On the day that Virginia secedes from the Union, Confederate Attorney General Judah Benjamin visits William and Mary College to recruit his former protégé, Percy Moorhead. Percy, formerly a New Orleans attorney, reluctantly leaves his position as professor of Rhetoric. Becoming a special agent of the Confederate Secret Service in England, Percy dodges Yankee spies and runs the Union blockade to supply the South with ships, supplies and ordnance. Richmond then sends him on a mission so secret that it is known only to President Jeff Davis and Judah Benjamin, now Secretary of War: Percy must travel to New Orleans to deliver orders to the commanding general to surrender the city. Confronting his own past as a Union fleet sweeps up the Mississippi River, cannons roaring, Percy and the reader are witnesses to the
Fire on the Mississippi
.