At noon, after lunch, it was the usual time for the women to go upstairs and rest while the men smoked a cigarette and talked about current events. Lillith followed her mother up the stairs to the top when she heard the sound of arguing from below.

"Are you saying we can't beat the Yankees?" A loud, agitated voice came over.

"Who is this?" Lillith thought, "It's funny that someone would dare to say that here." She slowed her pace slightly.

"No offense, but sir, I'd like to know how many times you've been to the north. How much do you know about them? As far as I know, you are a West Point graduate, so you must know that Clausewitz said in his "Theory of War" that 'intelligence is the whole of what we know about the enemy and the enemy's country and is the basis of all our ideas and actions, and I don't know on what basis you conclude that the North is unbeatable. " A voice came over.

I know that the North is superior to us in material strength, but, just as you quoted from "The Theory of War", I will quote from "The Theory of War", and you are not unaware of Clausewitz's discussion of martial and spiritual strength. We in the South may not be superior in numbers or material strength, but it is the spiritual strength that is decisive on the battlefield! And this you, a coward who only sees material power, cannot see!"

"Things are getting more and more interesting, maybe next someone will throw the glove in the other's face?" Lillith stopped in her tracks.

"Lilith, come on." There was a look of reproach in her mother's eyes as if to say, "This is not something a young lady should be concerned about."

"Yes." Lillith hurriedly followed.

......

The following argument did almost lead to a duel. But the master intervened to prevent the situation from deteriorating. George intervened between the two: "Enough! Koster, I'm sure Joyce is not the coward you think she is. We are old neighbors, and we all know what kind of person Joyce is. Joyce is just trying to show that war is not as simple as you think. I agree, even the Mexicans are not as unbeatable as you think. You don't think the Yankees are even worse than the Mexicans, do you?"

Joyce was a young, young man, and it was fine to question him. But George is different, although he is also their peer, older than them, plus he has a war experience, has been the model of the young people in this area, so when he came forward, the young man called Koster was also quiet.

And Joyce, who had some trouble talking to the young men who always stayed in the South, got up and apologized to George and said he needed to go out for a walk. Then he left the living room. Alone, he went out into the hallway.

A short time later, George also came out.

"I'm sorry, Joyce, but these boys are too impulsive and lack real thought these days." George walked over to Joyce, put his hands on the porch railing, and lifted his head to look over the hilltop where a group of egrets was flying.

"George, you don't have to say anything to me about them, and the truth is, I'm not mad at them. Really." Joyce looked over at George, "I can understand them. A few years ago, at least before I left for Europe, I was no different from them. Just a few years out there and a little more insight ...... Well, how do you feel about that gun I gave you?"

"It was good, and it was bad," George replied.

"What?" Joyce asked.

"The gun was good, but the place where it was made was bad." George's answer was still unusually simple.

"Is our relationship with the North so bad now?" Joyce took a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket, handed one to George, then took one for herself, then took a pack of matches out of her undershirt pocket and rubbed it on top of the red phosphorus-coated matchbook, and a small flame came out. Joyce first lit a cigarette for George, and then for himself, and then waved his hand and shook out the fire.

George took a deep puff, then exhaled a few smoke rings: "In short, worse than before. Now in the House, the Whig guys are getting more and more. These guys, all day long, either to raise tariffs or there to abolish slavery. In fact, who are they to accuse us of slavery when the workers in their factories are not necessarily in the same position as our slaves?"

"I find that the Yankees are a lot like the English," Joyce said. Joyce said, "They want to find a grand excuse for everything they do, but in the end, it's all about money. You know, the Indians are revolting, and the British are busy trying to suppress them. The Yankees want to turn us into their India. If they can raise the tariff, then the most retaliation, the European countries will also be closed to our cotton, and then we will have to follow the Yankees want to sell our cotton to them at a low price, and also to buy from them at a high price than the European things are much worse and much more expensive. In this way, it won't take long for all the wealth we have accumulated over generations to go into the pockets of those greedy Yankees. Just like in India, those Indian princes defeated thousands of years of accumulated wealth, from the occupation of the whole of India in 49 years to now, in just a few years, India has to rebel against the situation. Those greedy Yankees will do anything for money."

"We're not India," George said. They'll knock their teeth out trying to turn us into India," George said. And the president is still a Democrat."

"There's a growing demographic gap between the North and the South, and someday the legislature and the president will be in the hands of the Yankees, and maybe four years from now the Whigs will have both the legislative and executive branches." Joyce said, "We have to prepare for this."

"That's right. If that day is inevitable, we have to be prepared. We have fewer men, so we have to be better prepared. The kind of guns you brought back is good, and we'd better buy more of them in the future. At any rate, we can't let the Yankees have better weapons than we do."

......

While Joyce and the others were discussing Scrooge's MacDonald 1857 rifle at the ball, Scrooge was doing something deadly in his secret laboratory. The underground laboratory was located on an old boat on Lake Erie. The laboratory was used to test dangerous products, such as the powder used in Stroh's bullets - trinitrotoluene - which was made in the laboratory.

The process of making trinitrotoluene in the laboratory was complex and dangerous, and toxic substances were produced in the process. However, this experiment was done by Scrooge in his previous life, so it was made without any danger. Although the purity is not too good, the effect seems to be quite good. Now Scrooge is carefully making another thing on board - nitrocellulose.

Compared to TNT, nitrocellulose is a lot safer and relatively simple to prepare, but it's not easy to make a firing charge. Because the nitrocellulose is not stable, the temperature exceeding 40 degrees may decompose spontaneous combustion, and dry long storage also easy to decomposes itself. So you must also add stabilizers, such as dissolved in ether and ethanol, and then add petroleum jelly as a stabilizer, and then is pressed, cut, and dried, to do the gun launcher.

And Scrooge's mind the most suitable rifle firing powder, in the technical difficulties, are greater. The general firing powder is slow burning, that is, at first burning fast, producing more gas, and later slow-burning, producing little gunpowder gas. The rifle is more powerful than a pistol, which means that it uses more gunpowder, it is the longer barrel, and gunpowder gas in the barrel for a longer period, which appears in the firing of the bullet, the beginning of the bore pressure is too high, and the bullet has not been chambered, the bore pressure and become a too low problem.

To solve this problem, we must use a special shape for the firing charge. The burning speed of gunpowder depends on its burning area, and the hollow tube shape is used in later times to ensure that the burning area of gunpowder remains unchanged when it is burned. The bore pressure in the bore of the gun is ensured evenly. However, in Scrooge's time, it seemed to be difficult to make such a complex configuration of gunpowder. Therefore, Scrooge had to settle for the second best and try to use a mixture of fast-fired and slow-fired gunpowder.

The rifle of this era was still very immature in Scrooge's view. Even the MacDonald 1857 produced in his factory was an advanced rifle for this era, but it was still far from the ideal state. In addition, because of the limited energy of the black powder, the burning speed is also limited, which makes it challenging to increase the muzzle velocity of the bullets fired from this gun, although the muzzle velocity of more than 400 meters per second of the Macdonald 1857 was already second to none at that time, compared to the later type Although MacDonald's muzzle velocity of over 400 meters per second for 1857 was already second to none at the time, it was a far cry from the muzzle velocities of the later rifles, which often ranged from 700 to 900 meters per second.

The first problem brought about by low muzzle velocity is that to guarantee power, the bullet must be heavy enough. This means that the caliber of the rifle must be large enough. For example, in the McDonald 1857 rifle, the caliber is as high as 11 mm, which is almost the caliber of the later generation of anti-material rifles. This caliber is almost the smallest rifle at that time, and the caliber of some other rifles is even more amazing, some rifles' caliber is even as high as 16mm. And such large bullets, inevitably lead to soldiers carrying a very low number of bullets, the ability to continue to fight is not enough.

The second problem brought about by low muzzle velocity is accuracy, low muzzle velocity brings about more curved ballistics, which makes rifle accuracy very problematic when attacking long-range targets. Moreover, the low muzzle velocity also leads to the time required for the bullet to fly to the target at a distance of 500 meters, for example, when striking the target at a distance of 500 meters, the low muzzle velocity bullet fired by black powder has to fly for more than two seconds to hit the target, and such a long time, even if the person moves at a walking speed, it is enough to move to a meter away.

Of course, Scrooge did not intend to immediately replace the Macdonald 1857 with a smaller caliber rifle using smokeless powder. Even, what is one step ahead of the times is not necessarily acceptable to others. A few days ago, MacDonald Infantry Arms tried to recommend its own MacDonald 1857 to the Federal Army, but it was lost. Although the MacDonald 1857 outperformed the competitor Springfield 1856 in any of its tests, the Army was adamant that they would not accept any rifle that cost more than $25, no matter how good it was! No matter how good it is!

"Maybe we should find a way to buy more McDonald 1857 rifles for the Southerners so that when the war starts, they will be the best salesmen for McDonald's." Scrooge thought, "It's just a question of how to take care of the aftermath, and by then, there will be people who will accuse themselves of being 'unpatriotic. Perhaps I could organize a security company to provide security services for immigrants to the West now, and when the war starts, integrate them into a volunteer army and go to the battlefield with a newer generation of weapons, such as rifles that use smokeless bullets or something to make a big advertisement."