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About the Topic:
Robert C. Plumb will discuss five remarkable women who made important contributions to the Union cause at various stages before, during, and after the critical years of the American Civil War: Clara Barton, Julia Ward Howe, Sarah Josepha Hale, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Harriet Tubman.
The singular actions of these women led to their prominence during the war and launched them into successful public roles following the conflict. Tubman (the fearless conductor on the Underground Railroad) alongside Stowe (the author) 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 their marches. Amid this national catastrophe, Hale’s campaign to make Thanksgiving a national holiday moved North and South toward reconciliation.
About the Speaker:
Robert (Bob) 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 as a commander of a patrol boat with a crew of six in Vietnam.
Following graduate school, Mr. Plumb worked for General Electric in both U.S. and international markets, specializing in marketing programs. After twenty-six years with GE, he worked for Fannie Mae in Washington, DC in senior marketing management positions until his retirement.
After he retired from the corporate world, Mr. Plumb began researching and writing what would become Your Brother in Arms: A Union Soldier’s Odyssey. (University of Missouri Press, Blue and Gray Series, 2011.) His second book, The Better Angels: Five Women Who Changed Civil War America, was published in March 2020 by the University of Nebraska Press’s Potomac Books.
Mr. Plumb received his BA in history from the State University of New York at Buffalo; received an MA degree from Newhouse School at Syracuse University; and has attended the Yale Writers Workshops in residence 2014 through 2017 and in 2019 where he specialized in non-fiction and historical fiction writing.
Mr. Plumb is a member of the American Battlefield Trust; the Civil War Round Table of the District of Columbia; the Montgomery County Civil War Round Table; the Montgomery County Historical Society as well as its Speakers Bureau; and The Society of Civil War Historians.
For more information about Mr. Plumb, visit www.robertplumb.com
