"Your letter starts out with a statement of an error, which I believe, to
be wholly unintentional, and results from placing too much confidence in
the statements of your friend, Rev. Theophilus Packard. You say, "Mrs.
P., as one of the results of a strongly inherited predisposition, (her
mother having been for a long period of her life insane,) had an attack of
insanity previous to her marriage." Such are _not_ the facts. Neither the
mother, nor any blood relations of Mrs. Packard, were ever suspected or
charged with being insane. And it is a slander of one of the best and most
pious mothers of New England, and her ancestry, to charge her and them
with insanity; and could have emanated only from the heart of the pious
----, who would incarcerate the companion of his bosom for three years,
with gibbering idiots and raving maniacs.
"Nor had Mrs. Packard an attack of insanity before her marriage. The pious
Packard has fabricated this story to order, from the circumstance, that
when a young lady, Mrs. Packard had a severe attack of brain fever, and
under which fever she was for a time delirious, and no further, has this a
semblance of truth."
This is the simple truth, which all my relatives are ready, and many of
them very anxious to certify to; but the limits of this pamphlet will not
admit any more space in answer to this slander.