(Spring 1848 – Summer 1854) George gets married to Constance and Orry is his best man. Orry’s father dies and Orry inherits the family plantation. His first act is to fire the brutal Salem Jones as overseer. Jones vows revenge. Orry’s cousin Charles, who doesn’t have good relations with the Main family, is challenged to a pistol duel in a dispute over a woman. Orry helps Charles to survive the duel and they become friends. The Mains visit the Hazards in Pennsylvania. Orry’s sister Ashton courts George’s brother Billy. Billy and Charles are going to attend West Point together, just as Orry and George did. Orry and George begin a partnership cotton mill at Orry’s plantation in South Carolina; they do so on George’s condition that Orry not use slave labor in the mill. Virgilia is furious that her family has allowed slaveowners into their house and tries to humiliate them, angering the rest of her family. While dying, Madeline’s father tells her that her mother’s grandmother was black.