I'll make an attempt:
Attempting to assassinate the President and his cabinet, the traitors called down the thunder. Father Abraham came for them, and hell came with him. President Lincoln not only established Reconstruction but enacted a grand plan to end the aristocratic pox on the house of the Union.
To affect the changes he saw needed in the world the President sent Federal troops to enforce the Monroe Doctrine and aid in the overthrow of Maximilian's French backed rule over Mexico. Taking advantage of the latest Cuban revolution, the President dispatched the Navy to Cuba, and began to arm the Cuban revolutionaries. This was followed shortly by stationing of Federal troops across the island. What would have been a disastrous 10 year conflict for the Cubans, quickly resolved with Cuba petitioning for annexation to the United States. Rather than face the burdensome carpetbagger tyranny in the Deep South, many of these Aristocrats picked up roots and relocated to Cuba. Though they no longer had the recourse of legal slavery, these aristocrats were lured by the promise of cheap labor and plantation lifestyle.
The next stop was the creation of a nationalized Federal Bank which helped to finance the purchase of Alaska, additional continental railroad projects, development in Cuba, development in Liberia, and a canal zone across Nicaragua. America under Lincoln's leadership engendered close ties with Mexico, Russia, Prussia, and Sardinia. Men of the United States Colored Troops were attracted to Federal works projects occurring across the continent. Father Lincoln rewarded hyperactive Klansmen the opportunity to usefully expend their energies with a pickaxe in his canal project. Confederate aristocrats with troubled consciences found themselves on a prepaid cruise to an exclusive Federal resort in scenic Liberia. The Confederados in Cuba eventually came to terms with the simple arithmetic of demographics, and realized they had been hoodwinked. The former slave states began to slip away from Democrat control as poor blacks and whites united in the Populist Party.
Democrats would still maintain a national presence, strongest in the Deep South, but ebbed as poor whites and blacks came together in the Populist Party. The Populist Party advocated for policies that would advance the situation of poor people, and united in cause the Freedmen of the Deep South, the impoverished of Appalachia (William Mahone), farmers in the Midwest (James Weaver), and tradesmen in New York (Samuel Tilden). The Populist Party obtained control of many state governments, and Congressional seats and would help to moderate the corruptive business influence over the Republican Party.
After three terms Lincoln was succeeded by Chester Arthur. Arthur's political connections had aided Lincoln in accomplishing certain goals, and he came to prominence at an early stage for such a young man. Arthur served two terms (1873-1881) and maintained the Greenback policy, trade protectionism, and prudent internal investment the United States resulting in an era of stable economic growth. Arthur also established a restrictive Chinese immigration policy. Continuing the Gilded Age was two terms of Benjamin Harrison (1881-1889). Harrison oversaw the relaxing of the last of the major Reconstruction policies in his second term, and the notable annexation of Hawaii.
Grover Cleveland was the first Democrat to be elected President (1889-1893) since Buchanan. Cleveland was a proponent of free trade, gold based money (though he was not successful in this), civil service reform, and an unenunciated policy of quiet strength. Cleveland initiated a major naval upgrade and construction program in expectation of a coming international war. Grover Cleveland died in the last year of his term from cancer, and was replaced by his vice president Adlai Stevenson. Cleveland's non-interventionism should not have been mistaken for isolationism, but it was. The Republican Thomas Reed succeeded the Cleveland-Stevenson administration and continued an unremarkable isolationist policy. Building on a coalition of Populist and Democrats, Adlai Stevenson returned for two terms (1897-1905), and was the last of the Gilded Age Presidents. Stevenson had essentially prepped the ground for the Second Era of Good Feelings.
Theodore Roosevelt came into office on a vast wave of popular support for his Square Deal platform. Roosevelt would stay in office for almost four terms (1905-1921), dying in his last year, and being replaced his Vice-President Charles Evans Hughes. The outbreak of the Great War, came from a tangling network of alliances as predicted by the late President Cleveland. Roosevelt seized the opportunity to advantage the American position snipping up pieces of vulnerable, but advantageous bits of land, while cultivating an air of mysterious, and ominous neutrality. By 1918 the European powers were exhausted. Roosevelt led the peace negotiations which saw France stripped of many colonial possessions, the peaceful reorganization of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the emergence of the Russian Republic.
The Populist Hiram Johnson succeeded Hughes (actually nominated him to the Supreme Court in a back room deal) for one term (1921-1925). The archrepublicans returned to office with two terms (1925-1929) of Calvin Coolidge. Coolidge died in his last year, and was replaced by his Vice-President Charles G. Dawes. Revanchist forces were on the rise in France and Russia, Britain was still bitter over America's manipulations, and Japan plotted to carve out a huge Pacific Rim empire. The successor to the Coolidge-Dawes administration was in for a hard time. Though with a more sensibly directed Federal Bank vs. Federal Reserve, there was no money supply contraction which prompted the OTL Great Depression.
