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Modern Persecution, or Married Woman's Liabilities
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1091 | "Mrs. Packard, there is not a man in Massachussetts -sic- neither do I think there is one in the United States who would dare openly to defend Mr. Packard's course, when the facts are known as they exist." | |
1092 | The opinion of his own church and community in Manteno, where he preached at the time I was kidnapped, is another class whose verdict the public desire to know also. When he put me off, his church and people were well united in him, and as a whole, the church not only sustained him in his course, but were active Co-conspirators. | |
1093 | When I returned, he preached nowhere. He was closeted in his own domicile on the Sabbath, cooking the family dinner, while his children were at church and sabbath school. His society was almost entirely broken up. I was told he preached until none would come to hear him; and his deacons gave as their reason for not sustaining him, that the trouble in his family had destroyed his influence in that community. | |
1094 | Multitudes of his people who attended my trial, who I know defended him at the time he kidnapped me, came to me with these voluntary confessions: | |
1095 | "Mrs. Packard, I always knew you were not insane." | |
1096 | "I never believed Mr. Packard's stories." | |
1097 | "I always felt that you were an abused woman," etc., etc. | |
1098 | These facts indicated some change even in the opinion of his own allies during my absence. I leave the public to draw their own inferences from the facts above stated. | |
1099 |
CHAPTER XX. | |
1100 | The question is sometimes asked, "Mrs. Packard, is your husband's real reason for treating you as he has, merely a difference in your religious belief, or is there not something back of all this? It seems unaccountable to us, that mere bigotry should so annihilate all human feeling." | |
1101 | This is a question I have never been able hitherto to answer, satisfactorily, either to myself or others; but now I am fully prepared to answer it with satisfaction to myself, at least; that is, facts, stubborn facts, which never before came to my knowledge until my visit home, compel me to feel that my solution of this perplexing question is now based on the unchangeable truth of facts." | |
1102 | For I have read with my own eyes, the secret correspondence which he has kept up with my father, for about eight years past, wherein this question is answered by himself, by his own confessions, and in his own words. | |
1103 | And as a very natural prelude to this answer, it seems to me not inappropriate to answer one other question often put to me first, namely: | |
1104 | "Has he not some other woman in view?" | |
1105 | I can give my opinion now, not only with my usual promptness, but with more than my usual confidence that I am correct in my opinion. I say confidently, he has not any other woman in view, nor never had. | |
1106 | And it was only because I could not fathom to the cause of this "Great Drama," that this was ever presented to my own mind, as a question. | |
1107 | I believe that if ever there was a man who practically believed in the monogamy principle of marriage, he is the man. Yes, I believe, with only one degree of faith less than that of knowledge, that the only Bible reason for a divorce never had an existence in our case. | |
1108 | And here, as the subject is now opened, will take occasion to say, that as I profess to be a Bible woman both in spirit and practice, I cannot conscientiously claim a Bible right to be divorced. I never have had the first cause to doubt his fidelity to me in this respect, and he never has had the first cause to doubt my own to him. | |
1109 | But fidelity to the truth of God's providential events compel me to give it as my candid opinion, that the only key to the solution of this mysterious problem will yet be found to be concealed in the fact, that Mr. Packard is a monomaniac on the subject of woman's rights. | |
1110 | It was the triumph of bigotry over his manliness, which occasioned this public manifestation of this peculiar mental phenomenon. | |
1111 | Some of the reasons for this opinion, added to the facts of this dark drama which are already before the public, lie in the following statement: | |
1112 | In looking over the correspondence above referred to, I find the "confidential" part all refers to dates and occasions "wherein I can distinctly recollect we had had a warm discussion on the subject of woman's rights; that is, I had taken occasion from the application of his insane dogma, namely, that "a woman has no rights that a man is bound to respect," to defend the opposite position of equal rights. | |
1113 | I used sometimes to put my argument into a written form, hoping thus to secure for it a more calm and quiet consideration. I never used any other weapons in self-defense, except those paper pellets of the brain. And is not that man a coward who cannot stand before such artillery? | |
1114 | But not to accuse Mr. Packard of cowardice, I will say, that instead of boldly meeting me as his antagonist on the arena of argument and discussion, and there openly defending himself against my knock-down arguments, with his Cudgel of Insanity I find he closed off such discussions with his secret "confidential" letters to my relatives and dear friends, saying: |