"All her family friends, almost without exception, sustain Mr. Packard in
his course."
Not one of my family friends ever _intelligently_ sustained Mr. Packard in
his course. But they did sustain him ignorantly and undesignedly, for a
time, while his tissue of lies held them back from investigating the
merits of the case for themselves. But as soon as they did know, they
became my firm friends and defenders, and Mr. Packard's private foes and
public adversaries. I do not mean by this, that they manifest any
revengeful feelings towards him, but simply a God-like resentment of his
inhuman course towards me. All my relatives, without exception, who have
heard my own statement from my own lips, now unite in this one opinion,
that Mr. Packard has had no right nor occasion for putting me into an
insane asylum.
But fidelity to the truth requires me to say in this connection, that
among my family relatives, are three families of Congregational
ministers--that each of these families have refused me any hearing, so
that they are still in league with, and defenders of, Mr. Packard. All I
have to say for them is, "May the Lord forgive them, for they know not
what they do."
But it may be urged that the published certificates of her friends
contradict this statement. This is not the case. Those certificates which
have appeared in print since my return to my friends, all bear date to the
time they were given previous to my return.
And in this connection I feel conscientiously bound, in defence of my
kindred, to say, that some of these certificates are mere forgeries in its
strict sense; that is, they were drafted by Mr. Packard, himself, and most
adroitly urged upon the individual whose signature he desired to obtain,
and thus his logic, being based in a falsehood, which was used as a truth,
and received as such, they are thus made to certify to what was not the
real truth. My minor children's certificates are the mere echoes of their
father's will and dictation. He has tried to buy the signatures of my two
oldest sons, now of age, in Chicago, by offering them some of his abundant
surplus clothing, from his missionary boxes, if they would only certify
that their mother was insane. But these noble sons have too much moral
rectitude to sell their consciences for clothes or gold. Instead of being
abettors in their father's crimes, they have, and do still, maintain a
most firm stand in defence of me. And for this manly act of filial piety
towards me, their father has disinherited both of them, as he has me, from
our family rights.
Another thing, it is no new business for Mr. Packard to practice forgery.
This assertion I can prove by his own confession. Not long before I was
exiled from my home, he said to me one day, "I have just signed a note,
which, if brought against me in law, would place me in a penitentiary; but
I think I am safe, as I have fixed it." Again, Mr. Packard sent a great
many forged letters to the Superintendent of the Asylum, while I was
there, professing to come from a different source, wherein the writer
urged, very strongly, the necessity of keeping me in an asylum, and
begging him, most pathetically, to _keep me there_, not only for Mr.
Packard's sake, but also for his children's sake, and community's sake,
and, lastly, for the cause of Christ's sake! Dr. McFarland used to come to
me for an explanation of this singular phenomenon. I would promptly tell
him the letters are a forgery--the very face of them so speaks--for who
would think of a minister in Ohio writing, self-moved, to a Superintendent
in Illinois, begging of him to keep another man's wife in his Asylum!
Either these letters were exact copies of Mr. Packard's, with the
exception of the signature, or, they were entirely drafted from Mr.
Packard's statement, and made so as to be an echo of Mr. Packard's wishes,
but seeming to be a self-moved act of the writer's own mind and wishes.
O, how fruitful is a depraved heart in devising lies, and masking them
with the semblance of truth! and how many lies it takes to defend one! The
lie he was thus trying to defend was, that I was insane, when I was not,
and all this gigantic frame work of certificates and testimony became
necessary as props to sustain it.
I now give the testimony of my lawyer, who, after witnessing the
revelations of the court room, thus alludes to this subject in his reply
to Dr. McFarland's letter. "The certificates produced, fully attesting her
insanity, before she was admitted, I suspect were forgeries of the pious
Packard, altered to suit the occasion, and your too generous disposition
to rely upon the statements made to you, was taken advantage of again, and
they were imposed upon you, without the critical examination their
importance demanded."