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Watch the webinar recording here.

Harriet Tubman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Clara Barton, Julia Ward Howe, and Sarah Josepha Hale came from backgrounds that ranged from sheer enslavement to New York City’s elite.  Surmounting social and political obstacles, they emerged before and during the worst crises in American history, the Civil War.

In his presentation, Plumb traces these five remarkable women’s awakenings to analyze how their experiences shaped their responses to the challenges, disappointments, and joys they encountered.  Here is Tubman, fearless conductor on the Underground Railroad, alongside Stowe, the author who awakened the nation to the evils of slavery. Barton led an effort to provide medical supplies for field hospitals, and Union soldiers sang Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic” on the march.  And, amid a national catastrophe, Hale’s campaign to make Thanksgiving a national holiday helped move North and South toward reconciliation.

Author/Presenter’s Bio

Robert C. Plumb was born and raised in upstate New York where he received his education from grade school to graduate school.  Between his undergraduate and graduate education, he served as an officer in the Navy, initially stationed on a ship in the Atlantic Fleet and later commanded a patrol boat with a crew of six in Vietnam.  Following graduate school, he worked for General Electric in both U.S. and international markets, specializing in marketing programs, and later joined Fannie Mae in Washington, DC in senior marketing management positions.

After he retired from the corporate world, Plumb began researching and writing what would become Your Brother in Arms: A Union Soldier’s Odyssey (University of Missouri Press). His second book, The Better Angels: Five Women Who Changed Civil War America, was published in March 2020 by the University of Nebraska Press. He has attended the Yale Writers’ Workshops in residence 2014 through 2019.

Plumb’s writing has been published in the Montgomery County Historical Society’s journal; Hallowed Ground, the magazine of the American Battlefield Trust; and the Washington Post and the Washington Post Magazine. 

This program is co-presented with the Ridgefield Library and Books on the Common where you can purchase The Better Angels: Five Women Who Changed Civil War America either at the bookstore or online.