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12 Vindication adn "Virtuous Action"
- University of Illinois Press
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12 Vindication and “Virtuous Action” Th e Repor t o f t h e Inv esti g a ti ng Commit t ee appeared in the 6 December 1867edition of the Chicago Tribune even before reaching the hands of Governor Oglesby, who was touring in Europe. As might be expected, it reignited the furor that had simmered throughout the investigation. The Illinois State Register applauded itself for supporting Packard who, they said, had “tried in vain to get the attention of politicians and presses of the dominant party.” Now, they reported, “Mrs. Packard’s statements appear to be true.”1 Meanwhile,the Jacksonville Journal “refuse[d]tobelieveawordagainst”McFarland and insisted he was “wrongfully accused . . . of crimes that every honest man in the city of Jacksonville knows he never dreamed of committing.” The Journal attacked committee chairman Allen C. Fuller as “the inquisitor would-be governor of Illinois, and renowned follower of Grandmother Packard.”2 McFarland and his supporters immediately complained that the report was published before they could read and respond to it, and reasserted their argument that most of those testifying were disgruntled former employees and patients, motivated by either revenge, politics, or insanity. On 12December 1867a large group of Jacksonville’s “best and most prominent citizens” gathered at the court house to express their views on the report. Among those present were Senator Murray McConnell, Judge Henry Dummer, the Reverend Dr. Julian Sturtevant, and Professor Jonathan Baldwin Turner.3 Turner, a former asylum trustee, suggested that it was actually a credit to McFarland that only twenty instances of abuse could be found, given the fact that some 2,500 patients were treated during his twelve-year tenure. The group agreed that any testimony that might impeach the committee ’s “pet witness”—Mrs. Packard—had been cut short, while testimony that might “exculpate” McFarland had been suppressed. The meeting concluded as the group approved a set of resolutions affirming their faith in McFarland and called on the trustees to rebut the investigating committee’s report as soon as possible.4 Beyond the expected pro-Packard and pro-McFarland divisions, the investigation exposed deeper political rivalries and also ideological wounds from the recent Civil War. The Chicago Tribune, for example, chided Jacksonville for its pecuniary motives in supporting McFarland. The Tribune editorialized , “The good people of Jacksonville, many of whom live on the crumbs dropped from the tables of the charitable institutions in the place,” seemed to view the Report of the Investigating Committee “as a direct attack on their bread and butter.”5 A week later, in a front-page editorial, the Illinois State Register (a Democratic Party paper) reminded readers that committee chairman Fuller along with a majority of the investigating committee and officers of the asylum were all “radical [Republican] politicians, who had been using the patronage and influence of their institutions in support of radical men and radical measures.” The editorial concluded that, as far as Democrats were concerned, all of the “radicals” involved in both the investigation and the institution had “proved themselves equally corrupt.”6 The Jacksonville correspondent for the Register, writing under the pseudonym “Nemesis,” agreed. He railed that while a good crowd of McFarland’s “Jacobin” supporters had met, the group hardly represented all of the “good people of Jacksonville.” Clearly relishing the Republican infighting, Nemesis declared, “Democrats care very little about it” since they can wait a year until “the next election numbers the days of Dr. McFarland.”7 Then, dredging up raw wounds from the war, Nemesis declared: “Democrats , don’t forget these men who during the war refused to celebrate the 4th of July with ‘democrats’ . . . who publicly declared that all those who dared to differ in opinion with them ‘must be put down and trampled underfoot like serpents,’ who used the epithets copperhead, traitor, rebel, etc.” Concluding the diatribe, Nemesis declared, “All these things did Dr. McFarland, and does he expect support from democrats now? . . . That revenge is sweet that sees the sworn friends of that conclave destroying one another with the virus of their own throats. It ain’t our funeral, and we wear no crepe.”8 Meanwhile, McFarland’s friends agreed he was “a badly treated and persecuted gentleman.”9 In an open letter to “ministers of the gospel in Illinois,” Reverend Ludwig M. Glover, pastor of Jacksonville’s First Presbyterian Church (of which McFarland was a member), declared that his “confidence in the ability, skill and faithfulness of Dr. McFarland . . . remains high and unimpaired.”10...