She’d begun campaigning back in January 1865, keen to get going with what she saw as a God-given mission. Yet she’d known nothing about “the complicated machinery of legislation”8 and had been forced to embark “ignorantly…upon the work of reforming the laws under which we live.”9 Yet if she ever flagged, she would ask herself, “Where do you find courage? Where do you find dauntless perseverance?”10 and answer her own question resolutely: “In woman!”11
Her campaigning had begun in Massachusetts, the state to which her husband had fled and where her youngest children now resided. Elizabeth had wanted to be close to them—hoping perhaps for shared access or even just occasional visits—but Massachusetts’s commitment law was almost identical to that of Illinois: husbands needed only two doctors’ certificates to lock up their wives. As Elizabeth saw it, unless she changed that law, “another kidnapping [was] inevitable.”12 The verdict of the Illinois court meant nothing in Massachusetts.
So, using her powers of persuasion, she’d enlisted a legal whiz, Samuel Sewall, to guide her through the intimidating maze. Aged sixty-five, Sewall had thick white hair that came down to his shoulders and sideburns to rival an ill-pruned bush. Though he was a passionate abolitionist—one of the founders of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and a supporter of the Underground Railroad—it was actually women’s rights that were closest to the lawyer’s heart; he ultimately assisted in passing over 150 statutes for their emancipation. “Our society [is] debased,” he declared, “because the two sexes do not associate as equals.”13
Sewall was already intimately familiar with the abuse to which the current commitment law could be put. He’d previously represented a Mrs. Denny, who’d been banished to an asylum after daring to ask her husband for a divorce. Sewall had made his own attempts to improve the law in recent years; when Elizabeth came calling, the pair decided to work together.
It was Sewall who taught Elizabeth the tricks of her new trade. Together, they’d unleashed publicity for their cause and personally lobbied the legislature, with Elizabeth appearing in person before a joint special committee to plead her case. Sewall also drafted a petition to drum up public support, and although only his name appeared on the paperwork they eventually submitted to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, it was Elizabeth who pounded the streets of Boston to secure the signatures required, selling yet more books as she did.
As she’d been in Illinois while crowdfunding, she was absolutely fearless. Boston’s Custom House, Navy Yard, and Common Council were among her targets, and she canvassed these masculine worlds as though a woman had every right to be there. She befriended sailors and engineers, counting room clerks and aldermen, doctors, lawyers, and bank directors too. Almost every man to whom she appealed treated her “in a most generous, and praiseworthy manner,”14 but she always had a ready response in case of any criticism: “I say I have just as good a right to discuss politics as a man, if I am a woman.”15
On May 16, 1865, the Massachusetts legislature had amended the insanity law. Partly thanks to Elizabeth’s impassioned campaign, the law was strengthened to protect those being sectioned, rendering “secret frameups more difficult by informing a number of interested persons of the event.”16
The new law was the crowning glory for Elizabeth in what had proved a tumultuous spring for her country, with the passing of the Thirteenth Amendment—abolishing slavery—President Lincoln’s subsequent assassination, and the eventual end of the Civil War. Elizabeth had been in Massachusetts for the latter, listening in delight to the patriotic bands that had begun spontaneously to play and to the joyous two-hundred-gun salutes. The celebrations were like “a dozen ‘Fourths of July’ concentrated into one day.”17
Although there was no two-hundred-gun salute for Elizabeth’s victory, it was no less momentous for that. Because her political triumph gave her immense confidence—confidence that she drew on now as she reached the top of the staircase of the Governor’s Mansion and ventured through its wide and curved front door. She entered with ease; its shape had been specifically designed to accommodate the sometimes six-foot diameter of ladies’ hoop skirts.
In the lobby, however, her smooth passage suddenly came to a halt. Here—without an invitation to admit her—she had to pause and patiently await an audience with the governor. She settled down, prepared to wait for as long as it might take.