Elizabeth Packard: A Noble Fight

4 Free Love and True Womanhood

4 Free Love and True Womanhood Ma nt eno wa s a sma l l farming village platted on the rich prairie of Kankakee County in east-central Illinois. The arrival of the railroad in 1853 encouraged growth and, by the time the Packards arrived there in 1857, the thriving community boasted a depot, grain warehouse, feed mill, general store, saloon, boarding house, hotel, post office, two schools, and three religious denominations—Catholic, Methodist, and Presbyterian. By 1860, the U.S. Census recorded Manteno’s population as 861. The Presbyterian church in this frontier community was a humble mission compared with the prestigious church Theophilus and his father had served in Massachusetts. The congregation had formed with eleven members just four years earlier at a meeting of the Chicago Presbytery of the New School Presbyterian Church, and was still meeting in the Methodist church building.1 Theophilus noted in his diary that, much like at Mount Pleasant, he found in Manteno a “small, feeble” congregation with its “society in a very loose state” and the “Sabbath greatly desecrated.”2 Membership would barely exceed fifty through the end of the century. Three years after Theophilus’s arrival, the congregation withdrew from the New School Presbytery and joined with the Old School. Recording the change, the church history mentioned politely, “The creedal hindrances being slight, the congregation, at the suggestion of the McCormicks, who were substantial friends of the church, changed its adherence from what was then the new, to the old school branch of the church.”3 This almost certainly understated the impact of the doctrinal shift. That the transition from New to Old School was less amicable than the church history implies is evident in the instability in membership during Theophilus’s pastorate (1857–62),during which “large numbers” left the church to form other congregations.4 The discord in the church was mirrored in the Packard household as the couple moved farther apart, both intellectually and emotionally. As they arrived in Manteno, Elizabeth was still mulling over unorthodox theologies she had picked up from Shelburne’s religious mix of Unitarians, Universal- ists, Baptists, Shakers, and Methodists. Theophilus apparently attempted to mute her influence over their children, recording that the thought she might teach them that “morality is religion and Universalism is true” filled him with “unspeakable grief.”5 Theophilus was also worried about his declining prosperity. He noted that his $500 salary was “insufficient even to support my family” and that he had been “greatly embarrassed” as to his property. Because of the “great financial crash” of 1857, he had been unable to sell his property in Iowa and had been forced to borrow money at 30 to 40 percent interest. Nearly $3,800 in debt, he could barely pay interest on the debt or keep up the $100annual payment on his life insurance. “Verily,” he wrote, “I have been reduced to sore straits.”6 Still, noting the kindness of his sister Sybil and her husband, Abijah Dole, he concluded that it was still “much more pleasant to live in [this] place.”7 By now, Elizabeth’s enthusiasm for western life had been replaced by anxiety . She was distressed by her husband’s allegations that she neglected her family and alarmed by his insinuation that she was insane. Her “heaviest burden,” she said, was her husband’s “incessant . . . trespass” on her “inalienable rights.” Especially troublesome was his interference with her “maternal rights” to train her children “in the paths of virtue.” All this occurred, she said, at a time when she had “no energies to expend in their defense.”8 “All these aggravated trials,” she conceded, had pushed her beyond “all possible limits of human forbearance.” She felt that temporary respite was “an absolute necessity, to prevent the bow thus bent to its utmost tension, from breaking.”9 Against her husband’s wishes, she began planning a trip to visit friends and family in New York. Anxious to avoid any appearance that she had deserted the family, Packard described herself to her readers as a “most faithfully devoted” wife dedicated “entirely to the promotion of [her husband’s] interests.” She explained that she had never before left the family for an extended trip, while her husband had left “repeatedly and often” to visit his friends and attend meetings.10 She assured readers that only life-threatening physical and emotional duress could force her to leave, and that she did so only after putting the new Manteno residence in order...