1850 American Gold Tycoon

After being banned from the New York consortium, Liang Yao quickly returned to San Francisco.

Before the election in California officially began, Liang Yao and Robinson convened a Citizens' Committee Congress in San Francisco. The Congress unanimously passed a resolution to reorganize the Citizens' Committee and established the first local political party in California: the Citizens' Party.

There is no doubt that the Civic Party has Liang Yao and Robinson as chairman and vice-chairman respectively. As a member of the Whig Party, Gervin was unable to hold any office in the Civic Party.

But Liang Yao and Robinson still allowed Ge Wen to listen.

In this era, not everyone in the United States has the right to vote. Each state has relatively strict requirements for voters, which can also be said to be thresholds.

For example, the threshold for voters in New York State is to own at least one property.

And wealth is the most unstable thing in California. Almost everyone's wealth will fluctuate greatly tomorrow.

For example, Liang Yao's net worth can rise by tens of thousands of dollars as soon as he wakes up.

Of course, there are also people who have bad luck in gold mining and lose all their wealth overnight.

How to define whether a California citizen has the right to vote has become a big problem facing the Civic Party.

It is impossible to count the property of California citizens in a short period of time. It is a problem that the property of California citizens fluctuates greatly. There is also a more practical problem that there is currently no statistical bureau in California.

In the end, Liang Yao proposed a practical solution, that is, as long as California citizens have American citizenship, they can have the right to vote and participate in voting.

This bold idea quickly gained support from most representatives of the Civic Party. After all, it is more convenient and faster to check nationality than to count property.

Some members of the Civic Party even feel that this is an initiative that is even more advanced than that of the eastern states.

Liang Yao's original intention in making this suggestion was not to consider whether this method was advanced, but because all Chinese immigrants in California had American nationality.

Many gold prospectors from Europe and other regions who poured into California did not have American citizenship.

As a result, the proportion of Chinese voters will greatly increase and they will become a pivotal political force in California.

On the third day after the convention, the elections were held as scheduled, with the governor's race starting first.

After the election began, the gold diggers who did not naturalize in the United States in time could not help but beat their chests and regret.

The reason they regret is not because they do not have the right to vote, but because those who have the right to vote can use their votes to exchange for 10 pounds of flour or 5 pounds of beer.

These things aren't cheap in California.

In the gubernatorial race, Robinson was successfully elected as the first governor of California with an approval rate of 93%.

Liang Yao's approval rating for lieutenant governor was 5 percentage points higher than Robinson's.

Strauss, who had just returned to San Francisco, narrowly defeated Stanford and was elected mayor of San Francisco.

Stanford was not completely without gains. He became the state attorney general as he wished.

Sutter was successfully elected mayor of Sacramento.

Even Deng Wenshun in Los Angeles became the mayor of Los Angeles Town.

At this point, the three largest settlements in California: San Francisco, Sacramento, and Los Angeles are all under Liang Yao's control.

He is now the veritable King of California.

After the election, Liang Yao was not immersed in joy. He was not dazzled by the victory in front of him.

He knows very well that he has not yet achieved complete victory, and what will greet him next will be a violent storm from Congress.

The financial groups and nobles in New York will never be willing to give up and will inevitably launch a crazy counterattack.

Congress and the federal government have no right to interfere in state affairs. That is for the more mature states in the east, and California is a new state with gold.

In the eyes of Congressmen, California, which had just been established as a state, was as weak and vulnerable as a child who had just inherited a huge fortune.

The American flag rose in the square in San Francisco, and California became the thirty-first star on the Stars and Stripes.

Beside the Stars and Stripes, the state flag of California, the Bear Flag, is flying in the wind. The state flag retains the words "Republic of California" from the time of the Bear Flag Rebellion in 1846.

This uprising was led by Fremont. Fremont's original idea was to follow the example of the Lone Star Republic, secede California from Mexico and establish a new independent country in California.

However, this idea was unrealistic at the time, so Fremont gave up the idea of ​​independence and declared California to join the United States of America.

The Republic of California only existed for a short 25 days from its independent founding in June 1846 to its declaration of joining the United States of America in July 1846.

The words "Republic of California" on the bear flag were not intentional by Liang Yao, and the words "Republic of California" were also retained on later California state flags.

Because Californians believe that although the Republic of California only existed for 25 days, this period of history is a very important part of California's history. Without the Republic of California, there would be no California.

Liang Yao looked at the California state flag with emotion, and then went to the military fortress to hand over to Griffin.

Griffin had no nostalgia for California, and the guns and military supplies in the fortress were left intact to Liang Yao. It’s just that Liang Yao has to pay some gold for these things.

Liang Yao ordered an inventory of the military supplies in the fortress. There were 1,280 rifles in stock, 18 artillery pieces, and countless ammunition.

It's just that most of the muskets in these stocks are front-loading smoothbore guns, and the artillery is also front-loading smoothbore cannon, which are not the most advanced weapons of this era.

But something is better than nothing. Liang Yao has enough weapons in stock to equip a full infantry regiment.

What pleased Liang Yao was that although the United States occupied California only a few years ago, the military fortress controlling Jinshan Bay was not only well-built, but also very strong.

At the same time, thousands of miles away in Washington.

Fremont walked into Congress with trepidation.

He thought that Ge Wen should have arrived in California by this time, and Liang Yao should have completed the California election.

The two senators from Texas greeted Fremont warmly, and then sat down next to Fremont and started talking with him.

Fremont is a native of Georgia, that is, a Southerner, and also participated in the Mexican-American War. This identity can easily bring him closer to the two Texas senators.

Congress will hold final discussions today on whether to accept the Mexican government's land grant in California, and the two Texas senators are also very concerned about the outcome of this meeting.

The country gentlemen of Texas held far more land grants from the Mexican government than those in California.

Although the 73-year-old Congressman Calhoun was terminally ill, he insisted on attending the meeting.

Calhoun was pushed into Congress in a wheelchair. The sick old man still had drool at the corners of his mouth. Whether he could speak was a question.

But this did not prevent Calhoun from becoming the protagonist of the meeting. Almost all the lawmakers' eyes were focused on Calhoun.

Calhoun also seemed to enjoy the feeling of being in the spotlight, with a proud and satisfied smile on his lips.

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