This silent melodrama is set against the 1840s westward migration of the Mormons. Dora, a young woman, and her family are saved from an Indian attack by a Mormon community traveling to Utah. They join the wagon train. Dora is pursued by two men, one a recent convert, the other a scheming elder with a stable of wives. The Mormon elder wants her in his harem. When the mother kills herself from revulsion toward polygamy, the daughter must consider her own future and the man she loves. One of Mae Murray's few surviving films, this was intended by Robert Leonard to be a thoughtful drama about the goods and evils of Mormonism, but today it is generally considered pure anti-Mormon propaganda.

Tom Chatterton is called a coward because he will not enlist in the Home Guard during the Civil War -- his mother is dying and he does not wish to leave while she is still alive. When she dies and the Yankees attack, he seizes command of the Home Guard and leads them to victory, proving himself a hero and dying in the process.