1856. Abel Bowman, a young Kansas farmer, receives a powerful, bloodstained vision of glory that binds him to the radical abolitionist cause of John Brown and links his destiny with those of Emma, Catherine, and David Hodge-the adult children in an elite southern Virginia plantation family that is becoming bitterly divided over the slavery issue.

The Hodge siblings love each other, but Emma's efforts to befriend the family's slaves ignites a deep fury within her politically ambitious father. She then faces a stark choice: yield to her father's demands, or embrace the perilous course of secretly supporting several slaves in their quest for education and freedom.

When war hits Fort Sumter, David-disgusted by southern religious views on slavery-moves north to join Abel's Union Army regiment as a war journalist delivering vital post-battle reports to President Lincoln. The men's zeal for the abolitionist cause is great, but will it help or hinder their endurance of horrific battlefield violence and scandalous personal accusation?

Catherine, meanwhile, remains devoted to her ailing father and his traditional southern beliefs. Crushed by personal tragedy and abandonment by her siblings, she struggles to protect her home and life as she's always known it from disloyal plantation employees and invading Union forces.

Confronted with terrifying threats to life and property, Abel and the Hodge siblings finally come to see the deadly consequences of their blind adherence to misled personal convictions. Will they yield to despair-or will they triumph by giving up their illusions, uniting with each other and with recently freed slaves in pursuit of a new, higher vision of glory?