She wanted, herself, to focus on her greater ambition: publishing her book. Having hit a brick wall with publishers, she’d determined to self-publish. In truth, the independence suited her. “I shan’t trouble myself at all to go around and ask…if I have written the right sort of book… The whole world…may blow at it—but they can’t blow it away… It won’t be kept down, any more than its author can be!”8
However, the cold hard facts of commerce were an anchor to these dreams she did not anticipate. To her shock, the prices she was quoted to print the book—even just a single volume of it—were hundreds of dollars, far out of her price range, even though she hoped soon to have some income from the reproof. The only capital Elizabeth had was her “health, education, and energy.”9 She couldn’t possibly afford it.
Yet she felt an “invincible determination”10 to prove herself. She would not retreat to Manteno and become a burden on her friends. She could not seek help from Angeline; sadly, her cousin had died in December 1863. She would definitely not return to Theophilus or seek shelter with her father, because Samuel Ware was still supporting her husband, believing his summation of the “sham”11 trial.
No: she would do this alone. She would support herself with her writing. She truly believed she could do it. She just needed to come up with a plan.
And though it took her “much study,”12 she finally devised what she hoped might prove the solution.
Today, we would call it crowdfunding.
She planned to sell tickets for her book, in advance of its printing, to raise the capital required. It was still no easy task. “I must first inspire in my patron sufficient confidence in my veracity, ability, and perseverance,” she realized, “to induce him to pay out fifty cents for a ticket, simply upon the promise of a stranger, that it should be redeemed in three months by a book as yet unprinted.”13
And she would need to convince fourteen hundred people to invest.
But if she didn’t try, she would never know. So she produced a series of small visiting cards upon which was printed, “The Bearer is Entitled to the first Volume of Mrs. Packard’s Book… None are genuine without my signature.”14 And on March 23, 1864, she took out an advertisement in the Chicago Tribune.
The subscriber wishes to give notice to her friends in America that the first volume of her book is to be issued by the Chicago press in May… All those who wish a copy for themselves or others, are hereby requested to forward their names to “Mrs. E. P. W. Packard”… And to my friends I would say that, since I am left PENNILESS, by the desertion of my husband, and the laws of Illinois, it would be a great favor TO ME, should you send the money with your names, as I am entirely dependent upon this mode of raising the money to meet the expense of getting my book into print… Friends of humanity and the oppressed, I wait your response to this notice.15
And then she went from door to door, selling as many tickets and pamphlets as she could, relying on the simple power of her personality to entice readers to support her work.
It was hard graft, but she had little choice. She could not be like her husband, firing off letters to well-connected friends. She had to make those friends she did not have, spending day after day telling and then retelling her story, always hoping to get another sale, to win another heart, to find another ally for her ongoing fight.
It was true that many more women were seeking work in wartime. But this kind of public work was definitely not the norm. With no male escort, Elizabeth simply knocked on doors and pitched herself to people without fear or favor. There was stepping out of the domestic sphere—and then there was catapulting out of it, with pompoms twirling and a brass band playing in the background. Elizabeth, with her public advertisements and her in-person pitches, had definitely chosen the latter.
It was a highly risky strategy, not only because of the association of “unnatural” female behavior and madness, but also because of the possible immoral connotations. After all, the very term public woman originally meant a prostitute; a woman working outside the home without a male protector “risked ruining her reputation irreparably.”16 As Elizabeth enthusiastically embarked on her new career in Chicago, someone was keeping a very close and very horrified eye on her activities.
“I write in behalf of my mother and your only daughter Elizabeth,” Toffy wrote to Elizabeth’s father on March 29, “and if you have any regard for her, and wish to have her saved from ruining herself, temporally and spiritually, I hope you will take this matter in hand, and do something effective at once… [Please] adopt some plan to get her into proper keeping.”17