The story of Captain Thomas H. Hines who master-minded the conspiracy to link the Copperheads throughout the North and to strike from across the Canadian border and seize vast areas for the Confederacy, is exciting and relatively unknown. The tales of successive attempts and why they failed, and of Hines, own charmed life, are thrillers in themselves, and from the scholar's viewpoint, the book is also a splendid piece of historical detecting that sheds new light on the Civil war.