But this day’s speech was much more personal. It was her friends she was fighting for: women she had known and loved and who, if she failed today, would be destined potentially to lifelong imprisonment. If she failed, too, there was every chance the assembly would follow McFarland’s advice and roll back the flawed law of 1865. That left even Elizabeth herself with no protection, liable once again to be locked up because of her beliefs.
Even now, McFarland was telling anyone who would listen that she was certifiably insane. He certainly felt she would be better off behind barred windows, never again to have a voice she could use against him.
But she had a voice today.
This was her chance to use it.
She felt nervous, in case she was not up to the job. Yet Elizabeth was a born public speaker who often found that “after the first sentence was fairly spoken, such a feeling of perfect, quiet self-assurance took possession of me, that I, from that moment, felt as much at my ease as if I was talking to parlor guests.”1
And from that moment, it became almost easy.
“Gentlemen of Illinois General Assembly,” she began as the men milled before her: one woman standing tall and strong to make her case.
Thankful for the privilege granted me, I will simply state that I desire to explain my bill rather than defend it, since I am satisfied it needs no defense to secure its passage… [I ask you to] use my martyrdom…to herald this most glorious of all reforms…
We married women…have had our personal liberty, for sixteen years, suspended on…one man’s opinion; and possibly [McFarland] may be found to be a fallible man, and capable of corruption.2
She planted that idea almost lightly, scattering it as a seed in a garden that was already beginning to flower. Because if all she was saying was true, then surely an investigation should follow? What was really going on behind those walls?
“Now, if the Doctor was required to prove his patients insane, from their own conduct, there would be a shadow of justice attached to his individual judgment,” she went briskly on,
but while this law allows him to call them insane, and treat them as insane, without evidence of insanity, where is the justice of such a decision? You do not hang a person without proof from the accused’s own actions that he is guilty of the charge which forfeits his life. So the personal liberty of married women should not be sacrificed without proof that they are insane, from their own conduct…
To my certain knowledge, there were married women there when I left, more than three years since, who were not insane then at all, and they are still retained there, as hopelessly insane patients, on the simple strength of the above ground of evidence; and it is my womanly sympathy for this class of prisoners that has moved me to come, alone…to see if I could not possibly induce this legislature to compassionate their case: for it is under your laws, gentlemen, I have suffered, and they are still suffering, and it is to this legislature of 1867 that we apply for a legal remedy.
She took a breath, hoping her words were sinking in. She turned next to read an extract from McFarland’s own letter that had been published in the Chicago Tribune in January 1864.
“Dr. McFarland writes, ‘I have no question but that Mrs. Packard’s committal here was as justifiable as in the majority of those now here,’” she quoted. Elizabeth was like an expert lawyer as she pointed out the corollary. “Gentlemen, your Superintendent’s own statement verifies it, that I am not the only one who has been so unjustly imprisoned there.”
Point nailed, she continued breathlessly,
In the name and behalf of those now there, I beg of this body that you extend to such a fair trial or a discharge… Only think of putting your own delicate, sensitive daughter through the scenes I have been put through. Do you think she would have come out unharmed?… We [women] have an individuality of our own…will you not protect our personal liberty, while in the lawful, ladylike exercise of it?
She was eloquent and passionate as never before. “Fear nothing so much as the sin of simply not doing your duty,” she urged, “in defence of the heaven-born principles of liberty and justice to all humankind.”
As her speech came toward its close, she turned her attention once again to the reality of life inside the asylum. With a push to the politicians that was so slight it was barely palpable, she lightly said,
Gentlemen, permit me also to say, that when you have once liberated the sane inmates of that hospital, and effectually fortified the rights of the sane citizens of Illinois against false commitments there, you will have taken the first progressive step in the right direction, in relation to this great humanitarian reform.