Midnight. New York, the summer of 1864. The Museum has closed its doors. The human inhabitants, released at last from the day's toils, gather together to discuss the outside world. This is P.T. Barnum's Museum and these men and women are his most profitable exhibits. But forty years are beginning to take their toll; once Barnum could do no wrong but now it seems that success is slipping beyond his reach. Across the country the Civil War rages, Atlanta burns and the sparks from that conflagration threaten the great city on the Hudson. In the American Museum, P.T. Barnum's human showpieces, confined to their quarters high above Broadway, take the hours of darkness as their own. This is the story of their struggles and triumphs; a journey through that overheated summer until at last, the events of one night becomes, for them all, a long and terrible transition into day.