1842: Orry Main leaves the cotton plantation near Charleston that he's heir to on his way to West Point for two years of officer's training. On the way, he meets and falls in love with Madeline Fabray, who agrees to write to him. However, her father needs her to wed Orry's rude neighbor, rich plantation owner Justin LaMotte. Orry's letters to Madeline become intercepted by her father so she becomes susceptible to Justin's generous courting. At West Point, Orry meets fellow cadet George Hazard, son of a Pennsylvania manufacturer. The hazing lives up to its reputation, not least due to drill master Elkanah Bent, who takes particular pleasure in humbling the cadets at sword-practice, but is humiliatingly defeated by Orry. George introduces Orry to his Pennsylvania family and their iron factory. After graduating and returning home, Orry stops an overseer from happily whipping a slave, but his father, Tillet, refuses to sack the sadist.

George distracts Orry, whose brooding about Madeline wrecks his West Point performance. Bent bluffs his way out of a court-martial but its president eventually bullies him out of West Point. At a party hosted by Tillet Main, Justin scolds Madeline for disagreeing with separatism and arranges for a slave to give public offense so the overseer is allowed to punish him with branding. Bent trades on his status as the bastard son of Ohio's U.S. Senator to get commissioned as an infantry captain in the Mexican-American War. In command once again of lieutenants Orry and George, he sends them on a suicide mission. Both survive but Orry is crippled for life. Constance, the daughter of the colonel who saves Orry from dying from his wounds, becomes George's true love. When George's father dies, he resigns his commission and returns home. The branded slave runs away and even reclusive Orry joins the manhunt, reuniting him with reluctant Madeline and starting their secret affair.