She described her initial committal for her religious beliefs, the way she’d been sent to the asylum simply because they no longer tallied with those of her husband, and how McFarland had accepted her as a patient nonetheless. She insisted that “during her entire stay in the hospital she was entirely sane.”8 Though she acknowledged that during her first four months, she’d been treated with respect, she revealed this abruptly changed as soon as she’d reproved the doctor, after which she’d been sent to a far worse ward.
She described the violence she’d suffered at the hands of those dangerous patients—the blows, hair pulling, the dodging of flying forks and knives—and how she’d feared for her life. She related how she’d begged McFarland to move her, but he’d always callously refused. She described the water torture she’d witnessed, the choking of patients, and the gouging of a girl’s throat; she perhaps even presented the cloth she’d saved, stained with that same woman’s blood. She testified about the unfairness and heartache of the censorship of letters and a myriad other things besides.
And as the hours passed by, both Morrison and McFarland grew rather more agitated. McFarland had long been aware of Elizabeth’s eloquence, but Elizabeth Packard under oath proved a far more formidable foe that even he’d anticipated.
To their frustration, however, although Morrison subjected her to “a most searching cross-examination, and re-examination,”9 testing not just “the accuracy of her memory, but the soundness of her mind,”10 she proved unshakable.
“It is but the truth to say,” reported General Fuller, “that she sustained herself with great ability in all respects.”11
Four hours on the stand slipped into five, then six. The summer’s day outside the hotel windows began a slow dawdle toward sunset. Still, Morrison kept questioning her. Elizabeth began to get tired, the experience a “long and severe strain upon my nerves and mentality.”12
“[He] left no point unchallenged,” she said wearily, “where Dr. McFarland could gain any advantage over me by way of inconsistencies, absurd opinions in religious belief, or conflicting statements, or by trying to puzzle my mind, so [that he could] impeach the value of my statements as a reliable witness.”13
She tried to keep her wits about her. She answered every question without hesitation and with as much intelligence as she could. “The prompt and plausible manner in which her views were defended or explained, while on the stand,” Fuller later said, “tended to increase the probability of her sanity.”14
Correctly assessing the reaction in the room, Elizabeth grew more confident. She could see that the doctor’s lawyer had “failed to elicit anything to their advantage.”15 When Morrison broke off from questioning her momentarily to have a brief consultation with his client, a gentleman took the chance to whisper in her ear, “Mrs. Packard, I believe you to be a perfectly sane person, and moreover, I believe you always have been.”16
She could not help but smile.
The smile was perhaps still on her lips as a new line of attack began. Whatever it was to be about, the preface to its introduction had been tense, with McFarland arguing with his lawyer about the course Morrison had urged him to pursue.
With Morrison’s leg disabling him, it was McFarland who now rose to quiz Elizabeth, holding a slightly yellowed piece of paper in his hand. He briefly passed it before her eyes.
“[Do you] recognize the handwriting?”17 he asked.
Elizabeth glanced at it. “It is my own handwriting,” she replied promptly, “yet I do not know what the document is.”18
It was a letter, he told her.
“I have written a good many letters to Dr. McFarland,”19 Elizabeth informed the committee.
McFarland passed the letter to General Fuller. It was formally marked “Exhibit A” and entered into evidence.
Fuller began to read it aloud: “Jacksonville, January 19, 1863.”20
As soon as she heard that fateful date, she knew exactly what it was.
“Dr. McFarland—My True Friend… I have never seen a man, before I saw you, to whom my whole womanly nature could instinctively pay homage, as my head, as the husband should be to the wife. To such a one, alone, can I entrust the key with which to unlock the fountain of conjugal love within me, whose depths no mortal has ever yet sounded.”21
She had asked him to consign it to flames. She had assumed he had respected her wishes. But the doctor had kept her promissory note for well over four years—even after she had left the asylum, even after she’d been found sane. Though McFarland had professed to want nothing more to do with her, he’d kept her letter close, and whether as memento or as ammunition did not much matter now.