NARRATIVE OF EVENTS—CONTINUED.
When this Trial terminated, I returned to my home in Manteno, where five days previous I had bestowed the parting kiss upon my three youngest children, little thinking it would be the last embrace I should be allowed to bestow upon these dear objects of my warmest affections. But alas! so it proved to be. Mr. Packard had fled with them to Massachusetts, leaving me in the court room a childless widow. He could not but see that the tide of popular indignation was concentrating against him, as the revelations of the court ventilated the dreadful facts of this conspiracy, and he “fled his country,” a fugitive from justice. He, however, left a letter for me which was handed me before I left the Court-house, wherein he stated that he had moved to Massachusetts, and extended to me an invitation to follow him, with the promise that he would provide me a suitable home. But I did not feel much like trusting either to his humanity or judgment in providing me another home. Indeed, I did not think it safe to follow him, knowing that Massachusetts’ laws gave him the absolute custody of my person as well as Illinois’ laws. He went to South Deerfield, Massachusetts, and sought shelter for himself and his children in the family of his sister, Mrs. Severance, one of his co-conspirators. Here he found willing ears to credit his tale of abuses he had suffered in this interference of his rights to do as he pleased with his lawful wife—and in representing the trial as a “mock trial,” an illegal interference with his rights as head of his own household, and a “mob triumph,”—and in short, he was an innocent victim of a persecution against his legally constituted rights as a husband, to protect his wife in the way his own feelings of bigotry and intolerance should dictate!
This was the region of his nativity and former pastorate, which he had left about eleven years previously, with an unblemished external character, and sharing, to an uncommon degree, the entire confidence of the public as a Christian man and a minister. Nothing had occurred, to their knowledge, to disturb this confidence in his present integrity as an honest reporter, and the entire community credited his testimony as perfectly reliable, in his entire misrepresentations of the facts in the case, and the character of the trial. His view was the only view the community were allowed to hear, so far as it was in his power to prevent it. The press also lent him its aid, as his organ of communication. He met also his old associates in the ministry, and by his artfully arranged web of lies, and his cunning sophistries, he deluded them also into a belief of his views, so that they, unanimously, gave him their certificate of confidence and fraternal sympathy. Yea, even my own father and brothers became victims also of his sophisms and misrepresentations, so that they honestly believed me to be insane, and that the Westerners had really interfered with Mr. Packard’s rights and kind intents towards his wife, in intercepting as they had, his plans to keep her incarcerated for life.
Thus this one-sided view of the facts in the case so moulded public sentiment in this conservative part of New England, that he even obtained a certificate from my own dear father, a retired orthodox clergyman in Sunderland, Massachusetts, that, so far as he knew, he had treated his daughter generally with propriety!! This certificate served as a passport to the confidence of Sunderland people in Mr. Packard as a man and a minister, and procured for him a call to become their minister in holy things. He was accordingly hired, as stated supply, and paid fifteen dollars a Sabbath for one year and a half, and was boarded by my father in his family, part of the time, free of charge.
The condition in which Mr. Packard left me I will now give in the language of another, by inserting here a quotation from one of the many Chicago papers which published an account of this trial with editorial remarks accompanying it. The following is a part of one of these Editorial Articles, which appeared under the caption:—
“A HEARTLESS CLERGYMAN.”
Chicago, March 6, 1864.
“We recently gave an extended account of the melancholy case of Mrs. Packard, of Manteno, Ill., and showed how she was persecuted by her husband, Rev. Theophilus Packard, a bigoted Presbyterian minister of Manteno. Mrs. Packard became liberal in her views, in fact, avowed Universalist sentiments; and as her husband was unable to answer her arguments, he thought he could silence her tongue, by calling her insane, and having her incarcerated in the Insane Asylum at Jacksonville, Illinois. He finally succeeded in finding one or two orthodox physicians, as bigoted as himself, ready to aid him in his nefarious work, and she was confined in the asylum, under the charge (?) of Dr. McFarland, who kept her there three years. She at last succeeded in having a jury trial, and was pronounced sane. Previous, however, to the termination of the trial, this persecutor of his wife, mortgaged his property, took away his children from the mother, and left her penniless and homeless, without a cent to buy food, or a place where to lay her head! And yet he pretended to believe that she was insane! Is this the way to treat an insane wife! Abandon her, turn her out upon the world without a morsel of bread, and no home? Her husband calls her insane. Before the case is decided by the jury, he starts for parts unknown. Was there ever such a case of heartlessness? If Mr. Packard believed his wife to be hopelessly insane, why did he abandon her? Is this the way to treat a companion afflicted with insanity? If he believed his own story, he should, like a devoted husband, have watched over her with tenderness, his heart full of love should have gone out towards the poor, afflicted woman, and he should have bent over her and soothed her, and spent the last penny he had, for her recovery! But instead of this, he gathers in his funds, “packs up his duds,” and leaves his poor, insane wife, as he calls her, in the court room, without food or shelter. He abandons her, leaving her penniless, homeless and childless!
“Mrs. Packard is now residing with Mr. Z. Handford, of Manteno, who writes to the Kankakee Gazette as follows:
“In the first place, Mrs. Packard is now penniless. After having aided her husband for twenty-one years, by her most indefatigable exertions, to secure for themselves a home, with all its clustering comforts, he, with no cause, except a difference in religious opinions, exiled her from her home, by forcing her into Jacksonville Insane Asylum, where he hoped to immure her for life, or until she would abandon what he calls her ‘insane notions.’
“But in the overruling providence of a just God, her case has been ventilated, at last, by a jury trial, the account of which is already before the public.
“From the time of her banishment into exile, now more than three and a half years, he has not allowed her the control of one dollar of their personal property. And she has had nothing to do with their real estate, within that time, excepting to sign one deed for the transfer of some of their real estate in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, which she did at her husband’s earnest solicitations, and his promise to let her have her ‘defense,’ long enough to copy, which document he had robbed her of three years before, by means of Dr. McFarland as agent. Her signature, thus obtained, was acknowledged as a valid act, and the deed was presented to the purchaser as a valid instrument, even after Mr. Packard had just before taken an oath that his wife was an insane woman!
“He has robbed her of all her patrimony, including not only her furniture, but her valuable clothing also, and a note of six hundred dollars on interest, which he gave her seven years before, as an equivalent for this amount of patrimony which her father, Rev. Samuel Ware, of Sunderland, Massachusetts, sent Mrs. Packard for her special benefit, and to be used for her and her children as her own judgment should dictate. He has taken her furniture and clothing, or the avails of them, with him to Massachusetts, without allowing her a single article of furniture for her own individual comfort and use. Thus he has left her without a single penny of their common property to procure for herself the necessaries of life.
“He has left her homeless. Before the court closed, Mr. Packard left this scene of revelations, and mortgaged and rented their home in Manteno, and dispossessed it by night of its furniture, so that when the court closed, Mrs. Packard had no sort of home to return to, the new renter having claimed possession of her home, and claiming a legal right to all its privileges, excluding her from its use entirely as a home, without leaving her the least legal claim to any of the avails of the rent or sales for the supply of her present necessities.
“Again, she is childless. Her cruel husband, not satisfied with robbing his wife of all her rightful property, has actually kidnapped all her dear children who lived at home, taking them with him, clandestinely, to Massachusetts, leaving her a ‘childless widow,’ entirely dependent for her living, either upon her own exertions, or the charities of the public. We will not attempt to describe the desolation of her maternal heart, when she returned to her deserted home, to find it despoiled of all her dearest earthly treasures; with no sweet cherub, with its smiling, joyous face to extend to her the happy, welcome kiss of a mother’s return.
“But one short week previous, Mrs. Packard had bestowed the parting kiss upon her three youngest children, little dreaming it would be the last embrace the mother would ever be allowed to bestow upon her dear offspring, in their own dear home. But now, alas! where is her only daughter, Elizabeth, of thirteen years, and her George Hastings, of ten years, and her darling baby, Arthur Dwight, of five years? Gone! gone! never to return, while the mandate of their father’s iron will usurps supreme control of this household!
“Yes, the mother’s home and heart are both desolate, for her heart-treasures—her dear children—are no more to be found. At length, rumor reaches her that her babe, Arthur, is at their brother Dole’s. The anxious mother hastens to seek for it there. But all in vain. The family, faithful to their brother’s wishes, keep the babe carefully hid from the mother, so that she cannot get even one glimpse of her sweet, darling boy. Her cruel husband, fearing her attempts to secure the child might prove successful, has sent for it to be brought to him in Massachusetts, where he now is fairly out of the mother’s reach.”
Z. Hanford.
I made various attempts to recover my furniture, which I found was stored at Deacon Doles’ house, a brother-in-law of Mr. Packard’s, under the pretense, that he had bought it, although he could never show one paper as proof of property transferred. I took counsel of the Judge and lawyers at Kankakee, to see if I could in any way recover my stolen furniture, which I had bought with my own patrimony. “Can I replevy it as stolen property?” said I. “No,” said my advisers, “you cannot replevy anything, for you are a married woman, and a married woman has no legal existence, unless she holds property independent of her husband. As this is not your case, you are nothing and nobody in law. Your husband has a legal right to all your common property—you have not even a right to the hat on your head!” “Why?” said I, “I have bought and paid for it with my own money.” “That is of no consequence—you can hold nothing, as you are nothing and nobody in law! You have a moral right to your own things, and your own children, but no legal right at all; therefore you, a married woman, cannot replevy, although any one else could under like circumstances.” “Is this so? Has a married woman no identity in Statute Book of Illinois?” “It is so. Her interests are all lost in those of her husband, and he has the absolute control of her home, her property, her children, and her personal liberty.”
Yes, all this is but too true, as my own sad experience fully demonstrates. Now I can realize the sad truths so often iterated, reiterated to me by my husband, namely: “You have no right to your home, I have let you live with me twenty-one years in my home as a favor to you. You have no right to your children. I let you train them, as far as I think it is proper to trust your judgment—this privilege of training and educating your own children is a favor bestowed upon you by me, which I can withhold or grant at my own option. You have no right to your money patrimony after you intrusted it to my care, and I gave you a note for it on interest which I can either pay you or not at my own option. You have no right to your personal liberty if I feel disposed to christen your opinions insane opinions, for I can then treat you as an insane person or not, just at my own option.” Yes, Mr. Packard has only treated me as he said the laws of Illinois allowed him to do, and how can he be blamed then? Did not “wise men” make the laws, as he often used to assert they did? And can one be prosecuted for doing a legal act? Nay—verily—no law can reach him; even his kidnapping me as he did is legalized in Illinois Statute Book, as the following article which was published in several Boston papers in the winter of 1865, demonstrates, namely:
“LEGAL KIDNAPPING,” OR PROVISION FOR A SANE PERSON’S IMPRISONMENT.
“From the ‘Disclosures’ of Mrs. Packard’s book, it appears a self-evident fact that one State of our Union has an express provision for the imprisonment of married women who are not insane. And this process of legal kidnapping is most strikingly illustrated in the facts developed in Mrs. Packard’s own experience, as delineated in her book entitled ‘The Great Drama.’
“The following is a copy of the Law, as it now stands on the Illinois Statute Book:—
“AMENDATORY ACT.”
“Session Laws 15, 1851. Page 96.”
“Sec. 10. Married women and infants who, in the judgment of the Medical Superintendent, [meaning the Superintendent of the ‘Illinois State Hospital’ for the insane] are evidently insane or distracted, may be entered or detained in the Hospital on the request of the husband, or the woman or guardian of the infants, without the evidence of insanity required in other cases.”
“Hon. S. S. Jones of St. Charles, Illinois, thus remarks upon this Act:—
“Thus we see a corrupt husband, with money enough to corrupt a Superintendent, can get rid of a wife as effectually as was ever done in a more barbarous age. The Superintendent may be corrupted either with money or influence, that he thinks will give him position, place, or emoluments. Is not this a pretty statute to be incorporated into our laws no more than thirteen years ago? Why not confine the husband at the instance of the wife, as well as the wife at the instance of the husband? The wife evidently had no voice in making the law.
“Who, being a man, and seeing this section in the Statute Book of Illinois, under the general head of ‘Charities,’ does not blush and hang his head for very shame at legislative perversion of so holy a term? I have no doubt, if the truth of the matter were known, this act was passed at the special instance of the Superintendent. A desire for power. I do not know why it has not been noted by me and others before.”
“And we would also venture to inquire, what is the married woman’s protection under such a Statute law? Is she not allowed counter testimony from a physician of her own choice, or can she not demand a trial of some kind, to show whether the charge of insanity brought against her is true or false? Nay, verily. The Statute expressly states that the judgment of the medical Superintendent, to whom the husband’s request is made, is all that is required for him to incarcerate his wife for any indefinite period of time. Neither she, her children, nor her relatives have any voice at all in the matter. Her imprisonment may be life-long, for anything she or her friends can do for her to prevent it. If the husband has money or influence enough to corrupt the officials, he can carry out his single wishes concerning his wife’s life-destiny.
“Are not the ‘Divorce Laws’ of Illinois made a necessity, to meet the demands of the wife, as her only refuge from this exposure to a ‘false imprisonment’ for life in an Insane Asylum?
“We hope our readers will be able to read Mrs. Packard’s book for themselves; especially her ‘Self-defence from the charge of Insanity,’ wherein the barbarities of this statute are made to appear in their true light, as being merely a provision for ‘Legal Kidnapping.’”
Boston, Feb. 24, 1865.
Satisfied as I was that there was no legal redress for me in the laws, and no hope in appealing to Mr. Packard’s mercy or manliness, I determined to do what I could to obtain a self-reliant position, by securing if possible the protection of greenbacks, confident that this kind of protection is better than none at all. I concluded, therefore, to publish the first installment of “The Great Drama,” an allegorical book I wrote while in the Asylum, consisting of twelve parts. But how could this be done in my penniless condition? was the great question to be practically settled. I accordingly borrowed ten dollars of Mr. Z. Hanford, of Manteno, a noble, kind hearted man, who offered me a home at his house after the trial, and went to Chicago to consult the printers in reference to the expense of printing one thousand copies of this book, and get it stereotyped. I found it would cost me five hundred dollars. I then procured a few thousand tickets on which was printed—“The bearer is entitled to the first volume of Mrs. Packard’s book, entitled the Great Drama. None are genuine without my signature. Mrs. E. P. W. Packard.” And commenced canvassing for my unborn book, by selling these tickets for fifty cents each, assuring the purchaser I would redeem the ticket in three month’s time, by giving them a book worth fifty cents. When I had sold about eight or nine hundred tickets, I went to Chicago to set my printers and stereotypers, engravers and binders, at work on my book. But I now met with a new and unlooked for difficulty, in the sudden inflation of prices in labor and material. My book could not now be printed for less than seven hundred dollars; so that my first edition would not pay for itself into two hundred dollars. As the case now was, instead of paying for my book by selling one thousand tickets, I must sell fourteen hundred, besides superintending the various workmen on the different departments of my book. Nothing daunted by this reverse, instead of raising the price of my tickets to seventy-five cents to meet this unfortunate turn in my finances, I found I must fall back upon the only sure guarantee of success, namely: patient perseverance. By the practical use of this great backbone of success, perseverance, I did finally succeed in printing my book, and paying the whole seven hundred dollars for it in three months’ time, by selling four hundred tickets in advance on another edition. I sold and printed, and then printed and sold, and so on, until I have printed and sold in all, twelve thousand books in fifteen months’ time. Included in this twelve thousand are several editions of smaller pamphlets, varying in price from five to twenty-five cents each.
At this stage of my Narrative it may not be inappropriate to narrate my interview with Mayor Sherman, of Chicago, since it not only discloses one of the dangers and the difficulties I had to encounter, in prosecuting my enterprise, but also serves as another exemplification of that marital power which is legally guaranteed to the husband, leaving the wife utterly helpless, and legally defenceless.
I called upon him at his office in the court house, and was received with respectful, manly courtesy. After introducing myself as the Mrs. Packard whose case had recently acquired so much notoriety through the Chicago press, and after briefly recapitulating the main facts of the persecution, I said to him:
“Now, Mr. Sherman, as the Mayor of this city, I appeal to you for protection, while printing my book in your city. Will you protect me here?”
“Why, Mrs. Packard, what protection do you need? What dangers do you apprehend?”
“Sir, I am a married woman, and my husband is my persecutor, therefore I have no legal protection. The husband is, you probably know, the wife’s only protector in the law, therefore, what I want now, Sir, is protection against my protector!”
“Is he in this city?”
“No, Sir; but his agents are, and he can delegate his power to them, and authorize them what to do.”
“What do you fear he will do?”
“I fear he may intercept the publication of my book; for you probably know, Sir, he can come either himself, or by proxy, and, with his Sheriff, can demand my manuscript of my printer, and the printer, nor you, Sir, have no legal power to defend it. He can demand it, and burn it, and I am helpless in legal self-defense. For, Sir, my identity was legally lost in his, when I married him, leaving me nothing and nobody in law; and besides, all I have is his in law, and of course no one can prosecute him for taking his own things—my manuscript is his, and entirely at his disposal. I have no right in law even to my own thoughts, either spoken or written—he has even claimed the right to superintend my written thoughts as well as post office rights. I can not claim these rights—they are mine only as he grants me them as his gifts to me.”
“What does your printer say about it?”
“He says if the Sheriff comes to him for the book he shall tell him he must get the book where he can find it; I shall not find it for him. I then said to my printer, supposing he should come with money, and offer to buy the manuscript, what then?” “I say, it will take more money than there is in Chicago to buy that manuscript of us,” replied my printer.
“I think that sounds like protection, Mrs. Packard. I think you have nothing to fear.”
“No, Mr. Sherman, I have nothing to fear from the manliness of my printer, for this is my sole and only protection—but as one man to whom I trusted even myself, has proved a traitor to his manliness, is there not a possibility another may. I should not object to a double guard, since the single guard of manliness has not even protected me from imprisonment.”
“Well, Mrs. Packard, you shall have my protection; and I can also assure you the protection of my counsel, also. If you get into trouble, apply to us, and we will give you all the help the laws will allow.”
“I beg you to consider, Sir; the laws do not allow you to interfere in such a matter. Are you authorized to stop a man from doing a legal act?”
“No, Mrs. Packard, I am not. I see you are without any legal protection. Still I think you are safe in Chicago.”
“I hope it may so prove, Sir. But one thing more I wish your advice about; how can I keep the money I get for my book from Mr. Packard, the legal owner of it?”
“Keep it about your person, so he can’t get it.”
“But, Sir; Mr. Packard has a right to my person in law, and can take it anywhere, and put it where he pleases; and if he can get my person, he can take what is on it.”
“That’s so—you are in a bad case, truly—I must say, I never before knew that any one under our government was so utterly defenceless as you are. Your case ought to be known. Every soldier in our army ought to have one of your books, so as to have our laws changed.”
Soldiers of our army! receive this tacit compliment from Mayor Sherman. You are henceforth to hold the reins of the American Government. And it is my candid opinion, they could not be in better or safer hands. And in your hands would I most confidently trust my sacred cause—the cause of Married Woman; for, so far as my observation extends, no class of American citizens are more manly, than our soldiers. I am inclined to cherish the idea, that gallantry and patriotism are identified; at least, I find they are almost always associated together in the same manly heart.
When I had sold about half of my twelve thousand books, I resolved to visit my relatives in Massachusetts, who had not seen me for about twelve years. I felt assured that my dear father, and brothers, and my kind step-mother, were all looking at the facts of my persecution from a wrong stand-point; and I determined to risk my exposure to Mr. Packard’s persecuting power again, so far as to let my relatives see me once for themselves; hoping thus the scales might drop from their eyes, so far at least as to protect me from another kidnapping from Mr. Packard.
I arrived first at my brother Austin Ware’s house in South Deerfield, who lives about two miles from Mr. Severance, where were my three youngest children, and where Mr. Packard spent one day of each week. I spent two nights with him and his new wife, who both gave me a very kind and patient hearing; and the result was, their eyes were opened to see their error in believing me to be an insane person, and expressed their decided condemnation of the course Mr. Packard had pursued towards me. Brother became at once my gallant and manly protector, and the defender of my rights. “Sister,” said he, “you have a right to see your children, and you shall see them. I will send for them to-day.” He accordingly sent a team for them twice, but was twice refused by Mr. Packard, who had heard of my arrival. Still, he assured me I should see them in due time. He carried me over to Sunderland, about four miles distant, to my father’s house, promising me I should meet my dear children there; feeling confident that my father’s request joined with his own, would induce Mr. Packard to let me see once more my own dear offspring. As he expected, my father at once espoused my cause, and assured me I should see my children; “for,” added he, “Mr. Packard knows it will not do for him to refuse me.” He then directed brother to go directly for them himself, and say to Mr. Packard: “Elizabeth’s father requests him to let the children have an interview with their mother at his house.” But, instead of the children, came a letter from brother, saying, that Mr. Packard has refused, in the most decided terms, to let sister see her own children; or, to use his own language, he said, “I came from Illinois to Massachusetts to protect the children from their mother, and I shall do it, in spite of you, or father Ware, or any one else!” Brother adds, “the mystery of this dark case is now solved, in my mind, completely. Mr. Packard is a monomaniac on this subject; there is no more reason in his treatment of sister, than in a brute.”
These facts of his refusal to let me see my children, were soon in circulation in the two adjacent villages of Sunderland and South Deerfield, and a strongly indignant feeling was manifested against Mr. Packard’s defiant and unreasonable position; and he, becoming aware of the danger to his interests which a conflict with this tide of public sentiment might occasion, seemed forced, by this pressure of public opinion, to succumb; for, on the following Monday morning, (this was on Saturday, P. M.,) he brought all of my three children to my father’s house, with himself and Mrs. Severance, as their body-guard, and with both as my witnesses, I was allowed to talk with them an hour or two. He refused me an interview with them alone in my room.
I remained at my father’s house a few days only, knowing that even in Massachusetts the laws did not protect me from another similar outrage, if Mr. Packard could procure the certificate of two physicians that I was insane; for, with these alone, without any chance at self-defense, he could force me into some of the Private Asylums here, as he did into a State Asylum in Illinois.
I knew that, as I was Mr. Packard’s wife, neither my brother nor father could be my legal protectors in such an event, as they could command no influence in my defense, except that of public sentiment or mob-law. I therefore felt forced to leave my father’s house in self-defence, to seek some protection of the Legislature of Massachusetts, by petitioning them for a change in their laws on the mode of commitment into Insane Asylums. As a preparatory step, I endeavored to get up an agitation on the subject, by printing and selling about six thousand books relative to the subject; and then, trusting to this enlightened public sentiment to back up the movement, I petitioned Massachusetts Legislature to make the needed change in the laws. Hon. S. E. Sewall, of Boston, drafted the Petition, and I circulated it, and obtained between one and two hundred names of men of the first standing and influence in Boston, such as the Aldermen, the Common Council, the High Sheriff, and several other City Officers; and besides, Judges, Lawyers, Editors, Bank Directors, Physicians, &c. Mr. Sewall presented this petition to the Legislature, and they referred it to a committee, and this committee had seven special meetings on the subject. I was invited to meet with them each time, and did so, as were also Mrs. Phelps and Mrs. Denny, two ladies of Boston who had suffered a term of false imprisonment in a private institution at Sommersville, without any previous trial. Hon. S. E. Sewall and Mr. Wendell Phillips both made a plea in its behalf before this committee, and the gallantry and manliness of this committee allowed me a hearing of several hour’s time in all, besides allowing me to present the two following Bills, which they afterwards requested a copy of in writing. The three Superintendents, Dr. Walker, Dr. Jarvis, and Dr. Tyler, represented the opposition. And my reply to Dr. Walker constituted the preamble to my bills.
MRS. PACKARD’S BILLS.
PREAMBLE.
Gentlemen of the Committee:
I feel it my duty to say one word in defence of the Petitioners, in reply to Dr. Walker’s statement, that, “in his opinion, nineteen twentieths of the petitioners did not know nor care what they petitioned for, and that they signed it out of compliment to the lady.”
I differ from Dr. Walker in opinion on this point, for this reason. I obtained these names by my own individual appeals, except from most of the members of the “Common Council,” who signed it during an evening session, by its being passed around for their names. I witnessed their signing, and saw them read it, carefully, before signing it. And I think they signed it intelligently, and from a desire for safer legislation. The others I know signed intelligently, and for this reason. And I could easily have got one thousand more names, had it been necessary; for, in selling my books, I have conversed with many thousand men on this subject, and among them all, I have only found one man who defends the present mode of commitment, by leaving it all to the physicians.
I spent a day in the Custom House, and a day and a half in the Navy Yard, and these men, like all others, defend our movement. I have sold one hundred and thirty-nine books in the Navy Yard within the last day and a half, by conversing personally with gentlemen in their counting-rooms on this subject, and they are carefully watching your decision on this question.
Now, from this stand-point of extensive observation, added to my own personal experience, I feel fully confident these two Bills are needed to meet the public demand at this crisis.
No person shall be regarded or treated as an Insane person, or a Monomaniac, simply for the expression of opinions, no matter how absurd these opinions may appear to others.
REASONS.
1st. This Law is needed for the personal safety of Reformers. We are living in a Progressive Age. Everything is in a state of transmutation, and, as our laws now are, the Reformer, the Pioneer, the Originator of any new idea is liable to be treated as a Monomaniac, with imprisonment.
2d. It is a Crime against human progress to allow Reformers to be treated as Monomaniacs; for, who will dare to be true to the inspirations of the divinity within them, if the Pioneers of truth are thus liable to lose their personal liberty for life by so doing?
3d. It is Treason against the principles of our Government to treat opinions as Insanity, and to imprison for it, as our present laws allow.
4th. There always are those in every age who are opposed to every thing new, and if allowed, will persecute Reformers with the stigma of Insanity. This has been the fate of all Reformers, from the days of Christ—the Great Reformer—until the present age.
5th. Our Government, of all others, ought especially to guard, by legislation, the vital principle on which it is based, namely: individuality, which guarantees an individual right of opinion to all persons.
Therefore, gentlemen, protect your thinkers! by a law, against the charge of Monomania, and posterity shall bless our government, as a model government, and Massachusetts as the Pioneer State, in thus protecting individuality as the vital principle on which the highest development of humanity rests.
Bill No. 2.
No person shall be imprisoned, and treated as an insane person, except for irregularities of conduct, such as indicate that the individual is so lost to reason, as to render him an unaccountable moral agent.
REASONS.
Multitudes are now imprisoned, without the least evidence that reason is dethroned, as indicated by this test. And I am a representative of this class of prisoners; for, when Dr. McFarland was driven to give his reasons for regarding me as insane, on this basis, the only reason which he could name, after closely inspecting my conduct for three years, was, that I once “fell down stairs!”
I do insist upon it, gentlemen, that no person should be imprisoned without a just cause; for personal liberty is the most blessed boon of our existence and ought therefore to be reasonably guarded as an inalienable right. But it is not reasonably protected under our present legislation, while it allows the simple opinion of two doctors to imprison a person for life, without one proof in the conduct of the accused, that he is an unaccountable moral agent. We do not hang a person on the simple opinion that he is a murderer, but proof is required from the accused’s own actions, that he is guilty of the charge which forfeits his life. So the charge which forfeits our personal liberty ought to be proved from the individual’s own conduct, before imprisonment.
So long as insanity is treated as a crime, instead of a misfortune, as our present system practically does so treat it, the protection of our individual liberty imperatively demands such an enactment. Many contend that every person is insane on some point. On this ground, all persons are liable to be legally imprisoned, under our present system; for intelligent physicians are everywhere to be found, who will not scruple to give a certificate that an individual is a Monomaniac on that point where he differs from him in opinion! This Monomania in many instances is not Insanity, but individuality, which is the highest natural development of a human being.
Gentlemen, I know, and have felt, the horrors—the untold soul agonies—attendant on such a persecution. Therefore, as Philanthropists, I beg of you to guard your own liberties, and those of your countrymen, by recommending the adoption of these two Bills as an imperative necessity.
The above Bills were presented to the Committee on the Commitment of the Insane, in Boston State house, March 29, 1865, by
Mrs. E. P. W. PACKARD.
The result was, the petition triumphed, by so changing the mode of commitment, that, instead of the husband being allowed to enter his wife at his simple request, added to the certificate of two physicians, he must now get ten of her nearest relatives to join with him in this request; and the person committed, instead of not being allowed to communicate by writing to any one outside of the Institution, except under the censorship of the Superintendent, can now send a letter to each of these ten relatives, and to any other two persons whom the person committed shall designate. This the Superintendent is required to do within two days from the time of commitment.
This Law is found in Chapter 268, Section 2, of the General Laws of Massachusetts. I regard my personal liberty in Massachusetts now as not absolutely in the power of my husband; as my family friends must now co-operate in order to make my commitment legal. And since my family relatives are now fully satisfied of my sanity, after having seen me for themselves, I feel now comparatively safe, while in Massachusetts. I therefore returned to my father’s house in Sunderland, and finding both of my dear parents feeble, and in need of some one to care for them, and finding myself in need of a season of rest and quiet, I accepted their kind invitation to make their house my home for the present. At this point my father indicated his true position in relation to my interests, by his self-moved efforts in my behalf, in writing and sending the following letter to Mr. Packard.[1]
COPY OF FATHER WARE’S LETTER TO MR. PACKARD.
“Sunderland, Sept. 2, 1865.
“Rev. Sir: I think the time has fully come for you to give up to Elizabeth her clothes. Whatever reason might have existed to justify you in retaining them, has, in process of time, entirely vanished. There is not a shadow of excuse for retaining them. It is my presumption there is not an individual in this town who would justify you in retaining them a single day. Elizabeth is about to make a home at my house, and I must be her protector. She is very destitute of clothing, and greatly needs all those articles which are hers. I hope to hear from you soon, before I shall be constrained to take another step. Yours, Respectfully,
“Rev. T. Packard. Samuel Ware.”
The result of this letter was, that in about twenty-four hours after the letter was delivered, Mr. Packard brought the greater part of my wardrobe and delivered it into the hands of my father.
In a few weeks after this event, Mr. Packard’s place in the pulpit in Sunderland was filled by a candidate for settlement, and he left the place. The reasons why he thus left his ministerial charge in this place, cannot perhaps be more summarily given than by transcribing the following letter which father got me to write for him, in answer to Rev. Dr. Pomeroy’s letter, inquiring of my father why Mr. Packard had left Sunderland.
LETTER TO REV. DR. POMEROY.
Sunderland, Oct. 28, 1865.
Dr. Pomeroy, Dear Sir: I am sorry to say that my dear father feels too weak to reply to your kind and affectionate letter of the twenty-third instant, and therefore I cheerfully consent to reply to it myself.
As to the subject of your letter, it is as you intimated. We have every reason to believe that father’s defence of me, has been the indirect cause of Mr. Packard’s leaving Sunderland; although we knew nothing of the matter until he left, and a candidate filled his place. Neither father, mother, nor I, have used any direct influence to undermine the confidence of this people in Mr. Packard. But where this simple fact, that I have been imprisoned three years, is known, to have become a demonstrated truth, by the decision of a jury, after a thorough legal investigation of five day’s trial, it is found to be rather of an unfortunate truth for the public sentiment of the present age to grapple with. And Mr. Packard and his persecuting party may yet find I uttered no fictitious sentiment, when I remarked to Dr. McFarland in the Asylum, that I shall yet live down this slander of Insanity, and also live down my persecutors. And Mr. Packard is affording me every facility for so doing, by his continuing strenuously to insist upon it, that I am, now, just as insane as when he incarcerated me in Jacksonville Insane Asylum. And he still insists upon it, that an Asylum Prison is the only suitable place for me to spend the residue of my earth-life in. But, fortunately for me, my friends judge differently upon seeing me for themselves. Especially fortunate is it for me, that my own dear father feels confident that his house is a more suitable home for me, notwithstanding the assertion of Mrs. Dickinson, (the widow with whom Mr. Packard boards,) that, “it is such a pity that Mrs. Packard should come to Sunderland, where Mr. Packard preaches!” Mr. Johnson replied in answer to this remark, that he thought Mrs. Packard had a right to come to her father’s house for protection, and also that her father had an equal right to extend protection to his only daughter, when thrown adrift and pennyless upon the cold world without a place to shelter her defenceless head.
Mr. Packard has withdrawn all intercourse with us all since he was called upon by father to return my wardrobe to me. Would that Mr. Packard’s eyes might be opened to see what he is doing, and repent, so that I might be allowed to extend to him the forgiveness my heart longs to bestow, upon this gospel condition.
Thankful for all the kindness and sympathy you have bestowed upon my father and mother, as well as myself, I subscribe myself your true friend,
E. P. W. PACKARD.
P. S. Father and mother both approve of the above, which I have written at father’s urgent request.
E. P. W. P.
Fidelity to the truth requires me to add one more melancholy fact, in order to make this narrative of events complete, and that is, that Mr. Packard has made merchandise of this stigma of Insanity he has branded me with, and used it as a lucrative source of gain to himself, in the following manner. He has made most pathetic appeals to the sympathies of the public for their charities to be bestowed upon him, on the plea of his great misfortune in having an insane wife to support—one who was incapable of taking care of herself or her six children—and on this false premise he has based a most pathetic argument and appeal to their sympathies for pecuniary help, in the form of boxes of clothing for himself and his destitute and defenceless children. These appeals have been most generously responded to from the American Home Missionary Society. So that when I returned to my home from the Asylum, I counted twelve boxes of such clothing, some of which were very large, containing the spoils he had thus purloined from this benevolent society, by entirely false representations.
My family were not destitute. But on the contrary, were abundantly supplied with a supernumerary amount of such missionary gifts, which had been lavished upon us, at his request, before I was imprisoned. I had often said to him, that I and my children had already more than a supply for our wants until they were grown up. Now, what could he do with twelve more such boxes? My son, Isaac, now in Chicago, and twenty-one years of age, told me he had counted fifty new vests in one pile, and he had as many pants and coats, and overcoats, and almost every thing else, of men’s wearing apparel, in like ratio. He said I had a pile of dress patterns accumulated from these boxes, to one yard in depth in one solid pile. And this was only one sample of all kinds of ladies’ apparel which he had thus accumulated, by his cunningly devised begging system.
Still, to this very date, he is pleading want and destitution as a basis for more charities of like kind. He has even so moved the benevolent sympathies of the widow Dickinson with whom he boarded, as to make her feel that he was an honest claimant upon their charities in this line, on the ground of poverty and destitution. She accordingly started a subscription to procure him a suit of clothes, on the ground of his extreme destitution, and finally succeeded in begging a subscription of one hundred and thirteen dollars for his benefit, and presented it to him as a token of sympathy and regard.
Another fact, he has put his property out of his hands, so that he can say he has nothing. And should I sue him for my maintainance, I could get nothing. His rich brother-in-law, George Hastings, supports the three youngest children, mostly, thus leaving scarcely no claimants upon his own purse, except his own personal wants. His wife and six children he has so disposed of, as to be almost entirely independent of him of any support. And it is my honest opinion, that had Sunderland people known of these facts in his financial matters, they would not have presented him with one hundred and thirteen dollars, as a token of their sympathy and esteem. Still, looking at the subject from their stand-point, I have no doubt they acted conscientiously in this matter. I have never deemed it my duty to enlighten them on this subject, except as the truth is sought for from me, in a few individual isolated cases. I do not mingle with the people scarcely at all, and have sold none of my books among them. Self-defence does not require me to seek the protection of enlightened public sentiment now that the laws protect my personal liberty, while in Massachusetts.
But fidelity to the cause of humanity, especially the cause of “Married Woman,” requires me to make public the facts of this notorious persecution, in order to have her true legal position known and fully apprehended. And since my case is a practical illustration of what the law is on this subject—showing how entirely destitute she is of any legal protection, except what the will and wishes of her husband secures to her—and also demonstrates the fact, that the common-law, everywhere, in relation to married woman, not only gravitates towards an absolute despotism, but even protects and sustains and defends a despotism of the most arbitrary and absolute kind. Therefore, in order to have her social position changed legally, the need of this change must first be seen and appreciated by the common people—the law-makers of this Republic. And this need or necessity for a revolution on this subject can be made to appear in no more direct manner, than by a practical case such as my own furnishes. As the need of a revolution of the law in relation to negro servitude was made to appear, by the practical exhibition of the Slave Code in “Uncle Tom’s” experience, showing that all slaves were liable to suffer to the extent he did; so my experience, although like “Uncle Tom’s,” an extreme case, shows how all married women are liable to suffer to the same extent that I have. Now justice to humanity claims that such liabilities should not exist in any Christian government. The laws should be so changed that such another outrage could not possibly take place under the sanction of the laws of a Christian government.
As Uncle Tom’s case aroused the indignation of the people against the slave code, so my case, so far as it is known, arouses this same feeling of indignation against those laws which protect married servitude. Married woman needs legal emancipation from married servitude, as much as the slave needed legal emancipation from his servitude.
Again, all slaves did not suffer under negro slavery, neither do all married women suffer from this legalized servitude. Still, the principle of slavery is wrong, and the principle of emancipation is right, and the laws ought so to regard it. And this married servitude exposes the wife to as great suffering as negro servitude did. It is my candid opinion, that no Southern slave ever suffered more spiritual agony than I have suffered; as I am more developed in my moral and spiritual nature than they are, therefore more capable of suffering. I think no slave mother ever endured more keen anguish by being deprived of her own offspring than I have in being legally separated from mine. God grant that married woman’s emancipation may quickly follow in the wake of negro emancipation!