Rosa Moline is the neglected wife of a small-town Wisconsin doctor. She grows bored and becomes infatuated with a visiting Chicago businessman. She extorts money from her husband's patients and uses the cash to flee to Chicago, but the businessman does not welcome her. She returns home and becomes pregnant by her husband. The businessman has a change of heart and follows her to Wisconsin. He wants her back, but not her baby, so she attempts to abort by throwing herself down a hill and gets peritonitis, dying in what Bette Davis called "the longest death scene ever seen on the screen."

Two writers, friends since childhood, fight over their books and lives.

Don Bellows finds former stage star Joyce Heath a penniless drunk and takes her to his Connecticut home for rehabilitation. He asks his fiancée Gail to free him and offers to sponsor Joyce in a play.

Colonial representatives gather in Philadelphia with the aim of establishing a set of governmental rules for the burgeoning United States. Benjamin Franklin and John Adams charge Thomas Jefferson with the task of writing a statement announcing the new country's emancipation from British rule.