty thousand citizens?" He slammed the report on the table, and the thick parchment slid half a foot away on the oak table.

Seward swallowed his saliva and said, "Mr. President, according to our investigation, Zhao Si has taken at least 300,000 blacks from the southern states, Kansas, Missouri and other places to the West in the past two years. The Archbishop of the True Covenant sect, Amur Buddha, has converted more than 100,000 Indians to his Mongolian True Covenant sect through missionary activities."

"Ridiculous!" Lincoln punched the map. "The Naturalization Act of 1790 clearly stipulates that only free white people can become American citizens! What kind of citizens are these black slaves, red-skinned savages, and yellow coolies?"

A whistle sounded from the New York Harbor outside the window, and a steamship full of Polish immigrants was approaching the shore. Lincoln suddenly turned around, with a dangerous light flashing in his gray-blue eyes: "The Chinese in the three states on the west coast are already a stopgap measure, and now they want to build five new states? Are they going to dye half of the United States yellow, red and black? William, you have been working in New York State for many years. Do you know what it means to control a state? They actually want to take over five states at once!"

According to the rules of the American power game, let alone controlling a state, those who can control the constituency of a state's federal senator or federal representative are considered top bosses in the political arena. They have great say in Washington and can walk sideways in their own state. No, it's not about how to walk, but a letter of recommendation can get people into the state's top universities! If you manage it well, it will be a top political family!
As for the various races in the United States, only those who can secure one or several federal senators or representatives can have a seat at the table! A state has two federal senators and one federal representative at the very least! Now that the Chinese have three states, they have six federal senators and three federal representatives! If we count the three governors, there will be at least twelve top Chinese political families in the future. This does not even include the Chinese justices in more than a dozen state high courts!

If the United States wants to exclude Chinese people in the future, it will not be so easy to go through the legal process! Even if it is passed at the federal level, the state level can still resist it. And six Chinese senators and three Chinese congressmen are enough to make legislative deals to boycott the anti-Chinese bill - these nine federal congressmen are congressmen with strong vote banks!
If there are a few more black states and red states in the United States, it means that there will be at least thirty top black and red political families in the future! There will be twenty non-white senators in the Senate who have strong vote banks. If they stick together, then blacks and Indians will have to eat at the same table as the Chinese!

Seward added cautiously: "In fact, the Nevada Territory is also applying for statehood."

"That's enough!" Lincoln's roar shook the window glass. "Call Sherman immediately!"

Lincoln's secretary Nicholas heard what he said and immediately replied: "President, today Admiral Sherman went to the outskirts of New York to test that special weapons project."

Lincoln's pupils suddenly contracted: "The steam monster made by the Korean prince?"

Twenty miles north of New York City, deep in the white oak forest, in a clearing surrounded by barbed wire, several sheds had black smoke coming out of their chimneys. From the shed in the center, there was a constant clanging of metal colliding, occasionally mixed with the hiss of steam pressure relief.

General Sherman's carriage stopped at the edge of the woods. The general, who had become the commander-in-chief of the Union Army because he had "followed Lincoln early on," jumped out of the carriage, his boots sinking deeply into the soft mud. He squinted his eyes and looked at the coal smoke hovering above the shed in the distance.

"Is that it?" Sherman asked the adjutant beside him.

"Yes, General. Prince Yang and Prince Case have been working with the McCormick engineers for three months."

Sherman strode toward the shed, his saber swinging at his waist. When the guard outside the shed opened the iron door, the heat wave that hit him made him take a half step back.

The scene in the shed shocked the general who had fought Robert Lee on the cruel battlefield for several years: a steel monster lay quietly there, with three pairs of huge iron-clad wooden wheels supporting a body that looked like a water tank, and a ferocious obstacle-breaking shovel welded on the inclined armor plate at the front of the body. The most eye-catching thing was the rotating metal cylinder on the roof - the ten barrels of a Gatling machine gun were facing the door, as if ready to spit out iron rain at any time.

"General!" A clear voice came from under the car. Yang Xiuqing's eldest son, Prince Yang Chengtian, who was only sixteen years old this year, crawled out from under the chassis, his face covered with oil and soot, and he looked a bit like the Archbishop of the Mechanicus when he was a child. "You came at the right time, we have just completed the final debugging!"

Sherman walked around the steel behemoth and then looked at the armor plate with Chinese characters engraved on the front of the car: "Can it really move?"

"Not only can it move, it can also fight!" Yang Chengtian climbed into the cockpit excitedly and shouted to the boss of Case Company who was standing on the car and personally rolled up his sleeves and shoveled coal into the furnace, "Mr. Case, tank, let's go!"

With the roar of the boiler, the steam tank named "True Promise Tank" began to tremble forward. When Sherman arrived, its boiler had been burning for more than half an hour, the water had been boiled long ago, and now it was time for the power to surge.

When the 80-horsepower Case portable high-pressure steam engine was running at full power, coal smoke immediately filled the entire shed.

Sherman had to cover his nose - the smoke from the incomplete combustion made him almost cry. "Forward!" Yang Chengtian pulled the joystick. With the harsh sound of gears biting, the ten-ton steel behemoth slowly drove out of the shed, and the sun shone on its intact body for the first time.

The test site was a bulldozer-leveled field surrounded by wooden stakes and covered with barbed wire. In the center of the field stood a dozen scarecrows in gray Confederate uniforms.

"General, please look!" Yang Chengtian turned the turret, and the barrel of the Gatling gun began to rotate. With a command, ten barrels spewed out flames at the same time, and the rain of bullets at 300 rounds per minute smashed the scarecrow 50 yards away to pieces. The barbed wire wrapped around the wooden stakes was torn apart easily like a spider web.

Sherman's mouth opened unconsciously. He had participated in no less than ten battles and had seen the most intense artillery fire, but the scene before him still shocked him. This density of firepower was enough to turn any charging infantry into a meat paste. What made him even more excited was that this Gatling machine gun mounted on the tank could be quickly maneuvered on the battlefield.
"Obstacle-breaking demonstration!" Yang Chengtian shouted. The giant iron shovel at the front of the tank slowly descended, and with the roar of the engine, the steel behemoth rushed towards the simulated obstacle. The bowl-thick wooden stakes broke like matchsticks in front of the shovel, and the compacted earth wall was easily flattened.

The most amazing thing is the trench filling function. When the bucket truck towed by the tank passed through the simulated trench, several workers following the tank took out logs from the trailer and filled them into the trench, filling the three-meter-wide gap in a blink of an eye.

"This," Sherman's voice trembled, "is made to break through the trenches and barbed wire of the Southerners!"

Yang Chengtian jumped down from the cockpit with a proud smile on his face: "General, this is what future wars will look like. The gentlemen on horseback of the Southern Army are as ridiculous in front of this steel monster as medieval knights facing artillery."

Sherman walked around the tank again and suddenly asked, "What level of firepower can it defend against?"

"The 15mm rolled steel armor on the front can withstand the firepower of the Mitellius multi-barreled gun," explained Jerome Case, an engineer at Case. "In order to reduce weight, there is no armor on the sides and back, but we are developing a more advanced high-pressure steam engine, which will give this tank better protection in time."

"What about speed?"

"The maximum speed on the flat ground is eight kilometers per hour," replied Sellers of McCormick, "and each ton of coal can travel 8 miles, which is much less logistical pressure than that of the cavalry."

Sherman's eyes lit up. He remembered Grant's hard battle at Vicksburg last year. If there was such a steel monster leading the way,
"Production!" The general suddenly turned to Yang Chengtian, "How much can be produced now?"

The boy showed an embarrassed expression: "Currently, we can only produce three per month. The body needs to be made of high-quality white oak as the frame, and the armor plates must be specially ordered from the Pennsylvania Steel Plant. In addition, we also need Japanese technicians with a craftsman spirit."

"Double it!" Sherman's saber plunged heavily into the soil. "I want to see a hundred tanks before the spring offensive next year! Money is not a problem, personnel is not a problem, and materials are not a problem. The War Department will solve all of them for you!"

Back in New York, Sherman was showing Lincoln a blueprint of a steam tank in a conference room at the War Department. The president's finger lingered for a long time on the label "Gatling gun."

"This weapon," Lincoln said in a dry voice, "will change the face of warfare."

"That will definitely change, Mr. President." Sherman pointed to the data on the blueprint. "One tank has the firepower equivalent to half a company of infantry. One hundred tanks are equivalent to fifty companies. And they can easily break through barbed wire and trenches!"

Treasury Secretary Chase asked worriedly, "How much will it cost?"

"Twenty thousand dollars each," Sherman said frankly, "but compared with the lives it saves and the time it shortens the war, it's worth the money."

"I understand." Lincoln interrupted him, "Speed ​​up production, but this time we must strictly control the leakage of technology. Especially, we can't let those people in the West learn it."

(End of this chapter)