speedy liberation under the habeas corpus act; but in carrying into exercise their manly intentions, they found unexpected obstacles in the nonentity position in which the common law placed me; and since the consent of the man in whom my identity was merged or lost could not be obtained, the only alternative left me was to make application by letter, by which means alone they could legally get me for trial. I accordingly wrote, making application; but, behold! the superintendent, being an accomplice with my persecutors, and being allowed the censorship of my letters, would not mail my letter; and when he shut down upon me, every avenue between me and the laws was forever closed. I was as powerless to thwart that conspiracy as if I had been in my grave. And thus, in consequence of not having my postal rights protected to me, as an inmate of an insane asylum, I was imprisoned three years. But had this right been secure from interference, I need not have been there a week; I could have written and obtained a trial at once and been discharged, instead of being incarcerated three years, absolutely defenseless, because outside the pale of justice, while inside a humani. tarian institution.

Now, Christian gentlemen, will you not cheerfully co-operate in opening an avenue through which these unfortunate victims of cupidity, envy, jealousy, bigotry, or malice can easily and promptly appeal to the laws for deliverance from these machinations of the unscrupulous?

Besides, gentlemen, the personal wrongs and injustice I there endured might have been averted had I been able to appeal to the laws. For example: One day I summoned courage to espouse the cause of these innocent victims of Doctor McFarland's barbarous attendants by giving him a written delineation of their cruel practices, and besought him to interpose and protect his patients. I accompanied this appeal with a fair warning that if he did not heed this request, since he was the only one we could appeal to, I should deem it my duty to expose him when I got out. But instead of heeding my warning by protecting his patients, he led me that very day into the mad-room, where were confined eightteen of the most furious maniacs of the whole house, and instructed my attendants to treat me just as they did the maniacs.

Here my life was constantly exposed, both night as well as day, from their insane fights and dangerous attacks. I have been dragged around this ward by the hair of my head by the maniacs. I have received blows from them which almost killed me. I have begged and besought Doctor McFarland to remove me to some place of safety, where my life would not be so exposed, only to see him turn speechless away from me. And thus have I vainly sought for help for two years and eight months from this mad-room!

I have appealed to his humane assistant, Doctor Tenny, and, with tears of pity in his eyes, he has assured me "there is no appeal to any law, person, or board, from the autocratic power of the superintendent, from these prison wards." Said he: "Mrs. Packard, I am a subordinate, as well as you. No power rules this house but the will of Doctor McFarland; and there is no appeal from it; and therefore there is no help can reach you."

O, gentlemen, did I not need a body-guard to appeal to? And can you blame me for trying to secure one for others in like extremities? Ought not this Christian Government to have provided one for such emergencies? O, let me say to you, my God-like brothers, there is power to oppress the inmates of insane asylums, and there is no appeal from it but to the righteous bar of our common Judge.

My deliverance.

Doctor McFarland's "subduing treatment," as they call it, being so long and persistently continued, aroused a mutinous spirit within and a mob spirit without, by which an impending crisis was heralded; and taking advantage of the state of perturbation into which the doctor's mind was thrown thereby, I ventured to ask him to allow me to expose my obnoxious views before the Calvinistic trustees, that, as I argued, they might see my insanity, and thus secure to himself their intelligent co-operation and support in meeting the impending crisis. This pleased him, and he granted my request. In the most dauntless and unrestrained manner did I delineate my views of religious truth and my reasons for believing thus.

But the trustees, although Calvinists, had the sagacity to readily dis cover that it was the use of my reason, rather than the loss of it, that had caused my persecutors to use the asylum in my case as an inquisition, and, of course, ordered my discharge.

Finding this refuge had failed him, the discomfited superintendent immediately commenced to negotiate, through my husband, with an asylum in Northampton, Mass., to have me incarcerated for life within its gloomy cells, to prevent my ever having an opportunity of exposing him. To aid my husband in this nefarious work, Doctor McFarland gave his written certificate that I was hopelessly insane, which certificate was to serve as my only passport into hopeless imprisonment. Yes, into a life-long imprisonment, without even the form of a trial, was I thus deliberately and heartlessly consigned by Doctor McFarland's certificate! And Doctor Prince, of Northampton Insane Asylum, consented to take this certificate from an "expert superintendent" as his only evidence of my title to a cell, for life, among gibbering idiots and raving, howling maniacs!

And now, gentlemen, as Congressmen of these United States, allow me to ask you one question: What chance has the victim when once within this "asylum-ring," with no trial before being imprisoned, and none within his reach after getting there? Is it strange that the unscrupulous have used these institutions for base purposes?

And, gentlemen, in closing my argument of facts, I wish to demonstrate the potency of the remedy this bill proposes, by its application to myself in rescuing me from this impending crisis.

While these two great conspirators against my personal liberty, Doctor McFarland and my husband, were maturing their plot, I was kept a close prisoner in my own house, in Manteno, under my husband's lock and key, for two months, and all communication with the post-office most scrupulously denied me. But, through the overrulings of a mysterious Providence, two days before I was to be consigned to this terrible fate, I found some letters and manuscripts left in my room by mistake, wherein all this mature plot was revealed. Action, prompt and efficient, became an imperative necessity on my part.

I therefore wrote a note, revealing the discovery contained in these manuscripts, and pushed it down through where the windows come together into the hands of a stranger gentleman who was passing through our yard, and he delivered it into the hands of Mrs. Haslet, to whom I had directed it, and she took it to Judge Starr, of Kankakee City, and begged of him to rescue me before two days, or I should be beyond the reach of all human help for this world.

Since I was a prisoner, and had now made application myself for a trial, Judge Starr could legally, and did promptly summon Mr. Packard,

under the habeas corpus act, to bring me before him, and show a justifiable cause for imprisoning me. This he failed to do for want of any evidence to bring before the jury that I then was or ever had been in

sane.

After a trial of five days, the jury pronounced me sane, notwithstanding Mr. Packard's witnesses swore that it was evidence of insanity for a person to wish to leave a Presbyterian church and join a Methodist; and notwithstanding the sworn testimony of his certifying physicians that I had the same kind of insanity as Henry Ward Beecher, Horace Greeley, and Spurgeon, and three-quarters of the religious community generally.

Thus you see, gentlemen, that this letter proved to be the very pivot upon which my personal liberty for life was suspended. Had I not succeeded in getting out this letter, my persecutors would probably have triumphed over me, and I might now have been still entombed in one of these living cemeteries. And I believe, gentlemen, there are hundreds of American citizens now in the insane asylums of the United States, who at this momout need this remedy as much as I then did, and who ought to have it promptly extended to them. And is it not your duty to provide it for them? And O, what a harmless, simple remedy for such momentous evils!

Before the trial closed, Mr. Packard fled his country in the night, to avoid the dangers of a mob retribution. He took with him all our property and our minor children. He rented our place, and sold my furniture; took my money, notes, and also my own wardrobe, thus making me homeless, penniless, and childless.

Thus robbed of all my life-earnings, and bereaved of my children, in addition to my three years of false imprisonment, as the decision of the jury had proved it to have been, I now appeal to the laws for protection of my rights of conscience and religious belief, as a married woman, when, alas, I found I had no laws to appeal to! And since it is impossible to prosecute parties for doing legal acts, there was found to be no redress for any of my wrongs in the laws.

And the only restitution I ask of my Government is that you now enact such laws as will henceforth render such an outrage upon any other American woman a legal impossibility.

In closing, I take the liberty to add that the Post-Office Department has informed me that the expense of each box, and putting it up, will not exceed four dollars at the most. And the expense of collecting the letters from them once a week, where there are no letter-carriers, will probably not much exceed the additional stamps thus secured to the Government.

And it gives me great pleasure to inform you that our worthy President Grant has assured me that his personal influence shall be used in support of this bill, "for," said he, "the bill commends itself to the approval of Congress."

Please, gentlemen, allow me now to ask one personal favor, which is, that you report this bill at your earliest possible convenience, that I may be at liberty to commence my winter campaign-work in the legislatures.

Very respectfully submitted in behalf of the unfortunate, by
MRS. E. P. W. PACKARD,
Chicago, Illinois.

CAPITOL, WASHINGTON, D. C., January 8, 1875.

2d Session.

No. 60.

SOUTHERN MARYLAND RAILROAD.

[To accompany bill H. R. 4475.]

MEMORIAL

OF

SAMUEL S. SMOOT,

PRESIDENT OF THE SOUTHERN MARYLAND RAILROAD COMPANY.

FEBRUARY 4, 1875.-Referred to the Committee on Railways and Canals and ordered to be printed.

To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States in Congress assembled:

The Southern Maryland Railroad has its termini at Washington City, in the District of Columbia, and at Point Lookout and the Saint Mary's River, at and near the confluence of the Potomac River with the Chesapeake Bay, a distance of about seventy-six miles.

It runs through the counties of Prince George, Charles, and Saint Mary, along the peninsula formed by the Potomac and Patuxent Rivers, its southern terminus being something less than eighty miles from the capes of the Chesapeake, and about the same distance from Norfolk. About fifty miles of the road is graded, bridged, and the culverts finished, ready to receive the rails. About sixty thousand ties have been delivered, and the balance are under contract and can be delivered on the opening of the weather. The present grading completes the line to Brandywine, in Prince George's County, where it forms a junction with the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad, and thus gives a direct continuous line from Point Lookout to Baltimore, and an indirect line to Washington.

The direct line from Brandywine to Washington is only about sixteen miles, which can be finished so as to furnish a complete direct line from Washington to Point Lookout by the autumn of this year.

A glance at the map will show the importance of this road as a line of transportation of troops, munitions of war, supplies of every description, and especially of coal for the use of the United States Navy, the importance of which is very clearly demonstrated by the report of a board of naval officers, to which I respectfully refer. (See appendix marked A.) By this route the seat of Government is brought in close connection with the important military posts at Old Point and the navy-yard at Norfolk.

Its importance as a line for military operations can be estimated from the fact that, if it had been in operation during the late civil war, it