The mass revolt of the captives was something that no one expected, including the planners of this uprising.

There is no doubt that the cause of this riot was the instigation of the Self-Salvation Association, but the original purpose of the Self-Rescue Society was only to carry out a large-scale protest of controlled intensity to put pressure on the Chinese and the Allied Army so that the few officers could be free and return to the United States.

As mentioned above, due to the different classes and demands of the federal army prisoners, and the Chinese treat the prisoners quite well, if in addition to emotional factors such as dignity and freedom, the material treatment alone even exceeds that of soldiers and work, so the bottom prisoners actually do not want to go back.

In other words, for the officer class among the captives, their minds were very simple, that is, they wanted to use the method of mass protest to put pressure on the Chinese, asking them to quickly release them back and give those officers freedom.

However, for the grassroots soldiers among the captives, their minds are more contradictory, because on the one hand, they want to continue to get the jobs and benefits given by the Chinese Expeditionary Force, and on the other hand, they want to obtain a dignified personal freedom, so their appeal is only to be free, but at the same time, they cannot lose their jobs and change their treatment.

To put it bluntly, this is the difference in status, which leads to the difference in the demands of different people.

For the officers who were in captivity, since they could become officers in the Union Army, it meant that they had a good education, and at worst they had to have gone to elementary school.

In the United States in the sixties of the nineteenth century, whether it is the southern United States or the northern United States, the education system is still quite imperfect, there are few public schools, mainly private schools, and in terms of knowledge acquisition, family education is quite common.

At this time, if you can go to elementary school and graduate from elementary school in the United States, you can call yourself an intellectual. Such a person can be regarded as a talent in the United States, and if he mixes it up a little, he can mix it up with a middle-class person who has no worries about food and clothing.

For example, President Lincoln, this guy has a very low education, strictly speaking, he is a guy who didn't even graduate from elementary school. Due to his poor family since he was a child, he did not have a regular job at all before the age of 25, and he just went around to earn a living and do odd jobs. He was able to be so promising. Or is he willing to work hard, has been self-taught, and with a little luck, he can soar to the sky.

In fact, people like Lincoln who climbed up from the bottom were only a minority in the United States at this time, because many poor people received enlightenment education from their parents or neighbors and relatives at most when they were young, or better they could receive enlightenment in village-run or town-run elementary schools. It's hard to have the opportunity and motivation to continue learning.

On the contrary, the children of wealthy families have no worries about food and clothing since they were young, can get the best education, and when they grow up, it is easy for them to climb to high positions with the help of the resources of their parents and relatives. Finally get a good achievement.

For example, Joseph. Johnston is a typical son of a famous family, and his career path is also a typical rich second-generation model.

From this point of view. In fact, at this time, the United States, whether in the South or the North, paid quite little attention to the investment in education. In terms of the proportion of government fiscal spending, education expenditure was even inferior to that of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, so that there were quite few public schools in the United States, most of which were private schools, such as Harvard College, which later became Harvard University, was purely private schools.

It's just that because the United States in the past was richer than the Manchu Qing Dynasty as a whole, the entire society entered the modern society early, plus the population is smaller, and the per capita productivity and resources are more, so I feel that Americans are more knowledgeable than Chinese, but that is just an illusion, and it cannot be said that the United States pays more attention to education than the Manchu Qing.

If the U.S. government had invested heavily in education, as the Manchu government had done in the past, the results would have been even better.

The reason why the Manchu Qing Dynasty seems to have a high illiteracy rate is fundamentally due to the limited overall resources, the country's excessive population, coupled with the government's low governance efficiency, as well as corruption, social environment, cultural differences, and lack of attention to science, and many other factors, which make foreigners feel that Chinese do not attach importance to education, in fact, it is really a big mistake.

You must know that no matter how backward the Manchu Qing is, it is also the backwardness of the whole and the backwardness of the system. However, if we simply talk about the importance that the state attaches to intellectuals, the United States cannot compare with it.

If we divide intellectuals according to the standard of reading books for ten years, then the number of Chinese intellectuals not only far exceeds that of the United States, but even exceeds that of Britain.

On the other hand, among the Chinese, the fairness of intellectuals is also better, it is not difficult for the poor to read, and the success rate of the reader to become an official is also greater, after all, even if the imperial examination system is backward, it is much better than the European door system at this time, and in Europe, even if you have knowledge and culture at this time, if you do not have a prominent gate valve background, it is usually difficult to be an official.

Although the United States does not pay too much attention to the family and does not pay much attention to the aristocratic style like Europe, after all, it adheres to Western civilization, so the so-called intellectuals who can go to school and have rich knowledge are definitely respected in society, and the people who can do this are eighty percent of the middle class with money in their families, and only two percent are poor people who climb up from the bottom.

But no matter how you go to school, as long as you can read books and newspapers, write and calculate, and become a so-called intellectual, you will not have to worry about not being able to find a decent job in American society, because you can become a teacher at the worst.

After the outbreak of the Civil War, whether in the South or the North, the original professional army was too small to cope with large-scale wars, so the main force later was conscription, or mobilization.

After mobilization, soldiers can be expanded rapidly, and there is no requirement for academic qualifications, but officers are different, and they must have a certain degree to be competent, because if you are an officer, at least you must be literate and able to read and understand the military orders written on them.

Don't think that the conditions for literacy are very simple, even if English is easy to learn, it takes time and energy, but in this era, most people at the bottom of the United States do not have the time and energy, many people can only read one or two sentences, can write their own names, and this level of literacy, it is impossible to become an officer. To be an officer, you must at least be able to read the Declaration of Independence in its entirety.

Therefore, whether it is the Union Army in the South or the Union Army in the North, almost all officers above the rank of lieutenant can read the Declaration of Independence. And intellectuals who will basically add, subtract, multiply and divide to act, such people, normally speaking, will not be unbearable in American society at this time, after all, they are all talents.

However, even so, most intellectuals in the United States are not happy to be soldiers, after all, as long as you can read, do arithmetic, and be an intellectual, there are too many jobs to do. It's better to do anything than to be a soldier, so they always evade military service in different ways.

Not to mention the South, the North, if Lincoln hadn't issued a mandatory order and implemented a compulsory military service system, he would not have been able to get enough junior officers.

In short, in the federal army, those who can become officers are definitely the educated and educated middle class. Although these people also like to work to earn money, they must earn money with dignity and freedom and not be forced to work as a captive. Even if the job pays a lot of money, far more than they used to earn as a teacher or an officer.

In fact, this can also be understood, once this person has read a book, his vision and requirements are high. If you let them do hard work such as logging or mining, even if they are well paid, they will definitely not be willing to do it. What's more, as a captive, he was forced to do it.

In short, for the officer class among the captives, the high wages given by the Chinese are not very attractive to them, and their desire for freedom is also stronger, and they are the group of people who want to get rid of their captive status and restore their freedom.

However, for those ordinary soldiers, they are different, although the work given to them by the Chinese is also hard work, but the pay is quite generous, so rich that it is much higher than the income of many middle classes in the United States.

According to the calculations of those ordinary captive soldiers, working as a captive here in the Chinese for a month, even the simplest lumberjack, the income of one month can be comparable to that of a respected trainee doctor, and in less than half a year, this income can buy a house in Philadelphia!

Moreover, the Chinese not only pay more than they are paid, as captives, they also provide food and shelter, and treat them when they are sick, and even some diseases that they see as terminal diseases, such as flu and malaria, the Chinese can also give high-priced special drugs without hesitation and carefully treat each of them.

With such a good treatment, there is no one in the whole United States, so these low-level captives are quite content.

But, in any case, this is also a captive, there is no personal freedom, and you can't share it with your family, which is emotionally unacceptable.

Therefore, these grassroots prisoners, they are willing to join the self-help association, the purpose is just to obtain a free identity, and then continue to work for the Chinese as free people, preferably to take their families over.

Although the two different classes of officers and soldiers in the captives had different demands, they were able to unite before because they both wanted to be free, which was also a fundamental reason for the rapid development of the Self-Salvation Association.

Originally, the head of the Self-Help Association, the so-called Daddy George, wanted to wait until Memphis, contact more companions, and develop more members before acting, which would not only be larger in scale and more influential, but also because there were people in the alliance, the effect should be better.

In other words, Daddy George wanted to hold a controlled demonstration, not a riot.

But the situation turned out to be unexpected, or rather, when it came to actual operation, the whole thing got out of control.

It turned out that although Memphis was a big city, it could not accommodate 500,000 foreign prisoners at once, so in order to successfully accommodate these prisoners, the Alliance Army and the Expeditionary Force built five additional prisoner camps on the outskirts of Memphis, each of which could accommodate 100,000 people.

The five captive camps were connected to each other in a five-pointed star-like fashion, with the Confederate Tennessee Corps camp, the Mississippi River Corps camp, and the Chinese Expeditionary Force camp on the periphery.

In other words, the Alliance Army and the Expeditionary Force are encircling the prisoner camp in three directions to prevent emergencies.

Originally, everything was fine, but because the expeditionary force was busy with retreat, the captives were no longer required to mine and cut down trees, and the prisoner camps were distributed according to work, or piecework, so if they didn't work, they would not be paid a high salary, and the food treatment would drop a lot, and they would only maintain a state of starvation.

The so-called from thrift to luxury, from luxury to frugality, since these federal soldiers became prisoners, life is actually much better than in the past, but now they have suddenly lost all this, and their treatment has become worse, even if it is just to restore the food standard when they were soldiers in the federal army, it is also very frustrating.

But at this time, they didn't have any work to do. Everyone stayed in the prisoner camp all day and panicked, and naturally they complained to each other in tandem, and slowly, all kinds of rumors spread.

The most lethal and widespread rumor is that they believe that the Chinese are doing this now because they intend to hand them over to the Union Army, that is, the Southerners, who intend to use them as slaves or cannon fodder.

These rumors have noses and eyes. Not only did the officer class among the captives panic, but the lower-level soldiers panicked.

During the American Civil War, both the North and the South were compatriots, but during this period there was no provision for treating prisoners well, and both the North and the South were quite harsh on the prisoners they caught, and the abuse of prisoners was quite common.

Moreover, in order to increase the morale of their own troops, they reduced the number of people who surrendered. Both the South and the North tried their best to exaggerate each other's evil and publicize their mistreatment of their captives.

In the Union Army in the North, for example, propagandists try to indoctrinate people below them with an idea. That is, don't surrender, don't be a prisoner, once you become a captive of the Southerners, not only will you be abused. And they were to be treated as slaves and work with black slaves.

This statement is quite marketable in northern society, after all, in the sixties. The term white slave has not completely disappeared, and white slaves, although rare, are not absent. And it is not inconceivable that the South is known as a slave owner, and it is not inconceivable that the Southerners were taken as prisoners, and then turned into slaves, working with the black slaves, and perhaps even eating and living with the black slaves.

In addition, the legend of the abuse of prisoners by the Southern Army is also very loud, so these prisoners of the Federal Army do not mind being prisoners of the Chinese, even if the Chinese are foreign invaders, but they are absolutely unwilling to be prisoners of the southern compatriots!

If it was just a spontaneous discussion, it would be nothing, but the problem was that there were already a large number of members of the Self-Help Association in the prisoner camp, which was a very strong organization, and the supervision was relatively lax, so in the end, these people were organized and started a huge riot.

At the beginning of this riot, it was just a few people from the Self-Help Association giving speeches, and then talking and talking, which seemed to touch a certain part of everyone's mind, and the result was a lot of emotion, and then the crowd gathered more and more, and finally became a large team of more than 100,000 people.

The men began to smash the camp's facilities, then began to ram the camp's guardrails and walls, and clashed with the Union soldiers guarding it.

That's right, it's the Union soldiers, because this prisoner camp is jointly guarded by the soldiers of the expeditionary force and the alliance army, and everyone is on one side, originally to reduce the pressure on the expeditionary force, but now it has become a hidden danger.

As a result, everyone did not dare to rush to the places defended by the Chinese, and concentrated on storming the gates guarded by the soldiers of the Union Army.

And the guards of the Union Army were also panicked, blowing the whistle while firing a warning gun, and after seeing that it didn't work, they shot directly at the crowd in front.

This shot, seeing the blood, the situation could no longer be contained, the angry captive soldier Ula screamed, directly against the guns of the Union defenders, fiercely rushed to the gate, and then attacked the Union soldiers on the gate of the prisoner camp with stones and other weapons.

However, this is a prisoner camp after all, essentially a prison, surrounded by high walls and wooden fences, which cannot be quickly broken through by the unarmed crowd, and the defenders on the walls of the prisoner camp can shoot without scruples.

The captives scattered at once, and then lit fires everywhere to create chaos, and built a human wall in the chaos, intending to force a break through the wall and escape from the prisoner camp.

It would have been fine if it had only been one prisoner camp, but the other prisoner camps heard the sound and began to riot, and eventually a situation where five prisoner camps rioted at the same time.

Although the captives were unarmed due to the blockage of the city wall, and there was no detailed plan and organization, the captive's assault on the city wall ultimately failed, but because of this incident, the prisoners' casualties were not small.

According to preliminary statistics, after this uprising, the casualties of the prisoners exceeded 30,000, and the casualties of the coalition army also exceeded 300, which was no less than a high-intensity battle.

This kind of loss makes Li Yongji quite distressed, after all, they are all strong laborers! Of course, the most important thing is that after this incident, the captives have begun to separate themselves from themselves, and they are not as easy to control as before.

In other words, since these captives had rioted once, it was probably not appropriate for them to work in an open place such as the Isthmus of Panama, unless they were really slaves, wearing shackles, which would greatly reduce their efficiency.

"Why is it so worry-free?" Seeing the casualty report, Li Yongji rubbed his forehead vigorously, "I have given you so many benefits, so you can reduce the treatment a little, and actually play riots for me!" If this continues, will we be able to work together happily? They are all proper white-eyed wolves! ”

"Your Majesty." Sun Xiangbing followed, "The so-called non-our race must have different hearts, these guys are not the same kind of people as us, they are not the same heart at all, you don't need to be too good to them!" You've been so nice to them in the past that that's what made them get in. According to what Wei Chen saw, simply take this opportunity to kill a hundred people! ”

"Kill a hundred people?"

"Yes." Sun Xiangbing said lightly, "Now that Huairou is no longer viable, we can only rely on fear to maintain our authority!" In this matter, we must be tough to the end, and we must tell them that obedient captives are good captives! (To be continued......)