The impact of the total annihilation of the British Expeditionary Force slowly subsided after a period of sensation. The foreign and subject missions have basically finished paying tribute, the weather is getting hotter and hotter, and the time is also entering summer. Feng Yunshan enjoyed this lazy early summer time, and was tired of being with Cheng Lingnan, Su Sanniang and others, and was very relaxed for a while.

As for the princess Elizabeth, after Prince William returned to Prussia, she stayed in the palace, Feng Yunshan didn't care about her, she didn't come to Feng Yunshan, just stayed with Fu Shanxiang, who was just pregnant, all day long. But Elizabeth is not an idle person, I don't know how to move Fu Shanxiang, the two of them set up a palace maid school in the palace, specializing in teaching palace ladies to read and write, making Feng Yunshan cry and laugh, seeing that Queen Cheng Lingnan did not interfere, so they had to let them.

While Feng Yunshan was enjoying this brief period of tranquility, Marshali, the former U.S. Commissioner to China, quietly rushed to Shengjing and asked to see him.

"Marshali?" Feng Yunshan was stunned for a moment when he heard the name of Fan Ruzeng, director of the Special Services Department, before remembering this person. At the beginning, this Marshali, who was originally the US Commissioner to China, later quietly took refuge in himself after leaving his post and served as his royal foreign affairs adviser, with an annual salary of 10,000 saints, to assist the Chinese Empire in its dealings with the United States. At the beginning, Feng Yunshan often had direct contact with Ma Shali, and later after becoming the emperor of the Chinese Empire, there were many things, so he handed over Ma Shali's counterpart contact to the jurisdiction of Fan Ruzeng, the secret service department, and slowly forgot about this person, but I didn't expect that this time I actually came to find myself, and there must be something important to report to myself in person.

"Yes, Your Majesty!" Fan Ruzeng explained: "Since His Majesty handed over Mashali to Weichen to liaison, Mashali has been of great help to the Chinese Empire, not only sending several important messages to Wechen, but also helping Wu Ruxiao of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to establish an embassy in the United States and helping the Admiralty to purchase warships. However, since last year, Mashali has resigned from his position as the foreign affairs adviser to the royal palace, and he has not received our money again. This time, he took the initiative to find me, saying that your Majesty had told him something, and now there are signs. ”

Feng Yunshan suddenly realized, he remembered, it is now 1860 according to the Western calendar, and it is very close to the outbreak of the Civil War between the North and the South in the United States. When Marshali confessed to him that he was a loyal Whig who was not on the same path as the president of the Democratic Party, and was removed from his post as commissioner in China, Marshali represented the Southern Whigs to strengthen his cooperative relationship with the Chinese Empire, which was still the Taiping Holy Kingdom at the time. At that time, Feng Yunshan was about to buy armaments on a large scale, so he hired Ma Shali as a foreign affairs adviser to the royal government, gave a huge amount of money, and purchased weapons in the United States through his connections.

During this period, Feng Yunshan knew in advance that the American Civil War was about to break out, and told Marshali that when a Republican ran for president in a few years, he must inform himself. Calculating the time, Feng Yunshan guessed that it was very likely that this was the case.

Sure enough, when Mashali was led in front of Feng Yunshan, the first words he said confirmed Feng Yunshan's guess.

"Mashali to your majesty!" Marshali looked at the Emperor of the Chinese Empire, who had a kind face in front of him but invisibly shone with an infinite aura: "I hereby inform Your Majesty that a new round of presidential elections in the United States of America has begun. And now, I, the Whigs, have reached the end of the mountain, and this time I have come to ask Your Majesty for help, save our Whigs! ”

Marshali looked at Feng Yunshan of the Eastern Empire wearing a golden crown in front of him, and his heart was full of emotion. Just a few years ago, when he was still serving as the US Commissioner to China, the man in front of him was just the leader of an anti-government force, running around, entrusting himself with the money he had stolen to help him buy arms and weapons, and at that time he would treat himself as a guest of honor, begging for his help. Just a few years have passed, and the person who is still in front of him is still in front of him, but his identity and status have completely changed. He was just a dying Whig member, and the other party was already His Majesty the Emperor of the powerful empire in the East. It's really impermanent!

Feng Yunshan also looked at the foreigner in front of him, a little down, much older than when he was in Guangzhou. However, he was more curious by what Marshali said, the Whigs, what the hell is wrong?

Under Feng Yunshan's questioning, Marshali talked about the purpose of his trip to Shengjing.

This year is another election year in the United States. The general election in the United States is generally divided into four stages, and the first stage is the caucus that begins at the beginning of the year, that is, the candidates of various parties compete for the nomination of their party's presidential candidate, and ends in the middle of the year. After the caucuses, the second phase, called the National Convention, will begin, in which each party will hold its national convention in the third quarter to finalize the candidates for the presidency and vice presidency of the party and discuss and approve the platform for the presidential campaign. The next third stage is the candidate campaign, and this stage is actually the official start of the presidential campaign. The presidential candidates identified by each party expound their policy propositions on domestic and foreign affairs through speeches, meetings with voters, press conferences, and public debates, in order to win the trust of voters and win votes. The final phase is a national voter referendum held in the week of November to formally elect the final president.

And now it's summer, and the results of the pre-selection are basically out. The current Democratic Party president, James Brown. Buchanan decided not to run for re-election, and his Democratic Party was divided over slavery, with Southern Democrats supporting slavery and Northern Democrats opposing slavery. As a result, the Democrats were unable to unite, and even with a leader like Senator Steven Douglas of Illinois who had the support of a majority of delegates in attendance, they still did not receive the two-thirds majority needed for the nomination. Therefore, it is difficult to decide on the nomination of the Democratic Party, except for Douglas of the Northern Democratic Party.

Even Douglas, Democrats in the South are opposed. Because Douglas was a representative of the Northern Democratic Party, his political position was the so-called "theory of popular sovereignty", which was neither opposed to slavery nor the promotion of slavery, and at the same time stated that federal law could not impose slavery on areas that did not want to accept slavery.

The Southern Democrats who opposed Douglas were led by William Youngcey of Alabama, and Youngsey wanted to include an explicit support for slavery in the Democratic platform, but Douglas naturally disagreed, so Youngsey called on Democrats in the Southern states to oppose Douglas as a candidate, and unless a pro-slave candidate was elected, they would even quit the Democratic Party.

Republicans were reaping the benefits of the Democratic strife, and with the Republican Party already growing in power, Marshali and other Americans agreed that the Republican candidate was inevitable in the 1860 presidential election. And the two most competitive candidates of the Republican Party have come out, which is New York Senator William Seward in first place and Abraham Lincoln in second place.

As for the rest, there are several insignificant candidates of various parties, and one of them, the candidate of the Constitutional Coalition Party, John Bell, is also supported by many people.

These are just some of the primaries, and when Mashali left the United States, the Democratic candidates had not yet come out except for Douglas. Marshali analyzed that the Republican Party had a better chance of winning, and that Senator William Seward of New York, a former Whig left-wing leader who, like most Whigs in the North, joined the anti-slavery Republican Party in 1854 and was known for his fierce opposition to slavery, Marshali said.

The purpose of Marshali's trip was to ask for Feng Yunshan's help to save his Whigs, to be precise, to save the Southern Whigs and defend the representatives behind them. The interests of Southern planters.

In their view, William Seward's election for president is very likely to be successful, and once he becomes president, with his fierce anti-slavery political leanings, he will definitely try to abolish slavery in the South, destroy the plantation economic system in the South, and bring endless disasters to the American people in the South, and even civil war. Therefore, Mashali asked Feng Yunshan to use the power of the Chinese Empire to prevent William Sewardard's election success as much as possible, and to help the Southern Democratic candidate run for the presidency of the United States.

Hearing Ma Shali say this, Feng Yunshan smiled.

It is no wonder that Marshali and the forces behind him are not as able to predict the future as they are, and they know that the future presidential candidate will be Lincoln. They won't even know that the two Republican presidential candidates, William Seward, currently seem to be in first place in the support rating, but in the next Republican National Convention election, four votes, Abraham Lincoln won more support than the first time, and finally surpassed William Seward in the fourth vote to become the Republican candidate.

However, Feng Yunshan would not do as Marshali requested. From his standpoint, he naturally hopes that the more chaotic the United States is, the better, and it is better if the civil war breaks out more intensely. And the political position of this William Seward, strongly opposed to slavery, was, so to speak, more resolute than Lincoln. After Lincoln was elected president, he also adopted a compromise approach to slavery between the North and the South, trying to solve the problem of slavery in a relatively relaxed way, and finally because of the loss of the war, at the critical juncture nearly two years after the outbreak of the civil war, he formally proposed the complete abolition of slavery and the emancipation of slaves to stimulate the progress of the war. In this way, after Lincoln was elected president, the southern states began to take action one after another, declaring their withdrawal from the Union and rebelling. If William Seward, who was determined to abolish slavery, was elected, he was afraid that as soon as the election results came out, before he became president, the southern states, as well as some states that had remained neutral, would unanimously break away from the United States Union and rebel.

Therefore, Feng Yunshan made a decision in an instant, not only not to prevent the election of William Seward, but also to find a way to help him, so that he could defeat Lincoln and become president, which provoked the southern states more strongly than in history to make them rebel in advance.

However, on the surface, Feng Yunshan smiled and said, "No problem, I promise you." But Mr. Marshali, how do you think I can help you? ”