Although Li Yuanhong was not a revolutionary, he had a special relationship with some important figures of the revolutionary party. For example, Sun Wu, the president of the Communist Advancement Association, was a student of Hubei Wubei School and had a teacher-student friendship with Li Yuanhong.

Jiang Yiwu, the president of the Literary Society, served in the 41st standard and was a subordinate of Li Yuanhong. And the two of them have a good personal relationship with Li Yuanhong, and they also know Li Yuanhong well.

Many members of the Communist Association and the Literary Society in the New Army are also subordinates of Li Yuanhong of the 21st Association, and they admire Li Yuanhong very much on weekdays.

In order to unify the mind, the candidate for the governor was determined. In April 1911, the Gongjin Association and the Literary Society held a joint meeting in the pagoda behind the Hongshan Baotong Temple.

Later, people called this meeting the "Hongshan Pagoda Conference." ”

Hongshan Pagoda is hidden in the shadow of the trees, and there are few visitors on weekdays, and it is very secret. The spiral staircase inside the tower allows one person to bow up. Present at the meeting were representatives of the various standards, battalions, and teams of the New Army. The backbone of the two organizations, the Communist Association and the Literary Society, attended the meeting.

Jiang Jimin, who was very famous after the first uprising, wore a platoon commander costume and patrolled outside the tower to cover. There was no ceremony, no record, no signature, and no trace of what can be said to have been left at the meeting, which shows the high standard of confidentiality.

The meeting lasted only 10 minutes, and the participants dispersed.

According to Wan Hongjiao, a participant in the meeting, he wrote in his memoirs: "In April 1911, Jiang Yiwutuo Liu Jiusui invited me to a meeting at the Baotong Temple in Hongshan. Liu and I walked to the gate of Changchun Guan and met Jiang Yiwu, who whispered to me: "Today's meeting is to discuss the election of Li Yuanhong as the provisional governor. I asked, 'Comrade Li Fei, why did you promote him to be the governor?' Liu said to Chiang: "I knew that Comrade Wan was against this matter, and there would be arguments at the meeting, so in order to tell him first, we could find a grass to rest and discuss it in detail." ’

"A few of us found a secluded place, and Liu said to me: 'There are not no talents among the revolutionary party, and when Lan Tianwei was in the 32nd standard, everyone intended to promote Lan as the governor, but he was far away in Mukden and could not come south for a while. The most suitable choice for the governor is Wu Luzhen, but he is also in the north, and we have decided to send someone to contact him first, and I am afraid that he will not be able to catch up for a while. At present, some comrades in the army are all soldiers and subordinates, and there are not many junior officers, let alone middle-level officers, so it is not enough to call for them. Therefore, to pull Li Yuanhong out, there are three benefits: first, Li Nai is the current famous general, and he can use him to subdue the Qing court, call on the world, and increase the prestige of the revolutionary army; Second, the generals of the Li Nai'e army are well-liked and can call on their subordinates to join the revolution; 3. Li Su loved the literati who served as soldiers, and these literati were revolutionaries, so it was easy to cooperate with him. Therefore, if Lari comes out, the revolution will easily succeed. What we want is to overthrow the Qing government. Fu, why not give him the name of a governor, so that Wu Luzhen will lead the troops south in the future, and then push Wu as the official governor, and give Li another suitable position, why not? ’

"Jiang Yiwu said to me with a smile: 'In the future, when you are promoted as the commander of the Great East Gate and the Tongxiang Gate, you must pay attention to Li's actions.'

"When the three of us went to Baotong Temple for a meeting, Jiang Yiwu spoke, he said, today's emergency meeting, mainly to discuss the issue of the election of the governor, after consultation between the Literature Society and the Communist Association, we decided to elect Li Yuanhong as the governor, I don't know what everyone's opinion is. One of the delegates asked: 'Is Lai comrade?' Liu Jiusui stood up and explained, repeating what he had just said to Wan Hongjiao outside. After listening to Liu Jiusui's explanation, the deputies clapped their hands lightly in agreement. ”

Wan Hongjiao also talked about it in his reminiscences, and afterwards, he was still a little puzzled, and asked Jiang Yiwu and Liu Jiusui questions: "Comrade Jiang is the leader of the Literary Society, and the Literary Society has a large number of people, why not be promoted to the governor?" ”

Jiang Yiwu replied: "In Hubei, it is appropriate to consider Hubei people as leaders. ”

Wan Hongjiao said: "In this case, Cai Guozhen (that is, Cai Jimin) can also do it." ”

Jiang Yiwu said to Wan Yan solemnly: "Revolutionary groups, there were the Japanese Notification Society, the Gongjin Association, and the Mass Governance Society, etc., Sun Wu, Liu Gong, and Ji Yulin can all be promoted as governors, and the revolutionaries will not fight for power and profit, so as not to cause rifts in the future." ”

Jiang Yiwu's words are unfathomable. During the period of great historical changes, there were many capable people, such as Jiang Yiwu, who were elected as leaders by various groups, in fact, all of them were not simple. These people don't rely on seniority, on connections, or on some unique resource, no. They are the core figures of the natural formation of the mass movement, which is even more valuable.

Sun Wu, the initiator and leader of the Wuchang Shouyi, wrote in an article: "On the first day of the fifth month of Xinhai, at the organ of No. 91 Changqingli, cadre comrades Pan Shanbo, Deng Yulin, Ding Lizhong, Peng Chufan, Li Chunxuan, Xie Shiqin, Mei Baoji, Mou Hongxun, Gao Yinqun, Zhong Yuting, Ma Yuyun, Qian Yunsheng, Xu Wannian, Meng Fachen, Xu Beibin, Fang Xing, and others were recruited to hold a meeting, and Hunan Jiao Dafeng, Li Yida, Yang Jinkang, and others also attended the meeting. At the meeting, it was decided that this year's winter uprising would be held after the autumn exercises in Baoding. Elect Li Yuanhong as the governor, and this meeting will also decide. ”

Time calculations, the meeting Sun Wu said should be a month after the pagoda meeting. According to Sun Wu's manuscript "The True Portrait of the Wuchang Revolution", ten days before the uprising, that is, at 10 a.m. on October 1, "all the delegates went to the Sun Wu ward meeting at No. 12 Gongheli in the German Concession" and reiterated that "according to the May resolution, please make Li the governor."

Hu Zushun, a participant in the Shouyi, also recalled: "Before the Yu Yiyi was discussed, Jiang Yiwu once proposed that Yuan Hong be the candidate for the future governor, although the public opinion did not make any decision, but no one objected, and it was no accident that Yuan Hongzhi was embraced as the governor. ”

Some people say that Li Yuanhong was temporarily pulled out to be the governor of the capital, but judging from the recollections of the participants of the above uprising, this is obviously not the truth. On the contrary, the sages of Shouyi were carefully considered. If you casually pull someone to be the governor of this capital, it will be too blasphemous to the aspirants of Wuchang Shouyi and Li Yuanhong himself.

As for whether Li Yuanhong himself knew about this, it is unknown, one thing is certain, Li Yuanhong acted passively.

And in the period before the first uprising, Li Yuanhong's life was not very easy. His best time in his career was when Zhang Zhidong was in the governorship. Li Yuanhong worked hard and was fully recognized, supported and appreciated by his superiors.

After Zhang Zhidong transferred the military aircraft department and Zhao Erxun took over as governor, Li Yuanhong's life was still good. Zhao is also a person who does things, and he naturally likes people like Li Yuanhong, who have real talent and work hard.

After Zhao Erxun was transferred and replaced by Chen Bianlong, Li Yuanhong's life was much worse than before. As a person in the officialdom, Li Yuanhong is also short. He has gone all the way, and it seems that he deserves to work hard with his true skills, but in fact, he is not. There is also a very important prerequisite here, that is, to meet "Mingjun". I am fortunate to meet "Bole" like Zhang Zhidong and Zhao Erxun, and "Maxima" can move forward.

Chen Bianlong is the kind of person who has no self-knowledge, originally mediocre qualifications, but he is very confident. I feel that I am very remarkable, I am simply a genius, and this country has not produced a genius for many years.

We often say that some people feel good about themselves, but Chen Bianlong really doesn't belong to such people. His self-perception is not ordinarily good. It's not a bad thing for a person to have self-confidence, it's better to be self-confident than to have low self-esteem. But there is a degree to everything, and if you go too far, the nature will change.

He felt that he was very good, but Chen Bianlong was more than that, he also asked his subordinates to hold him all day long. I like to have a group of people, and a group of people who don't have any skills, I know that Ah Ah flatters the people who blow and pat him, revolves around him all day long, sings praises all day long, and sings praises.

An upright person, a serious person, it is disgusting to see such a scene, but Chen Bianlong likes it. The more others lifted him up to the sky, the more fluttering he became, and the more he felt that he was amazing.

Li Yuanhong would not do such a thing, although he was still conscientious and hard-working, he was not appreciated by Chen Bianlong. Not only that, Chen Bianlong often felt that Li Yuanhong looked down on him, which made the relationship between him and Li Yuanhong even more unharmonious.

Zhang Biao is different, he has a specialty in this field. For example, as soon as Chen Bianlong arrived, Zhang Biao worked hard. I heard that Chen Bianlong likes poetry, so he spent 100 taels of silver and asked someone to make four poems to praise Yang Chen Bianlong's merits in other positions. This sycophant was filmed just right, Zhang Biao said that this poem was written by himself, and he was really moved.

Chen Bianlong was also interested, and with a stroke of his pen at that time, he wrote "Confucian Generals", highly praising Zhang Biao's literary brilliance.

Zhang Biao's one hundred taels of silver were not spent in vain, and soon Chen Bianlong made him the deputy general of the Chinese army. Although the position has not changed, the rank has been promoted.

Zhang Biao tasted the sweetness and was out of control. Soon, Chen Bianlong's daughter passed away, and Chen was still a very greedy person, and he did not let go of any opportunity to make money.

Zhang Biao also took the opportunity to welcome him, and extensively mobilized his subordinates to gather members, and looted a total of 100,000 taels of silver and sent them up; Chen Changlong naturally treated Zhang Biao more differently.

But Li Yuanhong only symbolically sent a few silver dollars. Chen Bianlong thought that Li Yuanhong was a miser, an iron rooster-like character, except for being more disdainful of Li Yuanhong, he didn't have too many ideas, anyway, if there was a good thing, it would definitely not be Li Yuanhong's turn.

However, soon, all parts of Hubei were hit by floods, and the Hubei Charity Federation called on all walks of life to donate generously in order to relieve the victims. Li Yuanhong took out 3,000 oceans at once, and also mobilized his subordinates to donate.

When Chen Bianlong heard about this time, he felt very uncomfortable. If you are a dignified governor and there is a funeral in your family, you will take a few silver dollars. For the sake of these poor ghosts, you have taken out so much of these victims at once, what do you mean, I, the governor, can't catch up with the disaster victims? Outrageous! Chen Changlong's impression of Li Yuanhong was even worse.

Fortunately, at this time, Zhang Biao had become good friends with Li Yuanhong. From time to time, Lai Yuanhong took a handful. At least he won't take advantage of the fire to rob and fall into the well, although Li Yuanhong's life is a little sad, he can always get by.

After Chen Changlong left, he was replaced by Ruizi as the governor, and Li Yuanhong's life became even more difficult.