The Better Angels: Five Women Who Changed Civil War America

by Robert C. Plumb, Elisabeth Griffith (Foreword by)

Overview

Harriet Tubman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Clara Barton, Julia Ward Howe, and Sarah Josepha Hale came from backgrounds that ranged from abject enslavement to New York City’s elite. Surmounting social and political obstacles, they emerged before and during the worst crisis in American history, the Civil War. Their actions became strands in a tapestry of courage, truth, and patriotism that influenced the lives of millions—and illuminated a new way forward for the nation.

In this collective biography, Robert C. Plumb traces these five remarkable women’s awakenings to analyze how their experiences shaped their responses to the challenges, disappointments, and joys they encountered on their missions. 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 national catastrophe, Hale’s campaign to make Thanksgiving a national holiday moved North and South toward reconciliation.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781640123267
Publisher:	Potomac Books
Publication date:	03/01/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Robert C. Plumb is a writer, marketing consultant, and former marketing executive for two Fortune 500 companies. He is the author of Your Brother in Arms: A Union Soldier’s Odyssey and has written for the Montgomery County Historical Society’s journal, the Washington Post, and the Washington Post Magazine. He lives outside Washington, DC. Elisabeth Griffith is the author of In Her Own Right: The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and a contributor to Ken Burns’s documentary Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.
 
 
Robert C. Plumb is a writer, historian, and former marketing executive for two Fortune 500 companies. He is the author of Your Brother in Arms: A Union Soldier’s Odyssey and has written for the Montgomery County Historical Society’s journal, the Washington Post, and the Washington Post Magazine. He lives outside Washington, DC.
Elisabeth Griffith is the author of In Her Own Right: The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Foreword
Elisabeth Griffith
Acknowledgments
1. The Better Angels of Our Nature
2. Women in Antebellum America
3. The Underground Railroad
4. Abolitionism in America
5. The “Seething Hell of War”
6. Noble Watchwords and Inspiring Ideas
7. Tending to the Wounded and Missing
8. The Prolonged War
9. “With Malice toward None, with Charity for All”
10. “Joy My Freedom!”
11. Women in Post–Civil War America 
12. Concluding Remarkable Lives
13. The Angels among Us Still
14. “Contemplating Their Example”
15. Voce Angeli, or “Voices of the Angels”
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

All of these extraordinary women did a great deal in the causes of freedom, women’s rights, and literary excellence, as Robert Plumb makes clear in this fine group biography of five women who truly did change the course of American history.”—James M. McPherson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era

From the Publisher

“The Better Angels weaves together the stories of five extraordinary women whose talents won scope and recognition in the struggle to end slavery that led to the Civil War. As skillfully told by Robert Plumb, their stories illustrate the measure of liberation that some women were able to seize through that brutal conflict.”—David O. Stewart, best-selling author of Impeached: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation
 

David O. Stewart

“All of these extraordinary women did a great deal in the causes of freedom, women’s rights, and literary excellence, as Robert Plumb makes clear in this fine group biography of five women who truly did change the course of American history.”—James M. McPherson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era

James M. McPherson

 “There couldn’t be a better time for America to find its better angels, and Robert C. Plumb’s lucid and admiring portrait of five exemplary women is just the ticket. You’ll find corners of American history your old textbooks never told you about, and once you’re done, you’ll want to pass it on to the next generation.”—Louis Bayard, author of Courting Mr. Lincoln and The Pale Blue Eye

Louis Bayard

“Few realize the scope of what these remarkable women overcame and accomplished during their long, productive lives. . . . The Better Angels had great impact in their own time but also helped advance issues that benefited society in future generations. From them readers can learn lessons of courage, determination, creativity, and resourcefulness to make a difference in today’s world.”—Marilyn Southard Warshawsky, author of John Franklin Goucher: Citizen of the World
 

Marilyn Southard Warshawsky

“A clear, compelling introduction for readers not steeped in the history of the American Civil War. Robert Plumb doesn’t just chart clashes and body counts. He humanizes the conflicts that tore the country apart, focusing on the home front as well as the front lines. His story unfolds through the perspective of five women [whose] lively group portrait will inspire readers to find out more.”—M. G. Lord, author of Astro Turf and The Accidental Feminist 

M. G. Lord

“Robert Plumb has placed five remarkable women on the center stage of the American Civil War. Their compelling stories are told with perception and freshness in this inspiring work of women’s history.”—Robin G. Schulze, editor of Becoming Marianne Moore and author of The Degenerate Muse

Robin G. Schulze

2019-12-22
Portraits of five women who leaped into action during the Civil War—and whose contributions have proven essential and lasting.

Writer and marketing consultant Plumb (Your Brother in Arms: A Union Soldier's Odyssey, 2011) chronicles the Civil War contributions of five women who moved into active roles that men had normally filled. A young Clara Barton, a teacher from North Oxford, Massachusetts, who had been working as a clerk in the U.S. Patent Office in Washington, D.C., was horrified by the conditions of the military camps around the city and was motivated to begin a campaign to mobilize supplies for them. Her tireless efforts and advocacy eventually led to the establishment of the American Red Cross. Harriet Tubman, having made her way to freedom before the war along the Underground Railroad from Maryland to upstate New York, along with her family, became an active nurse and scout for the troops in South Carolina, operating behind enemy lines. She was known as "Moses of her people" and "General Tubman" for her work on behalf of black refugees, though she was never properly acknowledged or compensated by the military. Harriet Beecher Stowe, an ardent abolitionist, was outraged by the alarming national developments of the Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act and wrote the hugely influential Uncle Tom's Cabin in a righteous fury. Despite a suffocating marriage, Julia Ward Howe made a literary name for herself, spurred by the spectacle of troops marching to write the war's anthem, "Battle Hymn of the Republic," in 1861. Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of the popular women's magazine Godey's Lady's Book, had been tenaciously advocating for a national Thanksgiving Day, though it was ultimately President Abraham Lincoln who proclaimed the day on Nov. 26, 1863. In addition to his straightforward biographies, the author also looks at the women's postwar years and offers extracts from their writings.

An inspirational work of history that touts such character traits as persistence, courage, faith, and compassion.

Kirkus Reviews