Black slaves were emancipated after the American Civil War, but they fell into a darker situation, the so-called stray dogs were worse off than pet dogs, and the slaves without masters were worse off than the samurai who lost their masters in Japan. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

After the Civil War, the U.S. federal government helped rebuild the South, which was Lincoln's glorious slogan, "Give priority to rebuilding the South", in fact, the war was mainly fought in the South, and the New England region of the North was not only not affected by the war, but greatly promoted the development of industry because of the war.

The first priority for the reconstruction of the South is to restore production in the South, and the most important economic pillar of the South is, of course, the plantation economy of the past, which mainly produces cotton.

In the past, the cotton plantations were owned by white slave owners, and the labor force was mainly black slaves.

Now that the blacks were emancipated, what about cotton production, the government actively encouraged the conversion of black slaves into freelancers, so large estates were divided into small plots by slave owners and rented to slave families for farming.

By turning slaves into sharecroppers, the United States resumed cotton production as quickly as possible after the war, causing a worldwide collapse in cotton prices in 1866.

Some slave owners began to hire Chinese laborers to grow cotton, and at its peak the number of Chinese laborers employed was as high as one million, leaving millions of blacks without livelihood and forced to move north, causing discontent among whites in the northern United States.

The top level of the U.S. government still did some work to implement the so-called Southern Homestead Law, allowing blacks to occupy the ownerless wasteland in the south, but there was originally less land in the south, so most blacks were still reduced to tenant farmers.

However, after becoming the so-called free tenant farmers, their lives may not be better than those of the slaves of the past, because they are still exploited by the slave owners, or even more ruthlessly.

In the past, slave owners exploited them through forced labor, and they were the property of the slave owners, and the slave owners had to support these slaves in order to protect their property. But now that slaves are free, slave owners have lost the incentive to protect their property. But it still occupies land resources.

Although the land was leased to slaves, the rent collected was heavy. At the same time, rent is just one way to exploit it. As a large number of slaves were converted into tenant farmers on the spot, most of the blacks, who had no social connections, were still attached to the slave owners of the past. Just working on the slave owner's estate.

These slave owners began to set up shops on their estates, selling seeds, farm tools, and various household items to black people. Since blacks had no property at all in the beginning, they had to borrow money to buy it. As a result, a large amount of debt was incurred, and slave owners used debt as an excuse to demand that blacks could only buy goods in their stores. Not only are these goods expensive, but most of them are owed on credit, charging large amounts of interest to blacks.

It can be said that after the freedom of the blacks, most of them did not leave the old estates, they still did the work of growing cotton, and the profits were still whites.

There is evidence that after the liberation, the living conditions of blacks generally declined, and their physical fitness was not as good as before. At the same time, the plantation owners transformed the slave mode of production into a capitalist mode of production, and the profits were higher than before. Before the war, slave owners were generally in debt to maintain the high cost of farming, but now they are generally profitable.

The source of profit for the slave owners was, of course, the result of the decline in the standard of living of the slaves. The reason for this is that the capitalist mode of production is more efficient at extracting profits than the slave mode of production.

The general decline in the standard of living of slaves, combined with the fact that they were forced to work harder than in the past, created widespread discontent among the slave class, who were now responsible for the cost of production and had to pay rent to their slave owners. In fact, all the business risks that used to be borne by slave owners were passed on to blacks.

Blacks, of course, are dissatisfied.

But whites are equally dissatisfied. Even the more profitable plantation owners are still dissatisfied, and the slavery they adhere to is not a mode of production in their eyes, but a way of life, a system of power, and they used to treat blacks as they pleased, but now although they have higher incomes, they are just unhappy to see those black families.

What's even more unpleasant is that they feel that they are being exploited by the Northern Union, in the past the South insisted on low tax rates, the North demanded higher tariffs to protect industry, they demanded lower tariffs to promote exports, and as a result, a war broke out, and they lost, and the Yankees put all this on their heads.

Not only did it begin to impose high tariffs, which caused retaliation from the Europeans, which greatly affected the export of cotton. And the Yankees also taxed them in a targeted manner.

In order to compensate for the losses of the Civil War, and also to take revenge on the South, especially the slave owners, in 1865, just after the Civil War, the United States Congress decided to introduce a tax on cotton, which was not based on actual prices, but on weight 2.5 cents per pound of cotton, which was raised to 3 cents per pound in 1866.

This is a very high tax rate, considering that the price of a pound of cotton before the war was only 10 cents, and the government levied a third of the tax, in addition to tariffs on exports, which also required tariffs on European imports, which more than doubled the cost of cotton.

In this case, of course, the plantation owners were dissatisfied.

After the Ming army entered Texas, despite all kinds of resistance, among the various forces dissatisfied with the Yankees, there were still contacts with the Ming army and expressed support, and for some former slave owners, the hatred of the north was far more than racial discrimination against the yellow race.

In particular, a large number of slave owners or descendants of slave owners, who were originally rich and high, have now become poor white Southerners, and their psychological disparity is so great that they hate the government of the North.

Therefore, after the Ming army occupied every city, it recruited such people to serve the Ming army, especially the descendants of those slave owners, who often received a feudal lord-style aristocratic education when they were young, and the education level was relatively high, and the Ming army wantonly appointed these people as government officials to help restore order in the occupied areas.

When I was in New Mexico, I had already experienced these situations, and when I arrived in Texas, it was smooth sailing, because Texas was a relatively strong area of slavery, and there were a large number of blacks and the descendants of slave owners living in it.

The descendants of the slave owners said that the high-ranking officials would be satisfied, what should the blacks do, there are not so many high-ranking officials, but there are so many forces that can be used without it, Lu Yunqi felt that it was too wasteful, and he quickly wrote a report asking for the formation of the Black People's League.

In order to gain the support of the blacks, Lu Yunqi hoped to directly forgive the debts of the blacks and give the land rented by the blacks directly to the blacks.

The report to Deng Shicai was suppressed, because Deng Shicai consulted several local elites, who were several elites who cooperated with the Ming army, although they were dissatisfied with the US government, but they were indeed capable figures, and the purpose of their cooperation with the Ming army was not for their own interests, but hoped that the Ming army would support them to build an independent state.

Deng Shicai prefers this kind of people, he believes that these people are the most rational and capable group of people. In particular, he listened to several of the political and legal experts, all of whom had graduated from American universities with political science and law majors, and who were among the local high-imports even before the war.

These people were adamantly opposed to the distribution of land to blacks, believing that it would destroy their private property rights and bring about the collapse of social order.

Deng Shicai wanted stability, he did not want to see the collapse of order in the areas he occupied, and now the plantation owners are already panicking, because they hold huge real estate, and a considerable number of people remain here, and those who are the least friendly to the Chinese and have the strongest sense of anti-Chinese are either gone, or they are secretly supporting or even participating in the sabotage movement.

After Lu Yunqi's insistence on many times, Deng Shicai believed that as a means of punishment, confiscating a part of the land of the plantation owners who had been confirmed to be anti-Chinese to the blacks would not cause a breakdown of order, and would still be supported by the blacks.

So he quickly agreed to Lu Yunqi's suggestion and began to formulate relevant policies, at this time Liu Wei got Lu Yunqi's recommendation and came up with a complete set of plans.

He put forward the principle of three collections and three non-collections, the so-called three collections, that is, the land confiscation of the landlords who resisted the Ming army, the confiscation of the land of the landlords who had clearly excluded the Chinese in the local area, the confiscation of the land of the landlords who had abandoned the land and fled, the three non-collections were the non-collection of the land of the landlords who mainly hired Chinese laborers to operate plantations before the war, and the land of the landlords who were currently cooperating with the Ming Dynasty was not collected, and the land of the blacks was not collected. The confiscated land was directly distributed to local blacks for cultivation.

As for the other problem of the oppression of the blacks, the debts of the blacks on the lands of the resisters, the Chinese exclusives and the fugitives, it was announced that all the debts of the blacks on the lands of the landlords who cooperated with the Ming Dynasty should be repaid in a lump sum by the occupying junta, so as to make sure that the vast number of blacks would benefit.

In fact, this plan does not cost much, and part of the debt that needs to be paid only involves tens of thousands of people, millions of dollars, which is only a drop in the bucket compared with the huge military spending, and the support it can get is definitely worth the money.

But even this solution is opposed by local elites, who believe that law and property rights are the two pillars of American society, and that if destroyed, it will inevitably lead to continued chaos.

Liu Wei admits that law and property rights are the core elements of American society, they are a country established from a blank sheet of paper, the population comes from various countries and nationalities, there is no traditional social moral constraint, so the law is the bottom line of their social operation, but also the only criterion, not to mature Western European countries or East Asian countries, there are complex traditional social rules to constrain and have all kinds of rules, the role of the law as a set of social operation rules, but faded.

But Liu Wei told Deng Shicai that it is precisely because these are the pillars of the operation of American society that he should interrupt, even if the Americans in the occupied areas are allowed to establish an independent state, they should not take these into account, because Daming does not need a new United States, and what Daming needs is a country that is best different from American society.

So even if it interrupts the social pillars of the United States, it will not do Daming any harm, but it will allow Daming to get the support of more people at the bottom, and it doesn't cost much, so why not do it.

Liu Wei persuaded Deng Shicai to allow him to implement this set of policies, although he offended many elites, but Deng Shicai believed that giving them high-ranking officials and allowing them to build an independent country could still entrap them.

It's just that Deng Shicai somewhat underestimated the impact of smashing the foundation of society on a society, just like the local elite said, sure enough, the occupied areas are in chaos.

Those blacks who received debt relief and private land did have a good impression of the Ming army, but at the same time, when they saw the support of the Ming army, they began to demand more, they no longer paid rent to the landlord or the housekeeper left by the landlord, they robbed the goods in the plantation shop, they also wanted to occupy the landlord's mansion, and they also wanted the landlord's woman to share the landlord's wealth.

In short, the new decree caused considerable confusion for a while, but Deng Shicai decided to stick to it because he saw more chaos in the US ruled areas.

Daming's policy of fighting local tyrants and dividing up the land in Texas, west of Houston, led to a more developed plantation economy east of Houston, and Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippia, La Bama, and even as far away as South Carolina, blacks refused to pay their debts and demanded the division of landlords' land.

Compared with the troubles of the Americans, the chaos in half of Texas is nothing at all, not to mention that the chaos here is relatively weak and the damage is relatively small, because most of the landlords have actually fled and have no confrontation at all, so the chaos is only a short-term release of contradictions, not a large-scale conflict of interest groups, and the problems of the United States are very serious, especially pushing the US government to an embarrassing point, if it chooses to suppress, it is bound to push five million blacks to the opposite side of the government, If freedom is allowed to go ahead, not only will the social order in the southern states collapse, but it will also be a departure from the concept of property rights and law in the United States, and politicians will be burdened with considerable political burdens and enormous pressure from the middle and upper classes.

Deng Shicai saw this situation and was very satisfied, so he planned to strike while the iron was hot and launch a plan for the independent establishment of the American Southwest, but this kind of major event, although Zhu Jinglun allowed him all his powers, he had no problem doing it, but he decided to ask the emperor for instructions, because he had already made too many decisions, and he could make decisions of this degree, but he couldn't, which was also what Liu Wei strongly asked him to do.

Deng Shicai found that Liu Wei was simply a talent, and he suddenly sympathized with Liu Wei's situation, just because he had corrupted a few hundred taels of silver, he was sent to Alaska for ten years, which was really a waste of talent.