Nate Starbuck, the son of an abolitionist preacher in Boston, becomes stranded in Virginia at the outbreak of the Civil War and his great respect for Richmond landowner Washington Faulconer, and an urge to rebel against his father, leads him to join Faulconer's Confederate legion.

After the British establish a fort on the Penobscot River, the Massachusetts patriots--among them General Peleg Wadsworth and Colonel Paul Revere--mount an expedition to oust the redcoats.