May 1, 1869. Robert E. Lee arrives at the White House with a story to tell his old comrade turned adversary, President U.S. Grant. It concerns a luckless Union Army Captain, Joe Monroe, falsely imprisoned during the Civil War for robbing a bank in the middle of a battle. Running from the army, the law, and the real robbers, Monroe falls in with a girl with a rifle and a good aim, the girlas disturbed stepbrother, a sleazy Congressman, a love-struck homicidal landlord, Abe Lincolnas cousin, a bumbling general who loves his wife, a very strange lieutenant, a Confederate officer with a nagging conscience, monks, hired killers, the Marine Corps Band, his old girlfriend, and more. Freed from prison, Monroe finds himself on the run again, only this time his enemies are determined to, once and for all, put an end to the man the newspapers call aBloody Joe.a