Long Depression
In the United States, economists typically refer to the Long Depression as the Depression of 1873–1879, kicked off by the Panic of 1873, and followed by the Panic of 1893, book-ending the entire period of the wider Long Depression. The National Bureau of Economic Research dates the contraction following the panic as lasting from October 1873 to March 1879. At 65 months, it is the longest-lasting contraction identified by the NBER, eclipsing the Great Depression's 43 months of contraction. In the United States, from 1873 to 1879, 18,000 businesses went bankrupt, including 89 railroads. Ten states and hundreds of banks went bankrupt. Unemployment peaked in 1878, long after the initial financial panic of 1873 had ended. Different sources peg the peak U.S. unemployment rate anywhere from 8.25% to 14%.
American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold
When the Great Depression occurs, Burton Mitchel III is blamed in the Confederacy. In the U.S. which came out of the 1920s with a booming economy and with the Canadian revolt having been crushed in 1925, newly elected President Hosea Blackford takes the heat, with shantytowns and slums being named "Blackfordburghs". Millions lose their jobs, and in Utah, (under military occupation since 1916), a fanatical Mormon sniper guns down Governor-General John J. Pershing. When Japan and the U.S. go to war in 1932 after Japan is caught smuggling weapons to Pacific Canada (the occupied Canadian province of British Columbia) by the U.S.S. "Remembrance", and Japanese bombers attack Los Angeles. In the 1932 presidential election, President Blackford is defeated by Calvin Coolidge and his running mate Herbert Hoover in a landslide. However Coolidge is never able to take office. On January 5, 1933, he dies of a heart attack about a month before he could take office. (In real life, Former President Coolidge died of a heart attack on the same date.) Vice President-Elect Hoover assumes the presidency, practicing Coolidge's campaign policy of government non-intervention in the economy.