Two families, a tribe of abolitionist Northerners and Southern landowners tangle during the Civil War conflict when Confederate colonel Ben Cameron is captured in battle, and his assigned nurse Elsie Stoneman petitions for his pardon. However, trouble soon begets the pair again back in Reconstruction-era South Carolina, when Cameron founds the Ku Klux Klan, battling Elsie's congressman father and his African-American protégé, Silas Lynch.