This is the tragic story of John Beall, a Confederate soldier whose execution President Lincoln upheld despite appeals for clemency from his own staff. The narrative traces his early life as a scion of one of the best families in Virginia to the outbreak of the Civil War. Wounded while fighting with Jackson's legendary brigade, he fled to Canada intending to sit out the war.

Driven by a sense of duty, Beall found a way back into the war that did not involve the killing he came to abhor. With no maritime experience, he undertook privateering on the Chesapeake Bay. Captured and released in a prisoner exchange, he undertook a daring attempt to free Confederate prisoners on Lake Erie's Johnson's Island. While passing through Niagara Falls, he was arrested. This time there would be no reprieve. He was falsely charged with espionage and sentenced to be hanged. The notoriously compassionate Lincoln anguished over his decision to uphold Beall's sentence, knowing full well he was sending an innocent man to his death. Beall's is a story full of pathos and sadness that blurs the lines between right and wrong in a war that lingers in the American imagination to this day.