As the United States engages in a deadly Civil War, a select group of women step out from the safety of their sheltered lifestyles to risk their lives for the cause they each hold so dear.

*Think HBO's BAND OF BROTHERS in hoopskirts, lipstick and makeup.

SYNOPSIS:

In 1861, ROSE O'NEAL GREENHOW is Washington D.C.'s most influential hostess and a close personal friend to outgoing President James Buchanan and future Vice President Henry Wilson. But as Abraham Lincoln's term begins this Southern woman with revolutionary blood in her veins transforms herself into a fearless Confederate spy. Using her many social contacts, wit and charms she learns of the Union advance toward the Confederate capital in Richmond, Virginia, then passes the information along to her superiors. The result is a major Confederate victory at the First Battle of Manassas.

A few weeks earlier, BELLE BOYD, an educated Shenandoah Valley teenager, bursts onto the national scene when she kills a Union soldier in her Martinsburg, (West) Virginia home. As war rages around her hometown over the next year, Boyd gathers information on Union strength and movement. One night, she overhears Union officers discussing plans for an upcoming battle. The next day, she runs through the battlefield, bullets whistling around her, to get that vital information to General Stonewall Jackson.

Eventually, Federal authorities catch up with both Greenhow and Boyd. For the former, it is the famed Detective Allan Pinkerton who makes the arrest. Each rebel spy will spend time in the infamous Old Capital Prison in Washington D.C. Each will later be released, then go to Europe as couriers for the Confederate President Jefferson Davis where they, through their memoirs and deeds, gather support for the Southern Cause. One is killed in the line of duty. The other finds love in the arms of a Union naval officer.

ELIZABETH VAN LEW is a Union sympathizer living in the Confederate capital. The daughter of one of Richmond's richest businessmen, she uses both her money and influence to not only feed and clothe hundreds of Union prisoners of war, but to provide a series of safe houses for those who escape, including those from the massive Libby Prison breakout on the night of February 9-10, 1864.

In January, just prior to the prison break, Union General Benjamin Butler recruits Van Lew and her vast network of Pro-Union supporters to spy on the Confederates. In a bold move Van Lew places one of her former slaves, MARY BOWSER, inside the Presidential home of Jefferson Davis. Educated in the North by Van Lew before the war, Bowser has free access to every room in the Confederate White House. Each day she memorizes maps and orders she reads or conversations she overhears, and then passes the information to Van Lew, information which ends up on General Ulysses S. Grant's breakfast table the next morning.

The first episode, OH, MY COUNTRY, introduces all four characters and the situations that lead them to go where few women venture.