And in this connection I feel conscientiously bound, in defence of my kindred, to say, that some of these certificates are mere forgeries in its strict sense; that is, they were drafted by Mr. Packard, himself, and most adroitly urged upon the individual whose signature he desired to obtain, and thus his logic, being based in a falsehood, which was used as a truth, and received as such, they are thus made to certify to what was not the real truth. My minor children’s certificates are the mere echoes of their father’s will and dictation. He has tried to buy the signatures of my two oldest sons, now of age, in Chicago, by offering them some of his abundant surplus clothing, from his missionary boxes, if they would only certify that their mother was insane. But these noble sons have too much moral rectitude to sell their consciences for clothes or gold. Instead of being abettors in their father’s crimes, they have, and do still, maintain a most firm stand in defence of me. And for this manly act of filial piety towards me, their father has disinherited both of them, as he has me, from our family rights.
Another thing, it is no new business for Mr. Packard to practice forgery. This assertion I can prove by his own confession. Not long before I was exiled from my home, he said to me one day, “I have just signed a note, which, if brought against me in law, would place me in a penitentiary; but I think I am safe, as I have fixed it.” Again, Mr. Packard sent a great many forged letters to the Superintendent of the Asylum, while I was there, professing to come from a different source, wherein the writer urged, very strongly, the necessity of keeping me in an asylum, and begging him, most pathetically, to keep me there, not only for Mr. Packard’s sake, but also for his children’s sake, and community’s sake, and, lastly, for the cause of Christ’s sake! Dr. McFarland used to come to me for an explanation of this singular phenomenon. I would promptly tell him the letters are a forgery—the very face of them so speaks—for who would think of a minister in Ohio writing, self-moved, to a Superintendent in Illinois, begging of him to keep another man’s wife in his Asylum! Either these letters were exact copies of Mr. Packard’s, with the exception of the signature, or, they were entirely drafted from Mr. Packard’s statement, and made so as to be an echo of Mr. Packard’s wishes, but seeming to be a self-moved act of the writer’s own mind and wishes.
O, how fruitful is a depraved heart in devising lies, and masking them with the semblance of truth! and how many lies it takes to defend one! The lie he was thus trying to defend was, that I was insane, when I was not, and all this gigantic frame work of certificates and testimony became necessary as props to sustain it.
I now give the testimony of my lawyer, who, after witnessing the revelations of the court room, thus alludes to this subject in his reply to Dr. McFarland’s letter. “The certificates produced, fully attesting her insanity, before she was admitted, I suspect were forgeries of the pious Packard, altered to suit the occasion, and your too generous disposition to rely upon the statements made to you, was taken advantage of again, and they were imposed upon you, without the critical examination their importance demanded.”
“Mrs. Packard is alienated from her kindred, and even her own father and husband.”
I will confess I am alienated from such manifestations of love as they showed me while in the Asylum; that is, from none at all. Not one, except my adopted sister, and my two sons at Chicago, ever made an attempt to visit me, or even wrote me scarcely one line. I do say, this was rather cold sympathy for one passing through such scenes as I was called to pass through. This fact was not only an enigma to myself, but it was so to all my Asylum friends, and even to the Doctor himself, if I can believe his own words. He would often say to me, “Mrs. Packard, who are your friends? have you any in the wide world? If so, why do they not look after you?”
I used at first to say, I have many friends, and no enemies, except Mr. Packard, that I know of in the whole world. All my relatives love me tenderly. But after watching in vain for three years of prison life for them to show me some proof of it, I changed my song, and owned up, I had no friends worth the name; for my adversity had tried or tested their love, and it had all been found wanting—entirely wanting. So it looked to me from that stand point. And I still insist upon it, this was a sane conclusion. For what is that love worth, that can’t defend its friend in adversity? I say it is not worth the name of love.
But it must be remembered, I saw then only one side of the picture. The other side I could not see until I saw my friends, and looked from their standpoint. Then I found that the many letters I had written had never reached them; for Mr. Packard had instructed Dr. McFarland, and had insisted upon it, that not a single letter should be sent to any of my friends, not even my father, or sons, without reading it himself, and then sending it to him to read, before sending it; and so he must do with all the letters sent to me; and the result was, scarcely none were delivered to me, nor were mine sent to my friends. But instead of this, a brisk correspondence was kept up between Dr. McFarland and Mr. Packard, who both agreed in representing me as very insane; so much so, that my good demanded that I be kept entirely aloof from their sympathy. I have seen and read these letters, and now, instead of blaming my friends for regarding me as insane, I don’t see how they could have come to any other conclusion. From their standpoint, they acted judiciously, and kindly.
They were anxious to aid the afflicted minister to the extent they could, in restoring reason to his poor afflicted, maniac wife, and they thought the Superintendent understood his business, and with him, and her kind husband to superintend, they considered I must be well cared for.