Michael's Song: Canto I

Cleverly affecting a daring escape from a Mississippi plantation, Michael, a young slave of mixed racial heritage, flees northward. With the help of a poor farmer and a steamship pilot he makes it to Wisconsin where he gets hired at a small café run by an immigrant German woman and her large teenage son Hans. Hans and Michael become fast friends and Michael thinks he is finally safe.

But the Civil War begins. Like many others at the beginning of the war Hans eagerly wants to join the army....