I Became A Hidden Powerhouse Of The British Empire [EN]: Chapter 138

Became a Hidden Power in the British Empire 138 (138/537)

The United States of America’s Stratagem (2)

Washington, D.C., United States of America.

Unlike his time as a member of the House of Representatives, John Rutherford, the acting Governor of Virginia, now facing Congress, felt like he had narrowly escaped death.

When he first heard that the hunters who went to capture escaped slaves from Virginia had been shot dead in Canada, he initially thought it was a mistake.

But then the British Empire became furious and demanded an immediate explanation, and Congress was tearing him apart as if they wanted to kill him. It wasn’t an exaggeration to say that every day was a nightmare.

In the first place, he was only an acting governor and was due to step down at the end of the year.

The small amount of money he gave to the slave hunters was just a gesture to appease the plantation owners who were constantly complaining.

How could he have known that they would go all the way to Canada and commit such madness as to shoot up a peaceful settlement?

Moreover, the Queen of the British Empire was scheduled to visit a nearby city, and she was currently pregnant!

It was beyond absurd and, frankly, frightening.

What if a war broke out, triggered by such an absurd situation?

Beyond the fact that he would never be able to dabble in politics again, the situation itself was simply terrifying.

When he received the President’s call to come to the White House urgently, it felt like a death sentence.

Was he going to be forced to take all the blame and kneel before the Queen of England to apologize?

If that could end this whole situation, he would gladly do it, but the problem was that it had already gone beyond resolution that way.

The real problem was the root cause: the escape of slaves and the excessive actions of the hunters trying to catch them.

The North cited the immorality of the South as the fundamental cause, while the South criticized the hypocrisy of the North and pressured them not to apologize under any circumstances.

In other words, a strange idea began to spread that apologizing would mean the South kneeling before the North.

How did he become the vanguard of such a ridiculous battle of pride?

What if the President was close to the South and told him to push harder?

However, all sorts of worries disappeared as soon as he heard the President’s plan for the future.

“…Are you saying we should blame all of this on Mexico?”

“Exactly.”

“…But Mexico has nothing to do with this…”

“If they don’t, we just have to make them. It’s a national waste for the South and North to be divided and fighting over such a trivial matter. As the President of this country, I have a duty to mediate conflicts.”

“So you’re saying we should pin everything on Mexico.”

He understood what the President was suggesting, but he wondered if it was even possible.

However, after listening to the President’s explanation, it strangely made sense.

“Mexico is currently in a territorial dispute with us over Texas. But the Texans clearly want to join us. They felt a serious threat from this trend. So, they came up with a plan to create conflict between the British Empire and the United States of America so that we wouldn’t pay attention to them.”

“The justification itself seems plausible.”

“So now Virginia just needs to create appropriate evidence. Those slave hunters who sneaked into Canada were actually paid off by Mexico. They deliberately attacked Canada to escalate the conflict between Canada and the United States. In the process, they were unexpectedly counterattacked and killed.”

“Mexico will definitely deny it; how can we rebut that?”

“If the evidence is solid, just push it through. So make sure to create circumstances in which the slave hunters were paid off by Mexico.”

If there is no evidence, just create it.

At that simple solution, Rutherford wondered for a moment if this was ethical, but he thought it would be much better than taking all the blame himself.

To put it coldly, if public opinion is divided like this, the North and South could be completely divided, and that shouldn’t happen.

If we can sacrifice those Mexican tacos [a slang term for Mexicans] to overcome this national crisis, wouldn’t that be a good thing?

And if we can bring in Texas, which is currently in conflict…

“Your Excellency, I think this is the only way.”

“Hahaha, thank you for understanding. Then can you create the evidence?”

“First, we will hire experts in handwriting forgery to meticulously create traces.”

“And we need to use our people in Mexico to create a fabricated ledger that looks like they actually exchanged money. That alone will be enough to put the blame on them.”

“Understood!”

He came back from the dead, so who cares if those Mexicans are dying unjustly.

As soon as the meeting with the President ended, Rutherford began working to ‘create’ data that all of this was Mexico’s scheme.

At the same time, pro-government media enthusiastically took up this interesting conspiracy theory and began attacking Mexico with one mind.

[Shock! Mexico’s excessive discord!]

[Is Mexico afraid of the growth of the United States?]

[The slave hunter Hound was wiped out, why did they cross the Canadian border?]

Originally, people fundamentally prefer to blame others rather than reflect on their own faults.

Even more so if it’s a national matter.

Even without this incident, the citizens of the United States didn’t really like Mexico.

They are constantly in conflict over territorial issues and sometimes even shoot at each other, so it would be strange if they had good feelings.

This tendency was even stronger among those who lived closer to the West.

In this situation, the rumor that Mexico was trying to divide the United States and the British Empire to gain their own benefit was incredibly effective.

People were waiting to curse Mexico, saying that the already annoying country was plotting such a cunning scheme, and they urged the government to respond.

The power of perception was so terrifying.

However, there were still people who maintained their composure even in this collective frenzy.

“What Mexico are you talking about out of nowhere! This just looks like a shallow lie to get out of the situation!”

Abraham Lincoln, a young politician from the Whig Party [a political party active in the mid-19th century United States] who made a brilliant appearance in this year’s House election.

He vehemently protested that this cowardly way of solving problems would only damage the prestige of the United States in the long run and urged the President to explain.

“If all of this is a conspiracy by Mexico, please submit evidence to that effect! Can Acting Governor Rutherford confidently answer that all of this is a conspiracy by Mexico?”

“The investigation has revealed evidence that we have no choice but to see it that way. We have already submitted all the evidence to Congress.”

“Isn’t that evidence too flimsy? What is this?”

Lincoln waved a stack of documents roughly and raised his voice.

“It is presumed that they received money, but isn’t the evidence just a few letters like this?”

“It’s not just letters; the investigation into the history of money exchange is almost over.”

“Isn’t that just one side’s unilateral claim? What about cross-checking?”

“I can’t, even if I want to. All the slave hunters who went to Canada are dead, so how can I confirm it?”

Dead men tell no tales.

So no matter how much they manipulated it, there was no one left to protest that it was unfair.

No matter how unfairly Mexico was being treated, it was enough to ignore it, just as a criminal would deny his crime until the end.

“The current atmosphere is flowing in the direction of punishing Mexico for committing such acts. But do you really think it’s a rational choice to talk about war with this level of evidence?”

“I don’t think it’s up to me to say whether or not to start a war. I just informed you that there is a high possibility that this incident is related to Mexico through a thorough investigation.”

Lincoln shook his head in disbelief and sighed, but not many people in Congress agreed with him.

Many of the Northern lawmakers who were trying to pressure the South by taking advantage of this incident also changed their stance to beat Mexico first.

Politicians must manage their awareness by dealing with the issues that citizens are most interested in.

Currently, what the citizens of the United States want most is to hit Mexico, and the members of the United States Congress are willing to faithfully respond to that.

If this is an unreasonable war, there is no reason to refuse because there is a clear justification and plenty of spoils to take.

Even if a young lawmaker named Lincoln makes a fuss with his meager sense of justice, he can’t reverse this trend.

“The President has asked Mexico to explain first, and if their explanation is not convincing, appropriate measures should be taken.”

“No, I mean that explanation is…”

“Come on, Congressman Lincoln. Cool your head and think calmly. Why should we fight each other over something like this?”

“That’s right. The right thing to do is to appease the British Empire first and find and punish the real culprit who plotted this.”

“The right thing to do! This could be the most shameful war in the history of the United States!”

“Since we’ll be voting soon anyway, let’s talk with a vote instead of raising our voices. The result of the vote will tell us our public opinion.”

The issue of slavery is important, but what is more important than that is the expansion of American territory, a clear manifest destiny [the belief that the United States was destined to expand its dominion and spread democracy and capitalism across the entire North American continent].

They were given a golden opportunity to expand westward, and if they missed this opportunity, the chance to get Texas might come much later.

If Mexico was a strong enemy, they couldn’t even wage a proper war with the United States at the level of Mexico.

In the minds of the leaders of the United States, the American flag was already fluttering, eating up the shabby Mexican territory and ascending.

* * *

Same time.

Kingston, the temporary capital of Canada.

“Ambassador.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“I don’t know how to take this content right now.”

The apology brought by Edward Everett, the British Ambassador to Canada, exceeded my expectations in a pleasant way.

No, I thought they would just bow their heads and say sorry, but are they trying to change the angle here?

I thought there was about a 20 percent chance, but now that it’s actually happening, I can’t help but feel absurd and amused.

“Of course, we also understand Your Highness’s bewildered state. Let me say again that we are not trying to avoid responsibility at all. It is our fault that we have caused concern to Your Highness and Her Majesty the Queen without any excuse. We should have been more careful and controlled the border, but we didn’t. We apologize again for this.”

Everett bowed politely.

Looking at his gaze, which seemed so, so sorry that he was about to shed tears, I couldn’t help but think that diplomats are basically people who are born with a talent for acting.

“Is it a confirmed fact that Mexico is likely to be behind this, or is it an inference?”

“I know that it has been confirmed that Mexico has leaked money to those slave hunters.”

“I see. Now that I see it, Mexico was a scary country. I can’t believe they infiltrated the United States so deeply and plotted such a sinister scheme.”

“They have been insisting that our land is their land and illegally occupying it. When we asked them to return it, I think they committed this act to buy time.”

“…Mexico was illegally occupying the territory of the United States?”

Could it be that these guys are talking about Texas like that?

I don’t know if they think we don’t know anything and are just talking, or if they really think and say that.

“Yes. By now, a statement condemning Mexico will have been passed in the National Assembly. His Excellency the President has said that he will never condone this, so we will make sure to get the price for this.”

“It sounds like they’re willing to go to war, am I understanding correctly?”

“If Mexico doesn’t make a proper apology, that may be the case. Your Highness must have been very surprised, but how worried would Her Majesty the Queen have been? She is not only pregnant but also with someone who may become the heir to the British Empire.”

“When this news is known, there will be tremendous anger in the home country. The news must have arrived by now, but I don’t know how the parliament will react.”

“Of course, we understand that feeling. That’s why I’m telling you…”

Everett carefully took out a letter from his arms, placed it gently on the table, and slid it towards me.

“It’s a letter from His Excellency to Your Highness.”

“From the President?”

It’s bound to be full of excuses and apologies, but I should still read it since he wrote a letter.

After quickly skimming through it, the first part was as expected, full of apologies, promises to thoroughly control the border in the future, and that it was all the fault of the Mexicans.

But the content that followed was at a level that even I couldn’t have imagined that these guys would come out like this.

“So…”

I asked, laughing in vain after covering the letter.

“Are you saying that we should attack Mexico together at this opportunity?”

Since it’s a war waged by fabricating evidence, they don’t want to be the only ones to take the blame, so they’re trying to make an accomplice?

I barely suppressed the burst of laughter after hearing Everett’s answer, who nodded slightly.

I expected them to somehow get Mexico involved, like in the American-Mexican War in the original history, but they’re reaching out to us at this point?

Well, that’s good. It’s the flow that Victoria and I wanted.

As expected, they are the descendants of our British Empire. I can’t believe their thought process is so similar.

Thankfully.