Just when we think that this movie will be about a Southern family in Civil War days, the action jumps to modern-day 1914, still in the southern United States. Handsome Jack (Guy Coombs) is in love with the fair lady played by Marguerite Clayton.

Uncle Tom and Eliza's child are sold to Haley, a slave dealer. When Eliza learns that her son is to be taken from her, she steals the boy and runs away.

Gerson Randall, an adventurer, endeavors to win the hand of Isabel Sinclair, a wealthy widow. Howard Allen, Mrs. Sinclair's brother, tries to dissuade his sister from forming an alliance with Randall, but the suave manners of the latter have made a strong impression upon the susceptible woman. Mrs. Sinclair has two young children, Grace and Freddy, whom she loves very dearly, but she becomes remiss in her attentions to them because of the time which she spends in Randall's company.

Paolo, a skilled mechanic in a modler's factory in Italy, defends his friend Brocco, when the latter is discharged and incurs the foreman's enmity. The treacherous Brocco steals an empty six-pound shell, which Paolo treasures as a relic of the war, and makes a bomb, with which he wrecks the modler's factory. A piece of the bomb which bears Paola's name is found and on this evidence the innocent man is sent to prison for five years.