MANUSCRIPT: New Battle Hymn of the Republic."
[Suffrage]. Comstock, Adelaide. Holograph Mss: "New Battle Hymn of the Republic.” [San Buena Ventura, Cal.], [ca. 1895-1911].
Quarto: single sheet folded to 5 x 6-13/16"; light beige laid writing paper; written at the first and third sides; uneven darkening and age-toning to sheet, particularly around the edges (not affecting text); about very good.
Holograph manuscript signed "Adelaide Comstock.” Music formed a integral part of virtually every suffrage gathering. Suffragists, the NAWSA as well as the AWSA, had adopted Julia Ward Howe's "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" as the unofficial anthem of the woman suffrage movement. Printed sheets with the words to the deeply evocative lyric made their appearance at many suffrage conventions, meetings, rallies and parades. As with other well-known and popular songs, suffragists created different versions of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" to convey their sentiments regarding the votes for women campaign.
Adelaide Comstock, about whom little is known, published an extended article on the San Buenaventura Mission in the Ventura, California DAILY POST (c. 1900). She also may have authored a 1904 piece entitled "The Kreutzer sonata reviewed by a woman.” She may not have written professionally, but it appears that she liked writing. Although it is not possible to date her "New Battle Hymn of the Republic", she may well have penned it during one of the two California woman suffrage referendum campaigns — the first in 1895 and the second in 1911. Given the appearance of the ink and the paper and the date of the one known piece of writing by Comstock, the earlier date of 1895 seems the more probable.
Regrettably, such suffrage songs were collected and printed only haphazardly. We have come across just one or two small pamphlets of suffrage lyrics. Charlotte Perkins Gilman did publish Suffrage Songs And Verses in 1913, but few copies of this have survived. Probably Comstock's "New Battle Hymn of the Republic" never received book publication, though a local suffrage publication may well have printed the piece. Holograph manuscripts of suffrage songs are most unusual, this, in fact, being the first we have been able to offer.
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