William Rufus King survives his bout with tuberculosis, but his relationship with James Buchanan sours shortly after Buchanan has been elected president. In 1857 King starts writing a memoir about his long relationship with the president. He tells Buchanan that he has found a publisher in France.
Buchanan lures King to a secluded spot and beats him to death with a club. He relies on his mild, effeminate reputation to deflect all suspicion. But gradually the truth emerges, and Buchanan is put on trial for murder. He refuses to resign, for he acknowledges no master but the law, and he must assume his own innocence until he is proven guilty. He is impeached and convicted by the senate, and succeeded by John C. Breckinridge, a secessionist.
Buchanan is publicly hanged in 1859. In one of the last major acts before secession, the congress passes stringent new sodomy laws which mandate death for any man caught committing an act "contrary to nature".
When it becomes clear that Breckinridge will lose reelection to William Seward, he actively collaborates in the secession of southern states and the surrender of federal forts and arsenals to Confederate forces. Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri are overrun by secessionists, along with the federal capital. The resulting Civil Wars rage intermittently until 1875, and kill over a million, not counting victims of execution, famine, and disease. Argentina supplants the United States as the foremost power in the Americas.