A romance between King George III of Great Britain and a Quaker girl, Catherine, who becomes his morganatic wife, forms the early part of the story.

Catherine is really half native, being the daughter of a French adventurer and an indigenous woman, adopted and brought to England by a Quaker voyager.

[1] Griffith initially encouraged Goldstein's idea and cooperated with him, but later distanced himself from that project in favor of pursuing his own treatment of the subject, the 1924 film America.

In the scene, British regulars and Hessian auxiliaries attack Cherry Valley, New York, and are shown committing acts such as assaulting a woman and bayoneting a baby.

[3][4] The head of Chicago's Police Censor Board, Metallus Lucullus Cicero Funkhouser, confiscated the film at the behest of the United States Department of Justice on grounds that it generated hostility toward Britain.

After an investigation, the federal government concluded that Goldstein's action constituted "aiding and abetting the German enemy", and seized the film once again.

Goldstein was convicted on charges of attempted incitement to riot and to cause insubordination, disloyalty, and mutiny by U.S. soldiers then in uniform as well as prospective recruits, and he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

In his 1995 book Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, Prof. James Loewen notes that Goldstein's prosecution was consistent with Wilson's targeting anyone suspecting of holding anti-British views, which the president claimed gave aid to Germany.