Marital Power Exemplified in Mrs. Packard's Trial, and Self-Defence from the Charge of Insanity Part 6

JOHN STILES, _Foreman_.

DANIEL G. BEAN.

F. G. HUTCHINSON.

V. H. YOUNG.

G. M. LYONS.

THOMAS MUNCEY.

H. HIRSHBERG.

NELSON JERVAIS.

WILLIAM HYER.

GEO. H. ANDREWS.

J. F. MAFIT.

LEMUEL MILK.

Cheers rose from every part, of the house; the ladies waved their handkerchiefs, and pressed around Mrs. Packard, and extended her their congratulations. It was sometime before the outburst of applause could be checked. When order was restored, the counsel for Mrs. Packard moved the court, that she be discharged. Thereupon the court ordered the clerk to enter the following order:

STATE OF ILLINOIS, } _ss._ KANKAKEE COUNTY, }

It is hereby ordered that Mrs. Elizabeth P. W. Packard be relieved from all restraint incompatible with her condition as a sane woman.

C. R. STARR, _Judge of the 20th Judicial Circuit of the State of Illinois_

January 18, 1864.

Thus ended the trial of this remarkable case. During each day of the proceedings the court-room was crowded to excess by an anxious audience of ladies and gentlemen, who are seldom in our courts. The verdict of the jury was received with applause, and hosts of friends crowded upon Mrs.

Packard to congratulate her upon her release.

During the past two months, Mr. Packard had locked her up in her own house, fastened the windows outside, and carried the key to the door, and made her a close prisoner. He was maturing a plan to immure her in an Asylum in Ma.s.sachusetts, and for that purpose was ready to start on the Thursday before the writ was sued out, when his plan was disclosed to Mrs.

Packard by a letter he accidentally dropped in her room, written by his sister in Ma.s.sachusetts, telling him the route he should take, and that a carriage would be ready at the station to put her in and convey her to the Asylum.

Vigorous action became necessary, and she communicated this startling intelligence through her window to some ladies who had come to see her, and were refused admission into the house.

On Monday morning, and before the defense had rested their case, Mr.

Packard left the State, bag and baggage, for parts unknown, having first mortgaged his property for all it is worth to his sister and other parties.

We cannot do better than close this report with the following editorial from the Kankakee Gazette, of January 21, 1864:

MRS. PACKARD.

The case of this lady, which has attracted so much attention and excited so much interest for ten days past, was decided on Monday evening last and resulted, as almost every person thought it must, in a complete vindication of her sanity. The jury retired on Monday evening, after hearing the arguments of the counsel; and after a brief consultation, they brought in a verdict that Mrs. Packard is a _sane_ woman.

Thus has resulted an investigation which Mrs. Packard has long and always desired should be had, but which her cruel husband has ever sternly refused her. She has always asked and earnestly pleaded for a jury trial of her case, but her relentless persecutor has ever turned a deaf ear to her entreaties, and flagrantly violated all the dictates of justice and humanity.

She has suffered the alienation of friends and relatives; the shock of a kidnapping by her husband and his posse when forcibly removed to the Asylum; has endured three years incarceration in that Asylum--upon the general treatment, in which there is severe comment in the State, and which in her special case was aggravatingly unpleasant and ill-favored; returning to her home she found her husband's saintly blood still congealed, a winter of perpetual frown on his face, and the sad dull monotony of "insane, insane," escaping his lips in all his communications to and concerning her; her young family, the youngest of the four at home being less than four years of age, these children--over whose slumbers she had watched, and whose wailings she had hushed with all a mother's care and tenderness--had been taught to look upon her as insane, and they were not to respect the counsels or heed the voice of a maniac just loosed from the Asylum, doom sealed by official certificates.

Soon her aberration of mind led her to seek some of her better clothing carefully kept from her by her husband, which very woman-like act was seized by him as an excuse for confining her in her room, and depriving her of her apparel, and excluding her lady friends. Believing that he was about to again forcibly take her to an asylum, four responsible citizens of that village made affidavit of facts which caused the investigation as to her sanity or insanity. During the whole of the trial she was present, and counseled with her attorneys in the management of the case.

Notwithstanding the severe treatment she has received for nearly four years past, the outrages she has suffered, the wrong to her nature she has endured, she deported herself during the trial as one who is not only not insane, but as one possessing intellectual endowments of a high order, and an equipoise and control of mind far above the majority of human kind. Let the sapient Dr. Brown, who gave a certificate of insanity after a short conversation with her, and which certificate was to be used in aid of her incarceration for life--suffer as she has suffered, endure what she has endured, and the world would be deprived of future clinical revealings from his gigantic mind upon the subject of the spleen, and he would, to a still greater extent than in the past, "fail to illuminate" the public as to the virtues and glories of the martyr who is "watching and waiting" in Canada.

The heroic motto: "suffer and be strong," is fairly ill.u.s.trated in her case. While many would have opposed force to his force, displayed frantic emotions of displeasure at such treatment, or sat convulsed and "maddened with the pa.s.sion of her part," she meekly submitted to the tortures of her bigoted tormentor, trusting and believing in G.o.d's Providence the hour of her vindication and her release from thraldom would come. And now the fruit of her suffering and persecution have all the autumn glory of perfection.

"One who walked From the throne's splendor to the b.l.o.o.d.y block, Said: 'This completes my glory' with a smile Which still illuminates men's thoughts of her."

Feeling the accusations of his guilty conscience, seeing the meshes of the net with which he had kept her surrounded were broken, and a storm-cloud of indignation about to break over his head in pitiless fury, the intolerant Packard, after enc.u.mbering their property with trust-deeds, and despoiling her of her furniture and clothing, left the country. Let him wander! with the mark of infamy upon his brow, through far-off States, where distance and obscurity may diminish till the grave shall cover the wrongs it cannot heal.

It is to be hoped Mrs. Packard will make immediate application for a divorce, and thereby relieve herself of a repet.i.tion of the wrongs and outrages she has suffered by him who for the past four years has only used the marriage relation to persecute and torment her in a merciless and unfeeling manner.

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 Ma.s.sachusetts, 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 Ma.s.sachusetts, 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 Ma.s.sachusetts' laws gave him the absolute custody of my person as well as Illinois' laws. He went to South Deerfield, Ma.s.sachusetts, 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 const.i.tuted 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 a.s.sociates 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, Ma.s.sachusetts, that, so far as he knew, he had treated his daughter generally with propriety!! This certificate served as a pa.s.sport 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 p.r.o.nounced _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 cl.u.s.tering 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 G.o.d, 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 doc.u.ment 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, Ma.s.sachusetts, 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 Ma.s.sachusetts, 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 Ma.s.sachusetts, 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 Ma.s.sachusetts, where he now is fairly out of the mother's reach."