Although the corollary of her recent court victory was that Theophilus was guilty of cruel conduct, in the eyes of most courts, a husband’s abuse of his wife did not make him unsuitable to raise children. An 1857 case saw an abusive father win custody, even though his wife was still breastfeeding. The mother was denied all rights, even as her milk dried in her breasts.
Though it was a slim shot, the lawyers still advised that a divorce was Elizabeth’s only chance. Not only could she then sue for custody, but she would also be free of the danger of another committal at her husband’s hands. In addition, she would likely win a financial settlement. Theophilus had left her with nothing; he’d even stolen Elizabeth’s good clothes. The only way to redress the balance was divorce. So her lawyers, friends, and even the Kankakee Gazette all urged her to consider it. Still, she resisted, in part because she felt she could not “conscientiously get a divorce, as I am a Bible woman.”13
Come January 21, 1864, her situation was no clearer. The headlines in the papers that day spoke straight to her: “When Will the War End?”14
It proved a war Elizabeth was forced to fight on several fronts. If she’d thought that her husband and McFarland would be content to let her court victory lie, she’d have been mistaken. Neither was the type of man to accept a judgment that had gone against him. And from January 29, their comeback began.
They didn’t launch a legal appeal, however. Theophilus did instruct his lawyers to do so, but they refused, telling him frankly it would not succeed. Instead, Elizabeth’s enemies fought back through the press.
They almost needed to, for the sake of their own reputations. All the early publicity was in Elizabeth’s favor. “Depravity of a Clergyman”15 ran the headline in the Chicago Tribune, the article below it condemning McFarland for having been “a willing tool to aid in this nefarious scheme.”16
McFarland responded the very next day, in a letter published by the same paper. “I may here state explicitly,” he wrote, “that I have no question whatever that Mrs. Packard was an insane person…and that her committal here was as justifiable as in the majority of those now here…
“That many persons—a Court and jury, even—who see the first display of her pleasing address…should hold a different opinion does not surprise me… [But] I have no hesitation in saying that any person of good intelligence, who has had sufficient opportunity of judging, will, sooner or later, share [my] opinion.”17
The doctor totally rejected the court’s verdict. He hadn’t been shaken by it at all. It was the jury that was wrong.
With his usual arrogance, he thought it couldn’t possibly be him.
Elizabeth thought the letter outrageous. She wrote to the Tribune herself to rebut the many falsehoods in McFarland’s account, but the newspaper refused to publish it. Worse, other newspapers republished McFarland’s note, not only in Illinois but also Massachusetts.
In that state, her husband started his own PR campaign as soon as he and his three youngest children had settled into his sister Marian’s house. （Samuel, now sixteen, moved to Chicago when his father fled Manteno.） On February 5, 1864, Theophilus wrote to his local paper to “respectfully request the public to suspend their judgment”18 in the case should they hear rumors of it. Like McFarland, he blasted the “sham”19 verdict, denigrating the “illegal and oppressive [court] proceedings”20 and “the impudent, violent mob spirit [which] prevented a fair trial.”21
He was tireless in his defense of himself. Any time he spied a pro-Elizabeth article in either state, he wrote to complain and offer his own account, complete with “the reliable testimony of some fifty witnesses”22—the petitions and certificates he’d been collecting since 1860 from his partisan friends.
His efforts paid off. In Massachusetts, he was swift to reconnect with his former professional association—they happily supported him, despite the court verdict—and one of these colleagues gave him an in with the boss of the Chicago Tribune. This friend told the paper, “I see not how the poor man can have justice done him…unless his defense is published”23—as though Theophilus was the victim, not his falsely imprisoned wife.
Amid this media melee, Elizabeth was left in the cold. While Theophilus was being gifted introductions to powerful pressmen, she could not even get a simple letter published. It seemed impossible for her to fight back. Her adversaries were “two talented men, occupying high social positions of honor and trust.”24 In contrast, she’d spent the past two decades as a housewife. She had no professional association or former colleagues she could call upon for help. How could she possibly win?