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.

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.

Mrs. Pitman seeks a wealthy husband for her daughter, Virginia. The first prospect, Colonel Singleton, insults Virginia and is shot by her brother. They move, assume another name, and find a new suitor, Clayborne Gordon, who changes his mind when he learns of Virginia's past. She then tells her story to poor racing-driver Cole Hawkins, whom actually she loves. He not only accepts her but reveals himself to be one of the wealthiest men in the area.

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.

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.

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 Richard Hudson receives a pair of silk pajamas from a friend in China, he is unaware that they are bewitched and that whoever wears them will be transformed into someone else.

Dorothy Perkins, the eldest daughter of a simple, wholesome country family, leaves for the big city to study architecture. After winning a competition, she is a success, and meets Monty Rhodes, the son of aristocratic parents. Despite his parents' objections, Monty and Dorothy marry, but Mrs. Rhodes continually humiliates Dorothy for her lack of breeding. When she finally succeeds in driving the heartbroken Dorothy back to her own family, Monty realizes his mistake, and follows her to the country, where he finds happiness with his wife and their poor relations.