In canvassing for my books various important questions have been propounded to me, which the preceding Narrative of Events does not fully answer.
First Question.
“Why, Mrs. Packard, do you not get a divorce?”
Because, in the first place, I do not want to be a divorced woman; but, on the contrary, I wish to be a married woman, and have my husband for my protector; for I do not like this being divorced from my own home. I want a home to live in, and I prefer the one I have labored twenty one years myself to procure, and furnished to my own taste and mind. Neither do I like this being divorced from my own children. I want to live with my dear children, whom I have borne and nursed, reared and educated, almost entirely by my own unwearied indefatigable exertions; and I love them, with all the fondness of a mother’s undying love, and no place is home to me in this wide world without them. And again, I have done nothing to deserve this exclusion from the rights and privileges of my own dear home; but on the contrary, my untiring fidelity to the best interests of my family for twenty-one years of healthful, constant service, having never been sick during this time so as to require five dollars doctor’s bill to be paid for me or my six children, and having done all the housework, sewing, nursing, and so forth, of my entire family for twenty-one years, with no hired girl help, except for only nine months, during all this long period of constant toil and labor. I say, this self-sacrifizing devotion to the best interests of my family and home, deserve and claim a right to be protected in it, at least, so long as my good conduct continues, instead of being divorced from it, against my own will or consent. In short, what I want is, protection in my home, instead of a divorce from it. I do not wish to drive Mr. Packard from his own home, and exclude him from all its rights and privileges—neither do I want he should treat me in this manner, especially so long as he himself claims that I have always been a most kind, patient, devoted wife and mother. He even claims as his justification of his course, that I am so good a woman, and he loves me so well, that he wants to save me from fatal errors!
It is my opinions—my religious opinions—and those alone, he makes an occasion for treating me as he has. He frankly owned to me, that he was putting me into an Asylum so that my reputation for being an insane person might destroy the influence of my religious opinions; and I see in one letter which he wrote to my father, he mentions this as the chief evidence of my insanity. He writes: “Her many excellences and past services I highly appreciate; but she says she has widely departed from, or progressed beyond, her former religious views and sentiments—and I think it is too true!!” Here is all the insanity he claims, or has attempted to prove.
Now comes the question: Is this a crime for which I ought to be divorced from all the comforts and privileges of my own dear home?
To do this,—that is, to get a divorce—would it not be becoming an accomplice in crime, by doing the very deed which he is so desirous of having done, namely: to remove me from my family, for fear of the contaminating influence of my new views? Has a married woman no rights at all? Can she not even think her own thoughts, and speak her own words, unless her thoughts and expressions harmonize with those of her husband? I think it is high time the merits of this question should be practically tested, on a proper basis, the basis of truth—of facts. And the fact, that I have been not only practically divorced from my own home and children, but also incarcerated for three years in a prison, simply for my religious belief, by the arbitrary will of my husband, ought to raise the question, as to what are the married woman’s rights, and what is her protection? And it is to this practical issue I have ever striven to force this question. And this issue I felt might be reached more directly and promptly by the public mind, by laying the necessities of the case before the community, and by a direct appeal to them for personal protection—instead of getting a divorce for my protection. I know that by so doing, I have run a great risk of losing my liberty again. Still, I felt that the great cause of married woman’s rights might be promoted by this agitation; and so far as my own feelings were concerned, I felt willing to suffer even another martyrdom in this cause, if so be, my sisters in the bonds of marital power might be benefited thereby.
I want and seek protection, as a married woman—not divorce, in order to escape the abuses of marital power—that is, I want protection from the abuse of marital power, not a divorce from it. I can live in my home with my husband, if he will only let me do so; but he will not suffer it, unless I recant my religious belief. Cannot religious bigotry under such manifestations, receive some check under our government, which is professedly based on the very principle of religious tolerance to all? Cannot there be laws enacted by which a married woman can stand on the same platform as a married man—that is, have an equal right, at least, to the protection of her inalienable rights? And is not this our petition for protection founded in justice and humanity?
Is it just to leave the weakest and most defenceless of these two parties wholly without the shelter of law to shield her, while the strongest and most independent has all the aid of the legal arm to strengthen his own? Nay, verily, it is not right or manly for our man government thus to usurp the whole legal power of self-protection and defence, and leave confiding, trusting woman wholly at the mercy of this gigantic power. For perverted men will use this absolute power to abuse the defenceless, rather than protect them; and abuse of power inevitably leads to the contempt of its victim. A man who can trample on all the inalienable rights of his wife, will, by so doing, come to despise her as an inevitable consequence of wrong doing. Woman, too, is a more spiritual being than a man, and is therefore a more sensitive being, and a more patient sufferer than a man; therefore she, more than any other being, needs protection, and she should find it in that government she has sacrificed so much to uphold and sustain.
Again, I do not believe in the divorce principle. I say it is a “Secession” principle. It undermines the very vital principle of our Union, and saps the very foundation of our social and civil obligations. For example. Suppose the small, weak and comparatively feeble States in our Union were not protected by the Government in any of their State rights, while the large, strong, and powerful ones had their State rights fully guaranteed and secured to them. Would not this state of the Union endanger the rights of the defenceless ones? and endanger the Union also? Could these defenceless States resort to any other means of self-defence from the usurpation of the powerful States than that of secession? But secession is death to the Union—death to the principles of love and harmony which ought to bind the parts in one sacred whole.