In 1865, Morgan Gray, a Confederate renegade, kills the mother, father and sweetheart of Amity Graham and later marries her. Before dying in childbirth, Amity puts a curse on Gray and all his descendants. Fifty-two years later, the family curse is visited on Morgan Gray's hard-drinking, but likable grandson Abel, who, on the day of his marriage to Northern girl Hope Halliday, mistakenly concludes that he has killed a man, thanks to the machinations of his malevolent brother Kane. Fleeing to a distant area, Abel fights his tendency toward alcoholism and tries to recover his self-esteem. Eventually he rescues his wife from a gang of villains and learns that he had not committed murder, thus overcoming the family curse.