Elizabeth was astounded to find such characters in the asylum. “It was a matter of great surprise to me,” she wrote, “to find so many in the Seventh ward, who, like myself, had never shown any insanity while there, and these were almost uniformly married women, who were put there either by strategy or by force.”16
Women were sent to asylums for causing “the greatest annoyances to the family”17 or defying “all domestic control.”18 The asylum was, in short, a “storage unit for unsatisfactory wives.”19 They’d been, Elizabeth observed archly, “put here, like me, to get rid of them.”20
And that statement was truer in her own case than even Elizabeth knew. Because Theophilus had more motivation to get rid of her than she ever suspected.
Whatever the pastor later said, he wasn’t just trying to save his children’s souls.
He was trying to save himself.
There was a reason his church had recently flipped from New School to Old School doctrines. Openly, the switch had coincided with the church securing funding for its first permanent home. Even as Elizabeth was sent to the asylum, that money was paying for the upright boards and square tower that formed the new church building where her husband would now preach. The money had come with strings attached: the church had to switch its creed.
The suggestion had come from Cyrus H. McCormick, one of America’s richest men, who’d donated $800 （about $25,000 today）—nearly half the total cost. McCormick was not only an extraordinarily wealthy individual but powerful in all the ways a man can be. At six feet tall and weighing two hundred pounds, he was a “massive Thor of industry”21 whom “men of lesser calibre regarded…with fear.”22 Such was his intimidating aura that “smaller men could never quite subdue a feeling of alarm…in his presence.”23 When he said “jump,” one didn’t ask, “How high?” One’s feet were already in the air.
Although McCormick was himself devout, faith was not his motivating factor when it came to this more-than-generous donation. At the time, America was being torn apart by slavery, with many fearing these divisions might lead to the secession of the Southern states from the Union—even civil war. There were those in power determined to stop such splits by suppressing all talk of abolition, and McCormick was one. And the Old School’s position on slavery was that it had “no authority”24 to pronounce on the matter; it stayed firmly on the fence. Therefore, McCormick pushed the Old School doctrines wherever he could. With his immense wealth, he was easily able to manipulate financial matters so that existing pro-abolition pastors lost their places and pro-slavery ones were hired instead. He didn’t even try to conceal his plan; he was openly accused of “subsidizing the preaching of pro-slavery principles in the free Northwest.”25
McCormick was a personal friend of Deacon Spring of Manteno, so it had been easy for him to add Theophilus’s church to his political plot. Despite the fact that the church had previously followed the pro-abolition New School creed, the church had taken the money—and turned its back on abolition as it did.
Elizabeth was unaware of these machinations. She knew only that her husband, who’d previously supported abolition, had suddenly stopped. They’d argued about it. “The oppressed ought always to find in us a fearless friend,”26 she’d boldly told her husband. She thought it his duty to enlighten Deacon Spring—who, like McCormick, was not pro-abolition—on the merits of the cause. “I think he would respect you all the more, to see you true to your principles.”27
But Theophilus knew that was not the case. Spring and McCormick would likely fire him if he dared do that.
And Theophilus had a secret he’d been keeping from his wife—a secret that made that outcome an absolute impossibility.
He was deeply in debt—to the tune of $3,800 （about $118,000 today）。
It meant the threat of losing his job hung over him like a guillotine’s blade. No matter Theophilus’s true beliefs, he had to toe the line—as meekly obedient as his wife was not. As he himself observed, “Self-interest is a powerful principle of action.”28
And this self-interest, with its related need to put the church first, was at least partly behind his emphatic insistence that his wife had to keep her mouth shut—and his following through on his threat to dispatch her to the asylum when she didn’t. It was no coincidence that the very first time he’d made his threat had been after Elizabeth had voiced her pro-abolition perspective in front of Deacon Spring. Theophilus had told her himself he was attacking her sanity so that her opinions “may not be believed!”29 The pastor was acutely aware that if he could not control his wife—and her potential influence on his parishioners—he had no hope of controlling his congregation. And it was essential to McCormick and his political plan that Theophilus did just that.