"With the Confederate Army firing on Fort Sumter, the Civil War has begun--and an invasion of Washington, DC, from Secessionist Virginia seems imminent. As the population evacuates, the President needs men to defend the capital. Lincoln's trusted aide Adam Speed Quinn, and Quinn's friend Senator Jim Lane, hastily assemble a hundred men and garrison them in the East Room at the White House itself. Dubbed the Frontier Guard, these rough-and-tumble patriots steel themselves for the attack. But even as dawn breaks with no Rebel strike, one of the Frontier Guard lies dead in the oval library. A murderer is among them." -- From the back cover.