“O, yes, Mrs. Grere,” Elizabeth now thought, “there is a power which can make him do right.” She concluded fiercely, “Let justice…unsheathe its flaming sword.”20
The day after the committee was appointed, Elizabeth’s personal liberty bill had its third and final reading in the state senate. Women were not allowed on the senate floor for votes. When Elizabeth came to the senate chamber, therefore, she had to climb the wooden staircase outside. She took a seat in the gallery upstairs, trying not to have her view blocked by the room’s many ornate pillars.
By now, it really was her bill. Whereas in Massachusetts, when she’d first started her political campaigning, her petition had been filed under Samuel Sewall’s name, now, in the press at least, the woman and the legal reform had become one. “Mrs. Packard’s Personal Liberty Law”21 ran the headlines. Some meant it dismissively, intending to weaken the bill’s integrity by association with a woman’s name, but Elizabeth claimed it as her own with pride.
She could barely breathe as the senate came to vote. She’d had a long fight to get to this moment, experiencing various acts of administrative sabotage along the way; the bill itself even went physically AWOL. Even now that it was finally before the senate for its third reading, it did not mean it would pass. The general assembly was about to conclude its business for the session, and they’d spent all day killing bills, ordering that they not be passed as there was no time to get them through. Elizabeth feared hers might meet the same fate, even though she’d personally lobbied as many senators as she could to extract a promise that they’d vote in favor.
By this point, it was late in the day. Earlier, Elizabeth had been joined in the gallery by many other women who’d been eager to see this act for their protection passed, but it was now the supper hour, and they’d retired home to cook for their husbands. It was the time for lamp lighting, the windows to the outside dark eyes that seemed to promise anything but freedom. Below where Elizabeth sat in the gallery, the senate chamber seemed gloomy, and some of the senators may have started lighting the candles on their desks. It was dizzying to look down upon those circular lines of tables, all arranged around the speaker’s stand, all crammed with men who really just wanted to get home at this late hour.
A portrait of Lafayette, hero of the American Revolution, hung behind the main podium, looking down on proceedings with as much solemnity as Elizabeth herself. Both portrait and political campaigner listened as her bill was read once again.
It turned out that many senators had only clocked the bill’s title previously and had not grasped the radical nature of what she’d proposed: a jury trial of all inmates currently in the asylum who wanted one, plus penalties if the jury trial law was broken （which itself required administration）。 The discussions that followed were like a “tug of war.”22
Elizabeth looked down upon the chaos, aghast. She could see the politicians wobbling, despite the assurances they’d previously given. She feared a repeat of what had happened in Connecticut, when promises to pass her anti-coverture law had proved as empty as a barren woman’s womb.
Numerous questions were asked and answered. Elizabeth peered over the gallery’s balcony, eyeballing all those she could see, trying silently to remind them of their noble pledge. She felt “in a state of almost breathless suspense.”23
At length, the vote came around…
Every single senator voted for it. It passed unanimously.
Up in the gallery, a gentleman turned to her. “Mrs. Packard,” he said, “your bill is safe!”24
Elizabeth’s bill is read before the state senate
Elizabeth let out the breath she’d been holding. Her bill had passed. She had done it. A jury trial for every single woman on Seventh Ward and beyond. No woman, married or otherwise, could be committed without trial. Never again would a woman suffer what she had. Never again would her friends have to suffer. They would be free, and she would be free too. Free from fear of what Theophilus might do, yet free, too, from the guilt that she’d somehow escaped when others hadn’t. She had used her freedom to save them, and with this senate vote, that safety was assured.
“I felt such a relief,” she wrote, the words not strong enough to capture her feelings, “accompanied with an indescribable emotion of joy and thankfulness.”25 Her emotion surpassed even what she’d felt at the courtroom in Kankakee, when her own sanity had been declared. “In that decision,” she explained, “only the interests of one individual were involved, while on this decision, the personal liberty of hundreds was suspended.”26