Two families, abolitionist Northerners the Stonemans and Southern landowners the Camerons, intertwine in director D.W. Griffith’s controversial Civil War epic. When Confederate colonel Ben Cameron is captured in battle, nurse Elsie Stoneman petitions for his pardon. In Reconstruction-era South Carolina, Cameron founds the Ku Klux Klan, battling Elsie’s congressman father and his African-American protégé, Silas Lynch.

The feature length version of the serial by the same name. A mystical medicine arrow, the key to a lost gold treasure, is lost in one of many Indian attacks. It is recovered by the only two survivors, a Major and his daughter, who become the targets of those who wish to possess it. General George Armstrong Custer and army scout Kid Cardigan attempt to stop the ensuing war over the arrow, but fail in their efforts, which becomes the historic Custer’s Last Stand.