"Why, Mrs. Packard, do you not get a divorce?"
Because, in the first place, I do not want to be a divorced woman; but, on
the contrary, I wish to be a married woman, and have my husband for my
protector; for I do not like this being divorced from my own home. I want
a home to live in, and I prefer the one I have labored twenty one years
myself to procure, and furnished to my own taste and mind. Neither do I
like this being divorced from my own children. I want to live with my dear
children, whom I have borne and nursed, reared and educated, almost
entirely by my own unwearied indefatigable exertions; and I love them,
with all the fondness of a mother's undying love, and no place is home to
me in this wide world without them. And again, I have done nothing to
_deserve_ this exclusion from the rights and privileges of my own dear
home; but on the contrary, my untiring fidelity to the best interests of
my family for twenty-one years of healthful, constant service, having
never been sick during this time so as to require five dollars doctor's
bill to be paid for me or my six children, and having done all the
housework, sewing, nursing, and so forth, of my entire family for
twenty-one years, with no hired girl help, except for only nine months,
during all this long period of constant toil and labor. I say, this
self-sacrifizing devotion to the best interests of my family and home,
deserve and claim a right to be protected in it, at least, so long as my
good conduct continues, instead of being divorced from it, against my own
will or consent. In short, what I want is, _protection in my home_,
instead of a divorce from it. I do not wish to drive Mr. Packard from his
own home, and exclude him from all its rights and privileges--neither do I
want he should treat me in this manner, especially so long as he himself
claims that I have _always_ been a most kind, patient, devoted wife and
mother. He even claims as his justification of his course, that I am so
_good_ a woman, and he _loves_ me so well, that he wants to save me from
fatal errors!
It is my opinions--my religious opinions--and those alone, he makes an
occasion for treating me as he has. He frankly owned to me, that he was
putting me into an Asylum so that my reputation for being an insane person
might destroy the influence of my religious opinions; and I see in one
letter which he wrote to my father, he mentions this as the chief evidence
of my insanity. He writes: "Her many excellences and past services I
highly appreciate; but she says she has widely departed from, or
progressed beyond, her former religious views and sentiments--and I think
it is too true!!" Here is all the insanity he claims, or has attempted to
prove.
Now comes the question: Is this a crime for which I ought to be divorced
from all the comforts and privileges of my own dear home?
To do this,--that is, to get a divorce--would it not be becoming an
accomplice in crime, by doing the very deed which he is so desirous of
having done, namely: to remove me from my family, for fear of the
contaminating influence of my new views? Has a married woman no rights at
all? Can she not even think her own thoughts, and speak her own words,
unless her thoughts and expressions harmonize with those of her husband? I
think it is high time the merits of this question should be practically
tested, on a proper basis, the basis of truth--of facts. And the fact,
that I have been not only practically divorced from my own home and
children, but also incarcerated for three years in a prison, simply for my
religious belief, by the arbitrary will of my husband, ought to raise the
question, as to what are the married woman's rights, and what is her
protection? And it is to this practical issue I have ever striven to force
this question. And this issue I felt might be reached more directly and
promptly by the public mind, by laying the necessities of the case before
the community, and by a direct appeal to them for personal
protection--instead of getting a divorce for my protection. I know that by
so doing, I have run a great risk of losing my liberty again. Still, I
felt that the great cause of married woman's rights might be promoted by
this agitation; and so far as my own feelings were concerned, I felt
willing to suffer even another martyrdom in this cause, if so be, my
sisters in the bonds of marital power might be benefited thereby.
I want and seek protection, _as a married woman_--not divorce, in order to
escape the abuses of marital power--that is, I want protection from the
abuse of marital power, not a divorce from it. I can live in my home with
my husband, if he will only let me do so; but he will not suffer it,
unless I recant my religious belief. Cannot religious bigotry under such
manifestations, receive _some_ check under our government, which is
professedly based on the very principle of religious tolerance to all?
Cannot there be laws enacted by which a married woman can stand on the
same platform as a married man--that is, have an equal right, at least, to
the protection of her inalienable rights? And is not this our petition for
protection founded in justice and humanity?
Is it just to leave the weakest and most defenceless of these two parties
wholly without the shelter of law to shield her, while the strongest and
most independent has all the aid of the legal arm to strengthen his own?
Nay, verily, it is not right or manly for our man government thus to
usurp the whole legal power of self-protection and defence, and leave
confiding, trusting woman wholly at the mercy of this gigantic power. For
perverted men will use this absolute power to abuse the defenceless,
rather than protect them; and abuse of power inevitably leads to the
contempt of its victim. A man who can trample on all the inalienable
rights of his wife, will, by so doing, come to despise her as an
inevitable consequence of wrong doing. Woman, too, is a more spiritual
being than a man, and is therefore a more sensitive being, and a more
patient sufferer than a man; therefore she, more than any other being,
needs protection, and she should find it in that government she has
sacrificed so much to uphold and sustain.
Again, I do not believe in the divorce principle. I say it is a
"Secession" principle. It undermines the very vital principle of our
Union, and saps the very foundation of our social and civil obligations.
For example. Suppose the small, weak and comparatively feeble States in
our Union were not protected by the Government in any of their State
rights, while the large, strong, and powerful ones had their State rights
fully guaranteed and secured to them. Would not this state of the Union
endanger the rights of the defenceless ones? and endanger the Union also?
Could these defenceless States resort to any other means of self-defence
from the usurpation of the powerful States than that of secession? But
secession is death to the Union--death to the principles of love and
harmony which ought to bind the parts in one sacred whole.
Now, I claim that the Marriage Union rests on just this principle, as our
laws now stand. The woman has no alternative of resort from any kind of
abuse from her partner, but divorce, or secession from the Marriage Union.
Now the weak States have rights as well as the strong ones, and it is the
rights of the weak, which the government are especially bound to respect
and defend, to prevent usurpation and its legitimate issue, secession from
the Union. What we want of our government is to prevent this usurpation,
by protecting us equally with our partners, so that we shall not need a
divorce at all.
By equality of rights, I do not mean that woman's rights and man's rights
are one and the same. By no means; we do not want the man's rights, but
simply our own, natural, womanly rights. There are man's rights and
woman's rights. Both different, yet both equally inalienable. There must
be a head in every firm; and the head in the Marriage Firm or Union is the
man, as the Bible and nature both plainly teach. We maintain that the
senior partner, the man, has rights of the greatest importance, as regards
the interests of the marriage firm, which should not only be respected and
protected by our government, but also enforced upon them as an obligation,
if the senior is not self-moved to use his rights practically--and one of
these his rights, is a right to protect his own wife and children. The
junior partner also has rights of equal moment to the interests of the
firm, and one of these is her right to be protected by her senior partner.
Not protected in a prison, but in her own home, as mistress of her own
house, and as a God appointed guardian of her infant children. The
government would then be protecting the marriage union, while it now
practically ignores it.
To make this matter still plainer, suppose this government was under the
control of the female instead of the male influence, and suppose our
female government should enact laws which required the men when they
entered the marriage union to alienate their right to hold their own
property--their right to hold their future earnings--their right to their
own homes--their right to their own offspring, if they should have
any--their right to their personal liberty--and all these rights be passed
over into the hands of their wives for safe keeping, and so long as they
chose to be married men, all their claims on our womanly government for
protection should be abrogated entirely by this marriage contract. Now, I
ask, how many men would venture to get married under these laws? Would
they not be tempted to ignore the marriage laws of our woman government
altogether? Now, gentlemen, we are sorry to own it, this is the very
condition in which your man government places us. We, women, looking from
this very standpoint of sad experience, are tempted to exclaim, where is
the manliness of our man government!
Divorce, I say, then, is in itself an evil--and is only employed as an
evil to avoid a greater one, in many instances. Therefore, instead of
being forced to choose the least of two evils, I would rather reject both
evils, and choose a good thing, that of being protected in my own dear
home from unmerited, unreasonable abuse--a restitution of my rights,
instead of a continuance of this robbery, sanctioned by a divorce.
In short, we desire to live under such laws, as will _oblige_ our husbands
to treat us with decent respect, so long as our good conduct merits it,
and then will they be made to feel a decent regard for us as their
companions and partners, whom the laws protect from their abuse.