In 1865, tired and traumatized by five long years of Civil War, the Presidents of America's most prestigious universities, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Dartmouth, Penn and Brown, collectively announce that after the conclusion of the war, they will no longer admit any student from any state that constituted the Confederacy. They're followed, tepidly but eventually, by several other northern schools. What changes after this? How long does the prohibition on southern students last? Who's life is permanently altered?