James Adams and his brother-in-law, Paul Chase, united in friendship by their mutual love for Mrs. Adams, part at the outbreak of the Civil War because their sympathies call them to different sides in the great struggle of fifty years ago. In what proves to be the decisive struggle of the great conflict, four years later. Adams, now with the rank of Major, first meets his brother-in-law, Major Chase, on the field of battle before Richmond. Major Adams is leading a force of Union soldiers in an effort to capture and control a bridge ably defended by the Confederate troops under Major Chase. Chase, losing ground rapidly, decides to ruin the vantage point which he cannot bold, and accordingly, when the Union soldiers are half way across it, the bridge is blown to atoms. The two men, who have served their respective causes so nobly, find themselves side by side and seriously injured in a field hospital, where Mrs. Adams, acting as a Red Cross nurse, tells them the glad news that the war is ended. Another thrilling episode in this spectacular film is the desperate struggle of Major Adams, disguised as a Confederate trooper, to visit his baby daughter, and then outwit the sentries, who have discovered his disguise and who force him to take a wild leap from a cliff to get back to the Union camp again.