Jesse Wilson Richmond is a teenage boy caught up in the greatest of all American tragedies, the American Civil War. It takes him from enlistment as a carefree youth at the age of fourteen through some of the most heart wrenching battles of the Civil War. It tells the story as only a true son of the South could and outlines the internal struggles of the men in battle and their families at home, while telling the true story of the horrors of war perpetrated by 'The Beast Butler' on the state of Louisiana.