William De Vaull

Two families, abolitionist Northerners the Stonemans and Southern landowners the Camerons, intertwine. When Confederate colonel Ben Cameron is captured in battle, nurse Elsie Stoneman petitions for his pardon. In Reconstruction-era South Carolina, Cameron founds the Ku Klux Klan, battling Elsie's congressman father and his African-American protégé, Silas Lynch.

In 1853, young Southerner Don Buckner goes west in search of gold to recoup his dwindling fortune, spent mostly on his new bride, Elizabeth. During the years of his absence he fails to communicate with his wife or his mother Margarite, even when he strikes gold, because he hopes to make this good fortune a surprise.

John spies his girlfriend embracing his brother. Stunned, John deposits the family's money and leaves the country. Years later he returns to find his brother dead, the plantation in ruins, and that he is suspected of stealing the money.

An Austrian military officer and rogue attempts to seduce the wife of a surgeon. The two men confront each other in a test of abilities that ends surprisingly.

When spiritualist Madame Mysteria is killed in a train wreck, her three associates decide to replace her instead of declaring her dead. One of them, the Fox, calls on Jean Oliver, who he knew from prison. Jean was serving time after being framed by her former employer, Mrs. Ramsey, for a theft just to keep her and her son, Donald Ramsey, from marrying. Jean agrees to the crooks' scheme providing that they help her kidnap the baby that belongs to Donald and the woman that his mother had him marry.

When Dorothy's Southern, aristocratic father Colonel Raleigh refuses to let her marry Forbes Stewart, a Northern gambler, the couple elopes. When Dorothy soon thereafter becomes pregnant, Forbes vows to reform, but authorities arrest him on a gambling charge, and he serves a year in prison. During that time, and just before the birth of the baby, a woman comes to Dorothy and claims to be Forbes' wife. Stunned, Dorothy returns to her father, but the colonel throws her out, and so, on her own, she has her baby, whom the community believes to be illegitimate. Convinced that she has sinned, Dorothy is about to kill herself when Forbes, just out of jail, finds her and explains that the other woman simply had been an ex-sweetheart trying to win him back.

18 episode Western adventure serial. 1. Bonds of Steel 2. In the Enemy's Hands 3. The Spy 4. The Sword of Grant and Lee 5. The Man of the Ages 6. Prisoners of the Sioux 7. Shackles of Fate 8. The Last Shot 9. From Tailor to President 10. Empire Builders 11. Perils of the Plains 12. The Hand of Justice 13. Trails of Peril 14. The Scarlet Doom 15. Men of Steel 16. The Brink of Eternity 17. A Race to the Finish 18. Driving the Golden Spike.

Film serial.