Library Collections: Document: Full Text

Here his tears began to flow anew, while he exclaimed:

"I was afraid it would prove so! I was afraid you would not approve of my coming! But, mother, I could not bear to feel that you had become insane, and I could not believe it, and would not, until I had seen you myself; and now I see it is just as I expected, you are not insane, but are the same kind mother as ever. But I am sorry if I have done wrong by coming."

I wept -- he wept -- I could not bear to blame my darling boy.

"And must I?" was the great question to be settled.

"My son, let us ask God to settle this question for us," and down we both kneeled by the sofa, and. with my arm around my darling boy, I asked God if I should blame him for coming to see me in defiance of his father's order. While asking for heavenly wisdom to guide us in the right way, the thought came to me, "go and ask Dr. McFarland."

I accordingly went to the Doctor's parlor, where I found him alone, reading his paper. I said to him:

"Doctor, I have a question of conscience to settle, and I have sought your help in settling it, namely, has my son done wrong to visit me, when his father has forbidden his coming, and has threatened to disinherit him if he did? He has the letter with him showing this to be the case."

After thinking a moment, the Doctor simply replied:

"Your son has a right to visit his mother!"

Oh, the joy I felt at this announcement! It seemed as if a mountain had been lifted from me, so relieved was I of my burden. With a light heart I sought my sobbing boy, and encircling my arms about his neck, exclaimed:

"Cheer up! my dear child, you had a right to visit your mother! so says the Doctor."

Why was this struggle with our consciences? Was it not that we had trained them to respect paternal authority?

At this interview, Dr. McFarland fairly promised to co-operate with my son, in doing all in his power to get me out, and afterwards refused to do the least thing towards it, not even to send my letters to my son, nor would he deliver his to me. I know he received letters from him, for shortly after I saw one on his office table from him, directed to me, and I took it up to read it, and he took it from me, refusing to let me know its contents.

Now I found I was destined to another disappointment, for the Doctor had not only refused to co-operate, but was evidently defeating my son's filial attempts to rescue his mother. The agony of this disappointment was increased by the fact that the Doctor had deceived us both, in this transaction, therefore his word could no longer be trusted.

I was very sorry to be obliged to come to this conclusion, for until this development I had regarded him as a man of honor, whose word could be trusted.

Another effort my friends made was to go the Governor on my behalf, but he replied:

"I cannot repeal laws, nor enact laws, I can only execute laws, and if there is no law by which she can have a trial, or be liberated, I do not know of anything that I can do for her. It is her husband's business to take her out, and if he refuses, there is no law to force him, so long as Dr. McFarland claims she is insane."

After all these sore disappointments, I found that my personal liberty, and personal identity, were entirely at the mercy of Mr. Packard and Dr. McFarland; that no law of the Institution or of the State, recognized my identity while a married woman; therefore, no protection, not even the criminal's right of self-defence, could be extended to me; and therefore I must intelligently yield up all hopes of my personal liberty, so long as Mr. Packard and Dr. McFarland lived and agreed in keeping me imprisoned!

With such an institution in every State what is there now to prevent any kind of persecution a depraved nature may instigate against the innocent and unsuspecting? especially against a married woman, who, upon the principle of common law, has no legal protection whatever, if her husband chooses to use the power the law gives him to prevent it!

Had I lived in the sixteenth instead of the nineteenth century my husband would have used the laws of that day to punish me as a heretic for this departure from the established creed -- while under the influence of the same intolerant spirit, he now uses this autocratic institution as a means of torture to bring about the same result -- namely: a recantation of my faith.

In other words, instead of calling me by the obsolete title of heretic he modernizes his phrase by substituting insanity instead of heresy as the crime for which I am now sentenced to endless imprisonment in one of our Modern Inquisitions.

Much that is now called insanity will be looked upon by future ages, with a feeling similar to what we feel towards those who suffered as witches, in Salem, Massachusetts. That persecution went so far, that the government was obliged to make a law, that all who accused others of witchcraft, must themselves suffer the punishment they had designed to secure to the witch. This law and its execution put a speedy stop to these false accusations.