"He wants to conduct stone exploration in Texas?" Annabelle asked calmly, "Without any other purpose?"
"For now, there isn't any other purpose. Standard Oil Company is searching for new oil fields, and I don't know their exact intentions. But it's not surprising. If we resist too much, it might seem unrealistic," Isabella said, biting her lip, and then asked, "Should we reject them?"
"No need for that. They haven't even arrived yet, so there's no rush!" Annabelle gestured to stay calm, "Perhaps it's just a casual exploration. Rockefeller wants to replicate the success of Whaling in Ohio and Pennsylvania's oil industry in Texas, but our family is not like those small workshops. He can't just reap what he wants."
"Let's hope so!" Isabella let out a sigh of relief, "In the past twenty years, the South has been left further and further behind."
"Hmph!" Annabelle snorted, "It was deliberate on Yankee's part. They widened the gap between the North and the South through the war. Before you were born, in terms of the number of wealthy individuals, we weren't worse than the North. But their industrial development was much stronger than our plantations. A deserter from the Civil War who hoarded food during the war became an oil magnate."
Before the Civil War, to avoid the draft, Rockefeller feigned illness. When he couldn't continue the act, he spent money to find a substitute. Before the outbreak of the war, Rockefeller did everything he could, investing all his funds in hoarding grains, salt, ham, as well as cotton and coal, among other strategic materials. As the war escalated, crop yields decreased, and the prices of agricultural products and daily necessities skyrocketed, orders flew in like snowflakes to Rockefeller. Only he knew how much money he truly made during those times.
Rockefeller was actually very concerned about the Civil War. His office resembled the Army General Staff. He bought large maps of the United States to hang on the wall, marking the latest war reports from Washington with yellow and red labels. Rockefeller, like a general, often commented on the situation based on the maps. However, many believed that the locations marked by Rockefeller on the map were actually his business nodes: yellow labels represented grains, and red labels represented ham. The so-called war situation map was actually a business offensive map.
"After the war, many plantation owners ran to Brazil. Although it made our family somewhat isolated, it also reduced many competitors in the South," Annabelle said, noticeably more composed than her daughter, and reassured her nervous daughter, "Yankees are numerous, but any single family of ours can compete with them. Don't be nervous."
The current dominance of the Sheffield family was actually the result of the post-Civil War era. Before that, there were many plantation owners of the same caliber, and the Sheffield family in Louisiana was not the largest among them. However, after the Mexican-American War, Edward Sheffield, who successfully inherited the family business, defied the consensus and relocated his entire family to Texas, seeing the broader land opportunities in Texas, which led to the current situation.
"Don't worry; just wait for them to come knocking on our door!" Annabelle had been out all day and was a bit tired. She said in a slow and deliberate manner, "If it's just a domestic matter, the Yankees might be a bit stronger than us, but if we're not limited to domestic affairs, we're not weaker than anyone else. Instead, worry about DuPont; their family conflicts with us."
This business conflict was related to gunpowder and firearms. The DuPont family primarily dealt with gunpowder, which happened to be the business operated by the Sheffield family. Compared to the DuPont family, the Sheffield family was a latecomer, but during the Civil War, they provided firearms to the Union Army. This slightly undermined the Sheffield family's credibility compared to the DuPont family, who had sold Louisiana to the United States.
Due to the French Revolution, when DuPont came to America, Pierre followed the same strategy and began producing gunpowder in America. America was different from France, and although Pierre was familiar with many American officials, things were never quite smooth. Father and son, the DuPonts, then turned their attention to the U.S. government and advised Thomas Jefferson, the president at the time, to purchase the Louisiana Territory from France.
Jefferson had actually been considering the purchase of French Louisiana for a year because at this point, the United States effectively controlled New Orleans, and New Orleans was under French sovereignty. To secure New Orleans, acquiring Louisiana was the best option, but it seemed that the French government was not interested in the American proposal or could not accept the conditions offered by the United States.
When Pierre got involved, Jefferson was quite pleased. He immediately appointed Pierre as the sole representative of the United States for the purchase of French Louisiana and tasked him with negotiating with Napoleon. Eventually, France agreed to sell Louisiana to the United States. How important was the Louisiana Purchase? After the United States acquired it, it was divided into about fourteen states, covering an area of roughly over two million square kilometers, equivalent to the size of the United States' territory at that time, more than one-fifth of the current territory of the United States.
However, the situation changed with the outbreak of the Civil War. The Civil War altered the landscape of the Union; after all, only the Texas Legion in the Southern states remained intact, provided the legion leader didn't meet an accident and conditions were met for surrender. This gave Southern residents some psychological comfort and allowed them to establish a foothold in domestic chemical raw materials.
Recently, the United States hasn't been engaged in many wars. In the field of explosives and firearms, both families are struggling, and the competition isn't as fierce. But both families are also undergoing transformation, and the competition has expanded to other areas in the chemical industry.
William Sheffield, who had been in seclusion for several days, was still preparing for his graduation. Graduating from college was a minor matter; from now on, he could graduate from a university without attending a single day of classes. After all, in this Gilded Age, it wasn't real gold. Beneath the gilded surface, there were astonishing hidden problems.
In simple terms, it was the reckless expansion of capital, resulting in a lack of order and numerous illegal activities. This led to a lower threshold for bribery. In later years, for a person to carry out some covert operations, they had to buy off the entire board of directors or even all the top executives of a university. Everyone had to agree before William Sheffield could graduate from a higher education institution in the United States, a cost that an ordinary person couldn't afford.
Now, the lack of order had lowered the threshold for bribery, and many American institutions of higher learning could graduate students openly as long as they got through to key figures. Without supervision, inevitably, people became bolder.
What a despicable era it was, where even an ordinary citizen could openly obtain benefits as long as they paid money. With order, it would be different. At that time, ordinary citizens didn't have the financial capacity to bribe, and the right to bribe was only held by a few. That way, there would be order.
"Following family tradition, being a bit daring, anyway, we have the old man backing us," William Sheffield pondered for a moment while biting his pen, and then resumed writing feverishly.