Words attributed to Abraham Lincoln after surviving his attempted murder by would be assassin and former struggling actor John Wilkes Booth. President Lincoln would later die (or natural causes) two years later. Lincoln's reasonable reconstruction of the South saw the Nation begin the heal her wounds. However the Republican Party would split after his death. The radicals and centrists battled each other so much eventually allowing Democrat Sam Tilden to win the Presidency in 1876. This would have great repercussions in the South and the North, as African Americans began to move en masse to the North creating even more conflict between radical and centrist Republicans who blamed each other for the electoral defeat. This would lead to the end of the Republican Party. The Democratic Party would dominate American politics until in 1900 when a young Theodore Roosevelt would win the presidency for the National American Party of Progress, nick names the "Bull Moose Party". After 4 successive terms and a victorious war with Britain Roosevelt would die in office.
"They said Victory or death, yet we have suffered no defeat, nor have we died at the hands of our enemies, however, we have still lost more than we could ever have imagined."
American puppet president William Dudley Pelley.
After victory against the Soviets by means of a fascist government of Edward VIII./Chris Kettings, the Greater European Cooperative - composed of a far-right militarist Germany under a sane Gottfried Manninger, far-right Britain, fascist Italy under Benito Mussolini, fascist Hungary, a NDH under Ante Pavelic, and many other far-right or fascist powers in EUrope), this alliance - despite not being totally free of tensions themselves (Pavelic, for example, was far too radical for most of them, and there were tensions about how to deal with Kurdistan, with the Basque people as they were allowed leeway by Jesus Torres, with Sweden about their Sami genocide,...) - managed to unite behind supporting the far-right "Christian National" Party and rebels in the USA. THe latter ended up divided, and William Dudley Pelley was puppet leader of a state going from Louisiana to Virginia and Maine - east of the Mississippi, but without the Midwest and without much of western PA and NY. And this result could only be obtained by instant sunshine on Washington D.C., San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, New Orleans, and St. Louis.
So: No true defeat, the death of "only" several million of (contrary to all) Americans, but America has lost much more than it ever could imagine. Valuable and beautiful cities, millions of individual lives, and a lot of arable land that is now irradiated. Plus the Great Lakes which are, from the Chicago 5,9 MT bomb and a misfire (where it was not clear whether Detroit or again Chicago or even Duluth or Minneapolis were to be targeted) into Lake Michigan, now radioactive.
"I will regard this act as slander, and I will personally prosecute this act of slander!"