Although the text presented pertains to the XXth Century, the POD is in the central years of the XIXth, so I'm posting this here. Also it's going to be a bit disorganized, as I write when I have the inspiration, and about what my muse tells me. I have a pretty complete sketch of the timeline in my head, so I hope that contradictions are minor between sections.
Prologue: A view in the middle
Extracts from “An overview of the XXth Century” by Carlos Antúnez. Oxford University Press. 2001
Chapter 5. The Rise of the American Fascism
[..]Joseph D. Wilkerson III’s National Christian Democratic American Party had been a fringe movement in the years before the Big Bump of 1928, but he managed to capitalize in the inoperance of the measures that president Holman had tried to put American Economy back in track, blaming in an international conspiracy against America by ‘the heretic European Papists, and their allies the godless Jews’ [..]It wouldn’t have given him the presidency if it wasn’t by it fortuitous alliance with the Radical American Party, the most authoritarian of the parties that were born when both the Liberal and the Radical Party fragmented in the ‘20s, with a similar anti-Catholic bent, although more cradled in the traditional egalitarianism of the Radical Party [..]Both parties presented a joint ticket to the 1932 presidential elections, with Maxwell F. Heller as president and Joseph Wilkerson as vice-president.
The Heller/Wilkerson ticket got a narrow victory with a deeply divided Congress. Heller first public act was a speech in front the Capitol two days after being sworn in as the 30th president of the United States, where he was going to outline the politics of his presidency [..] the so-called ‘miraculous’ survival of vice-president Wilkerson when the bomb under the podium went off, has always ticked the suspicions in the European side of the pond, suspicions that never got a confirmation even after Great War III and the capture of Washington by the Commonwealth powers.
After assuming the presidency Wilkerson declared martial law, suspended Habeas Corpus and the Bill of Rights and approved a series of measures that gave effectively control of the United States of America to the NCDAP. [..]
From “The tragedy of the United States”, by Josephine Kennedy. Ed. Progreso. Madrid 1983
[..]If I had to pick the absolute beginning of the road that led the United States to become what it is now, I would pick President Lincoln's assassination in 1863 by Rebel irregulars during the evacuation of Washington D.C. Without his moderating influence, the Radical Republicans of Thaddeus Stevens wouldn't have dominated the Republican Party leading to its fragmentation, and the birth of the Radical Party. Even if the Radicals eventually mellowed down, becoming a "big business" party in their nearly half century of domination of the United States, the damage done to the balance between the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches, in favor of the Executive would eventually led to the Wilkerson dictatorship[..]