Based largely on Tourgée's actual experiences in Greensboro, North Carolina during Reconstruction, this is the fictional story of Comfort Servosse, a man of French Canadian descent who joins the Civil War on the Union side, then returns home after the war and resolves to move his family to the South. He purchases a decayed plantation called Warrington in Rockford County; the state to which he moves is never identified. He makes a name for himself as a radical Yankee--or carpetbagger--and arouses the hostility of the neighbors in the community. The rest of the story follows his increasing involvement on the behalf of former slaves in the community and his opposition to the activities of the Ku Klux Klan. There are several digressions and conversations in which Servosse, his friends, and even the narrator discuss the numerous problems facing the South during the time of reconstruction and blaming some of the violence and trouble in the South on Washington's unwillingness to step in where required.