Marital Power Exemplified in Mrs. Packard's Trial, and Self-Defence from the Charge of Insanity

by E. P. W. Packard

NOTE OF THANKS TO MY PATRONS.

I deem it appropriate in this connection, to express the gratitude I feel for the kind, practical sympathy, and liberal patronage, which has been extended to me by the public, through the sale of my books. Had it not been for your generous patronage, my kind patrons, I, and the noble cause I represent, would have been crushed to the earth, so far as my influence was concerned. For with no law to shield me, and with no “greenbacks” to defend myself with, what could I have done to escape another imprisonment, either in some asylum or poorhouse?

It has been, and still is, the verdict of public sentiment, which the circulation of these books has developed, that has hitherto shielded me from a second kidnapping. And this protection you have kindly secured to me by buying my books. I would willingly have given my books a gratuitous circulation to obtain this protection, if I could possibly have done so. But where could the $3000.00 I have paid out for the expense of printing and circulating these books have been obtained? No one could advance me money safely, so long as I was Mr. Packard’s lawful wife, and I could not even get a divorce, without the means for prosecuting the suit. Indeed, it was your patronage alone, which could effectually help me on to a self-reliant platform—the platform of “greenback independence.”

I have never made any appeal to the charities of the public, neither can I do so, from principle. For so long as I retain as good health as it is my blessed privilege still to enjoy, I feel conscientiously bound to work for my living, instead of living on the toil of other. My strong and vigorous health is the only capital that I can call my own. All my other natural, inalienable rights, are entirely in the hands of my persecutor, and subject to his control. But while this capital holds good, I am not a suitable object of charity. I am prosecuting business on business principles, and I am subject to the same laws of success or failure as other business persons are. I intend, and hope to make my business lucrative and profitable, as well as philanthropic and benevolent.

I maintain that I have no claims upon the charities of the public, while at the same time I maintain that I have a claim upon the sympathies of our government. It is our government, the man government of America, who have placed me in my deplorable condition; for I am just where their own laws place me, and render all other married women liable to be placed in the same position. It is the “Common Law” which our government took from English laws which makes a nonentity of a married woman, whose existence is wholly subject to another, and whose identity is only recognized through another. In short, the wife is dead, while her husband lives, as to any legal existence. And where the Common Law is not modified, or set aside by the Statute Laws, this worst form of English despotism is copied as a model law for our American people!

Yes, I feel that I have a just claim upon the sympathies of our government. Therefore, in selling my books, I have almost entirely confined my application to the men, not the women, for the men alone constitute the American government. And my patrons have responded to my claims upon their sympathy, in a most generous, and praiseworthy manner. Yea, so almost universally have I met with the sympathy of those gentlemen that I have freely conversed with on this subject, that I cherish the firm conviction, that our whole enlightened government would “en masse,” espouse the principles I defend, and grant all, and even more than I ask for married woman, could they but see the subject in the light those now do, whom I have conversed with on this subject. I am fully satisfied that all that our manly government needs to induce them to change this “Common Law” in relation to woman is, only to know what this law is, and how cruelly it subjects the women in its practical application. For man is made, and constituted by God himself, to be the protector of woman. And when he is true to this his God given nature, he is her protector. And all true men who have not perverted or depraved their God-like natures, will, and do, as instinctively protect their own wives, as they do themselves. And the wives of such men do not need any other law, than this law of manliness, to protect them or their interests.

But taking the human race as they now are, we find some exceptions to this general rule. And it is for these exceptions that the law is needed, and not for the great masses. Just as the laws against crimes are made for the criminals, not for the masses of society, for they do not need them; they are a law unto themselves, having their own consciences for their Judges and Jurors. I see no candid, just reason why usurpation, and injustice, and oppression, should not be legislated against, in this form, as well as any other. Developed, refined, sensitive woman, is as capable of feeling wrongs as any other human being. And why should she not be legally protected from them as well as a man? My confidence in this God-like principle of manliness is almost unbounded. Therefore I feel that a hint is all that is needed, to arouse this latent principle of our government into prompt and efficient action, that of extending legal protection to subjected married woman.

There is one word I will here say to my patrons, who have the first installment of my “Great Drama” in their possession, that you have doubtless found many things in that book which you cannot now understand, and are therefore liable to misinterpret and misapprehend my real meaning. I therefore beg of you not to judge me harshly at present, but please suspend your judgment until this allegory is published entire, and then you will be better prepared to pass judgment upon it. Supposing Bunyan’s allegory of his Christian pilgrim had isolated parts of it published, separate from the whole, and we knew nothing about the rest, should we not be liable to misinterpret his real meaning?

Another thing, I ask you to bear in mind, this book was written when my mind was at its culminating point of spiritual or mental torture, as it were, and this may serve in your mind as an excuse, for what may seem to you, as extravagant expressions; while to me, they were only the simple truth as I experienced it. No one can judge of these feelings correctly, until they have been in my exact place and position; and since this is an impossibility, you have a noble opportunity for the exercise of that charity towards me which you would like to have extended to yourselves in exchange of situations.

A person under extreme physical torture, gives utterance to strong expressions, indicating extreme anguish. Have we, on this account, any reason or right to call him insane? So a person in extreme spiritual or mental agony, has a right to express his feelings in language corresponding to his condition, and we have no right to call him insane for doing so.

Upon a calm and candid review of these scenes, from my present standpoint, I do maintain that the indignant feelings which I still cherish towards Mr. Packard, and did cherish towards Dr. McFarland, for their treatment of me, were not only natural, sane feelings, but also were Christian feelings. For Christ taught us, both by his teachings and example, that we ought to be angry at sin, and even hate it, with as marked a feeling as we loved good. “I, the Lord, hate evil.” And so should we. But at the same time we should not sin, by carrying this feeling so far, as to desire to revenge the wrong-doer, or punish him ourselves, for then we go too far to exercise the feeling of forgiveness towards him, even if he should repent. We are not then following Christ’s directions, “Be ye angry and sin not.” Now I am not conscious of ever cherishing one revengeful feeling towards my persecutors; while, at the same time, I have prayed to God, most fervently, that he would inflict a just punishment upon them for their sins against me, if they could not be brought to repent without. For my heart has ever yearned to forgive them, from the first to the last, on this gospel condition.

I think our government has been called to exercise the same kind of indignation towards those conspirators who have done all they can do to overthrow it; and yet, they stand ready to forgive them, and restore them to their confidence, on the condition of practical repentance. And I say further, that it would have been wrong and sinful for our government to have witheld this expression of their resentment towards them, and let them crush it out of existence, without trying to defend itself. I say it did right in defending itself with a resistance corresponding to the attack. So I, in trying to defend myself against this conspiracy against my personal liberty, have only acted on the self-defensive principle. Neither have I ever aggressed on the rights of others in my self-defence. I have simply defended my own rights.

In my opinion, it would be no more unreasonable to accuse the inmates of “Libby Prison” with insanity, because they expressed their resentment of the wrongs they were enduring in strong language, than it is to accuse me of insanity for doing the same thing while in my prison. For prison life is terrible under any circumstances. But to be confined amongst raving maniacs, for years in succession, is horrible in the extreme. For myself, I should not hesitate one moment which to choose, between a confinement in an insane asylum, as I was, or being burned at the stake. Death, under the most aggravated forms of torture, would now be instantly chosen by me, rather than life in an insane asylum. And whoever is disposed to call this “strong language,” I say, let them try it for themselves as I did, and then let them say whether the expression is any stronger than the case justifies. For until they have tried it, they can never imagine the horrors of the maniac’s ward in Jacksonville Insane Asylum.

In this connection it may be gratifying to my patrons and readers both, to tell them how I came to write such a book, instead of an ordinary book in the common style of language. It was because such a kind of book was presented to my mind, and no other was. It was under these circumstances that this kind of inspiration came upon me.

The day after my interview with the Trustees, the Doctor came to my room to see what was to be done. His first salutation was, “Well, Mrs. Packard, the Trustees seemed to think that you hit your mark with your gun.”

“Did they?” said I. “And was it that, which caused such roars and roars of laughter from the Trustees’ room after I left?”

“Yes. Your document amused them highly. Now, Mrs. Packard, I want you to give me a copy of that document, for what is worth hearing once is worth hearing twice.”

“Very well,” said I, “I will. And I should like to give the Trustees a copy, and send my father one, and some others of the Calvinistic clergy. But it is so tedious for me to copy anything, how would it do to get a few handbills or tracts printed, and send them where we please?”

“You may,” was his reply, “and I will pay the printer.”

“Shall I add anything to it; that is, what I said to the Trustees, and so forth?”

“Yes, tell the whole! Write what you please!”

With this most unexpected license of unrestricted liberty, I commenced re-writing and preparing a tract for the press. But before twenty-four hours had elapsed since this liberty license was granted to my hitherto prison-bound intellect, the vision of a big book began to dawn upon my mind, accompanied with the most delightful feelings of satisfaction with my undertaking. And the next time the Doctor called, I told him that it seemed to me that I must write a book—a big book—and “that is the worst of it,” said I, “I don’t want a large book, but I don’t see how I can cut it down, and do it justice. I want to lay two train of cars,” said I, “across this continent—the Christian and the Calvinistic. Then I want to sort out all the good and evil found in our family institutions, our Church and State institutions, and our laws, and all other departments of trades and professions, &c., and then come on with my two train of cars, and gather up this scattered freight, putting the evil into the Calvinistic train, and the good into the Christian train, and then engineer them both on to their respective terminus. These thoughts are all new and original with me, having never thought of such a thing, until this sort of mental vision came before my mind. What shall I do, Doctor?”

“Write it out just as you see it.”

He then furnished me with paper and gave directions to the attendants to let no one disturb me, and let me do just as I pleased. And I commenced writing out this mental vision; and in six week’s time I penciled the substance of “The Great Drama,” which, when written out for the press, covers two thousand five hundred pages! Can I not truly say my train of thought was engineered by the “Lightning Express?” This was the kind of inspiration under which my book was thought out and written. I had no books to aid me, but Webster’s large Dictionary and the Bible. It came wholly through my own reason and intellect, quickened into unusual activity by some spiritual influence, as it seemed to me. The production is a remarkable one, as well as the inditing of it a very singular phenomenon.

The estimation in which the book is held by that class in that Asylum who are “spirit mediums,” and whose only knowledge of its contents they wholly derive from their clairvoyant powers of reading it, without the aid of their natural vision, it may amuse a class of my readers to know. It was a fact the attendants told me of, that my book and its contents, was made a very common topic of remark in almost every ward in the house; while all this time, I was closeted alone in my room writing it, and they never saw me or my book. I would often be greatly amused by the remarks they made about it, as they were reported to me by witnesses who heard them. Such as these: “I have read Mrs. Packard’s book through, and it is the most amusing thing I ever read.” “Calvinism is dead—dead as a herring.” “Mrs. Packard drives her own team, and she drives it beautifully, too.” “The Packard books are all over the world, Norway is full of them. They perfectly devour the Packard books in Norway.” “Mrs. Packard finds a great deal of fault with the Laws and the Government, and she has reason to.” “She defends a higher and better law than our government has, and she’ll be in Congress one of these days, helping to make new laws!”

If this prophetess had said that woman’s influence would be felt in Congress, giving character to the laws, I might have said I believed she had uttered a true prophecy.

One very intelligent patient, who was a companion of mine, and had read portions of my book, came to my room one morning with some verses which she had penciled the night previous, by moonlight, on the fly-leaf of her Bible, which she requested me to read, and judge if they were not appropriate to the character of my book. She said she had been so impressed with the thought that she must get up and write something, that she could not compose herself to sleep until she had done so; when she wrote these verses, but could not tell a word she had written the next morning, except the first line. I here give her opinions of the book in her own poetic language, as she presented them to me.

LINES SUGGESTED BY THE PERUSAL OF THE GREAT DRAMA.

Affectionately presented to the “World’s Friend”—Mrs. E. P. W. Packard—by her friend, Mrs. Sophia N. B. Olsen.

Go, little book, go seek the world;
With banner new, with flag unfurled;
Go, teach mankind aspirings high,
By human immortality!
Thou canst not blush; thine open page
Will all our higher powers engage;
Thy name on every soul shall be,
Defender of humanity!
The poor, the sad, the sorrowing heart,
Shall joy to see thy book impart
Solace, to every tear-dimmed eye,
That’s wept, till all its tears are dry.
The palid sufferer on the bed
Of sickness, shall erect the head
And cry, “Life yet hath charms for me
When Packard’s books shall scattered be.”
Each prison victim of despair
Shall, in thy book, see written there
Another gospel to thy race,
Of sweet “Requiescat in pace.”
The time-worn wigs, with error gray,
Their dusty locks with pale dismay,
Shall shake in vain in wild despair,
To see their prostrate castles, where?
No mourner’s tear shall weep their doom,
No bard shall linger o’er their tomb,
No poet sing, but howl a strain
Farewell, thou doom’d, live not again.
Yes, oh, poor Ichabod must lay,
Deep buried in Aceldema!
His lost Consuelo shall rise
No more, to cheer his death-sealed eyes.
Then speed thy book, oh, sister, speed,
The waiting world thy works must read;
Bless’d be the man who cries, “Go on,”
“Hinder it not, it shall be gone.”
Go, little book, thy destiny
Excelsior shall ever be;
A fadeless wreath shall crown thy brow,
O writer of that book! e’en now.
The wise shall laugh—the foolish cry—
Both wise and foolish virgins, why?
Because the first will wiser grow,
The foolish ones some wisdom show.
The midnight cry is coming soon,
The midnight lamp will shine at noon;
I fear for some, who snoring lie,
Then rise, ye dead, to judgment fly.
The stars shall fade away—the sun
Himself grow dim with age when done
Shining upon our frigid earth;
But Packard’s book shall yet have birth,
But never death, on this our earth.

Jacksonville Lunatic Asylum, Jan. 27, 1863.

So much for the opinions of those whom this age call crazy, but who are, in my opinion, no more insane than all that numerous class of our day, who are called “spirit mediums;” and to imprison them as insane, simply because they possess these spiritual gifts or powers, is a barbarity, which coming generations will look upon with the same class of emotions, as we now look upon the barbarities attending Salem Witchcraft. It is not only barbarous and cruel to deprive them of their personal liberty, but it is also a crime against humanity, for which our government must be held responsible at God’s bar of justice.

I will now give some of the opinions of a few who know something of the character of my book, whom the world recognize as sane. Dr. McFarland used to sometimes say, “Who knows but you were sent here to write an allegory for the present age, as Bunyan was sent to Bedford Jail to write his allegory?” Dr. Tenny, the assistant physician, once said to me as he was pocketing a piece of my waste manuscript, “I think your book may yet become so popular, and acquire so great notoriety, that it will be considered an honor to have a bit of the paper on which it was written!”

I replied, “Dr. Tenny, you must not flatter me.”

Said he, “I am not flattering, I am only uttering my honest opinions.”

Said another honorable gentleman who thought he understood the character of the book, “Mrs. Packard, I believe your book will yet be read in our Legislative Halls and in Congress, as a specimen of the highest form of law ever sent to our world, and coming millions will read your history, and bless you as one who was afflicted for humanity’s sake.” It must be acknowledged that this intelligent gentleman had some solid basis on which he could defend this extravagant opinion, namely: that God does sometimes employ “the weak things of the world to confound the mighty.”

These expressions must all be received as mere human opinions, and nothing more. The book must stand just where its own intrinsic merits place it. If it is ever published, it, like all other mere human productions, will find its own proper level, and no opinions can change its real intrinsic character. The great question with me is, how can I soonest earn the $2,500.00 necessary to print it with? Should I ever be so fortunate as to gain that amount by the sale of this pamphlet, I should feel that my great life-work was done, so that I might feel at full liberty to rest from my labors. But until then, I cheerfully labor and toil to accomplish it.

NOTE OF THANKS TO THE PRESS.

In this connection, I deem it right and proper that I should acknowledge the aid I have received from the public Press—those newspapers whose manliness has prompted them to espouse the cause of woman, by using their columns to help me on in my arduous enterprise. My object can only be achieved, by enlightening the public mind into the need and necessities of the case. The people do not make laws until they see the need of them. Now, when one case is presented showing the need of a law to meet it, and this is found to be a representative case, that is, a case fairly representing an important class, then, and only till then, is the public mind prepared to act efficiently in reference to it. And as the Press is the People’s great engine of power in getting up an agitation on any subject of public interest, it is always a great and desirable object to secure its patronage in helping it forward. This help it has been my good fortune to secure, both in Illinois and Massachusetts.

And my most grateful acknowledgments are especially due the Journal of Commerce of Chicago, also the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Times, the Post, the New Covenant, and the North Western Christian Advocate. All these Chicago Journals aided me more or less in getting up an agitation in Illinois, besides a multitude of other papers throughout that State too numerous to mention.

Some of the papers in Massachusetts, to whom my acknowledgments are due, are the Boston Journal, the Transcript, the Traveller, the Daily Advertiser, the Courier, the Post, the Recorder, the Commonwealth, the Investigator, the Nation, the Universalist, the Christian Register, the Congregationalist, the Banner of Light, and the Liberator. All these Boston Journals have aided me, more or less, in getting up an excitement in Massachusetts, and bringing the subject before the Massachusett’s Legislature. Many other papers throughout the State have noticed my cause with grateful interest.

As the public came to apprehend the merits of my case, and look upon it as a mirror, wherein the laws in relation to married women are reflected, they will doubtless join with me in thanks to these Journals who have been used as means of bringing this light before them.

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