In her lavish period costumes, Shirley Temple is the delightful heroine of the appealing Civil War adventure, spiced with humor, fun and several rousing song-and-dance duets with Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. Virgie (Temple), the young daughter of a Confederate soldier (John Boles), inadvertently causes her father's arrest after he sneaks through enemy lines to visit his ill wife (Karen Morley). When Virgie learns her father and a kind Northern officer (Jack Holt) have been sentenced to death, she immediately takes off for a little chat with President Lincoln.