"Bang ......"

A messy burst of gunfire woke the black man Zengk from his sleep - it was a pretty beautiful dream, in which he was a happy slave! A slave to the O'Hara family in Atlanta, he had a small but warm and comfortable cottage where he could eat delicious and nutritious food every day, and spent most of his days leisurely except for the cotton sowing and picking season. And the owners of the O'Hara family are also very kind, only the lord of O'Hara has beaten himself a few times, but the blow is very light, it doesn't hurt at all, and it can't be compared to the shoulder with a big knife!

"Hell, free zone!" Zeng Ke cursed, and struggled to get up from a plank that was one of his few possessions now! It is also the only "furniture" in the wooden house where he lives. It is left over from the construction of the house, which can be used as a bed, a table, a chair, and probably a coffin board in the future, if someone is willing to bury Zengke.

Oh, and he's now in the legendary "democratic, liberal, egalitarian, with an elected government and a legislature, and everyone can carry a gun against the authoritarian Black Texas Free Zone," which should be a great place to be! Democracy, freedom, and everything is real, and on the 15th day of his arrival, Zengk received a sacred ballot...... Received it with an acre of fairly fertile land. He then voted for Mr. Solomon, the black man who persuaded him to come to the Black Free Zone, who is now a senior member of the Liberian Liberal Party and a member of the Black Free Zone Council, and is said to be a big figure in the Republic of Liberia in the future.

And the free zone inside a qiē system, law. All are formulated with reference to the United States. Even more democratic than the United States! Blacks here. Regardless of whether they are men or women, rich or poor (in fact, there is no rich), as long as they are at least 18 years old, they have the right to vote, and there is no such thing as property restrictions at all (everyone has no property, how to limit it?). ）。 Moreover, the voting process was not too boring, it was completely held under the joint supervision of the federal government of the United States and the governments of the southern states, and there was no possibility of fraud at all.

But it's such a place that should be an ideal society. Now it's a real disaster! Not only Empress Mathilde's, but also free blacks.

Zeng Ke sat on his bed and reached out to touch a hideous wound on his left shoulder. It was the result of a gang brawl six months ago, when there were very few guns in the free zone, so fights had to be fought with knives. As for why he fights and why he wants to join the gang, he can't say clearly, maybe he wants to make his life more comfortable for nothing.

The most important thing in this free zone is definitely freedom. It claims to be home to 4 million black people, but there are certainly not that many. But 3.5 million is always not bad. But the black self-government that runs it has less than $3 million a year - blacks in the free zone pay no taxes, so the self-government is run by the U.S. federal government and the southern states. And the U.S. government of this era really can't match generosity.

And the meagre $3 million is obviously not well used, so the free zone has only a very small government and a black police force of less than 1,000 people, and there is no formal army or militia, which is not Liberia but the United States. But how can such a small police force manage 3.5 million blacks living in abject poverty?

Therefore, in the black free zone, there is only freedom, and there is no order. Of course, there is not enough land, resources, capital, industry and commerce, and even food. One acre of land per capita has been allocated, but in the past year, less than half of the land has been sown, and less than one-tenth of the farmland has been well cared for!

The reason for this situation was not entirely due to laziness, but that most of the blacks who were gathered here were slaves on cotton estates, and carried out large-scale agricultural production under the command of the lord of the estate, and were not the kind of small farmers who were skilled in farming, and most of them had never even grown wheat. Moreover, farming is also an investment business, and most of the blacks in the Texas Black Free Zone have little capital, and none of the white bankers are willing to lend to them.

Of course, the most important reason is probably the lack of a stable and orderly environment. In the absence of a strong government and the lack of adequate resources for survival, most people can live without worry. The competition for some survival resources has naturally become fierce. And gangs, which did not exist in the black society of the United States, came into being at this time. Then there was robbery, theft, extortion, gambling, prostitution and other shady trades that began to develop in the free zone "free", oh, and opium! This is legal for sale in the United States, and it is no exception in the Black Free Zone, but not as a drug, but as some kind of bad hobby.

Zengke was slashed in a gang brawl over the opium trade, but fortunately there are some church-run charity hospitals in the free zone, otherwise his life would have been lost.

But what if you save your life? The crops in the field have long been barren, and when I first arrived in the free zone, the food distributed above was almost eaten, and if I stayed any longer, I would probably only starve to death!

"Let's go to Mexico! The empress there is preparing for war with Guatemala, and she probably needs soldiers, right? Zengk packed up his few clothes and thought about his future.

……

It was already the beginning of March of 1858. The economic crisis in the United States shows no signs of easing and is even worsening. Beginning in the fall of 1857, the crisis caused by the bursting of the railroad investment bubble swept through the banking industry, and a large number of banks went bankrupt and closed down because of lending to railroad companies, and the mass failure of banks made the factory owners of the American North miserable. What made them even more painful was the low-tariff policy after the United States joined the "Five-Power Agreement," and the industrial products of the United States were not able to enter the Chinese and Mexican markets at all, but the cheap industrial products of Britain and France drove straight in, occupying the southern market of the United States, and at the same time making the northern United States a depression.

But this depression had a negative impact on Natalie, a wealthy woman from Europe and a patron of the Mormon Church. Lesinskaya, it seems, is that there is no zài at all. Her mansion in New York is always full of guests, hosting a variety of salons, mostly from American political, business, press, and religious circles. Most of the issues discussed were related to current affairs, the most popular of which were trade policy in the United States, the black problem, and the statehood of the Utah Territory in the western United States.

At this time, she was listening to the visiting Mormon Church leader Brigham Bush. Young (Brigham Young) was telling her about negotiations between the Utah Territory and the U.S. Congress.

"Congress has agreed in principle to us Mormons to establish Utah, and this issue has been resolved, and all residents of Utah Territory who lived in Utah territory before June 1858 are automatically granted Utah citizenship, including Chinese! So we have 250,000 to 280,000 residents in Utah, which is not too small. That would give Utah two representatives in the Senate and six in the House of Representatives. ”

The state of Utah had been raging for a long time, and Brigham Young had declared martial law in Utah to prohibit federal troops, but it was eventually resolved through negotiations. Perhaps because of the large number of Chinese immigrants and the mining of Bingham's copper resources, Utah was founded decades earlier than it was in history. Thanks to the statehood of the Utah Territory, about 1230,000 Chinese immigrants have also obtained Utah citizenship, which should be a great encouragement to the struggle of the Chinese in California. (To be continued......)