(1755)
They [the French inhabitants of Acadia] still counted in their
villages "eight thousand" souls, and the English not more than "three
thousand"; they stood in the way of "the progress of the settlement";
"by their non-compliance with the conditions of the treaty of Utrecht
they had forfeited their possessions to the crown"; after the
departure "of the fleet and troops, the province would not be in a
condition to drive them out." "Such a juncture as the present might
never occur"; so he [the chief justice, Belcher] advised "against
receiving any of the French inhabitants to take the oath," and for the
removal of "all" of them from the province.
[Footnote 70: From Volume IV, Chapter VIII, of "The History of the
United States," as published in 1862. Acadia was the name of the
original French colony in the eastern part of Canada, including Nova
Scotia, New Brunswick and adjacent islands. It was first colonized by
the French in 1604. It is more particularly of the French settlers in
Nova Scotia that Bancroft writes. These were deported by the British
in 1755. Longfellow's poem "Evangeline" is founded on an incident in
this deportation, by which two lovers were hopelessly parted.
Hawthorne is said first to have heard this story and considered it as
the theme for a novel, but, unable to use it satisfactorily to
himself, he passed it on to Longfellow.]
That the cruelty might have no palliation, letters arrived leaving no
doubt that the shores of the Bay of Fundy were entirely in the
possession of the British; and yet at a council, at which Vice-Admiral
Boscawen and Rear-Admiral Mostyn were present by invitation, it was
unanimously determined to send the French inhabitants out of the
province; and, after mature consideration, it was further unanimously
agreed that, to prevent their attempting to return and molest the
settlers that were to be set down on their lands, it would be most
proper to distribute them among the several colonies on the continent.
To hunt them into the net was impracticable; artifice was therefore
resorted to. By a general proclamation, on one and the same day, the
scarcely conscious victims, "both old men and young men, as well as
all the lads of ten years of age," were peremptorily ordered to
assemble at their respective posts. On the appointed fifth of
September they obeyed. At Grand Pre, for example, four hundred and
eighteen unarmed men came together. They were marched into the church
and its avenues were closed, when Winslow, the American commander,
placed himself in their center, and spoke:
"You are convened together to manifest to you his majesty's final
resolution to the French inhabitants of this his province. Your lands
and tenements, cattle of all kinds, and live stock of all sorts, are
forfeited to the crown, and you yourselves are to be removed from this
his province. I am, through his majesty's goodness, directed to allow
you liberty to carry off your money and household goods, as many as
you can, without discommoding the vessels you go in."
And he then declared them the King's prisoners. Their wives and
families shared their lot; their sons, five hundred and twenty-seven
in number; their daughters, five hundred and seventy-six; in the
whole, women and babes and old men and children all included, nineteen
hundred and twenty-three souls. The blow was sudden; they had left
home but for the morning, and they never were to return. Their cattle
were to stay unfed in the stalls, their fires to die out on their
hearths. They had for that first day even no food for themselves or
their children, and were compelled to beg for bread.
The tenth of September was the day for the embarkation of a part of
the exiles. They were drawn up six deep; and the young men, one
hundred and sixty-one in number, were ordered to march first on board
the vessel. They could leave their farms and cottages, the shady rocks
on which they had reclined, their herds, and their garners; but nature
yearned within them, and they would not be separated from their
parents. Yet of what avail was the frenzied despair of the unarmed
youth? They had not one weapon; the bayonet drove them to obey; and
they marched slowly and heavily from the chapel to the shore, between
women and children, who, kneeling, prayed for blessings on their
heads, they themselves weeping and praying and singing hymns. The
seniors went next; the wives and children must wait till other
transport vessels arrive. The delay had its horrors. The wretched
people left behind were kept together near the sea, without proper
food, or raiment, or shelter, till other ships came to take them away;
and December, with its appalling cold, had struck the shivering,
half-clad, broken-hearted sufferers, before the last of them were
removed.
"The embarkation of the inhabitants goes on but slowly," wrote
Monckton, from Fort Cumberland, near which he had burned three
hamlets; "the most part of the wives of the men we have prisoners are
gone off with their children, in hopes I would not send off their
husbands without them." Their hope was vain. Near Annapolis a hundred
heads of families fled to the woods, and a party was detached on the
hunt to bring them in. "Our soldiers hate them," wrote an officer on
this occasion; "and, if they can but find a pretext to kill them, they
will." Did a prisoner seek to escape, he was shot down by the
sentinel. Yet some fled to Quebec; more than three thousand had
withdrawn to Miramachi and the region south of the Restigouche; some
found rest on the banks of the St. John's and its branches; some found
a lair in their native forests; some were charitably sheltered from
the English in the wigwams of the savages. But seven thousand of these
banished people were driven on board ships, and scattered among the
British colonies, from New Hampshire to Georgia--one thousand and
twenty to South Carolina alone. They were cast ashore without
resources, hating the poorhouse as a shelter for their offspring, and
abhorring the thought of selling themselves as laborers. Households,
too, were separated; the colonial newspapers contained advertisements
of members of families seeking their companions, of sons anxious to
reach and relieve their parents, of mothers moaning for their
children.
The wanderers sighed for their native country; but, to prevent their
return, their villages, from Annapolis to the isthmus, were laid
waste. Their old homes were but ruins. In the district of Minas, for
instance, two hundred and fifty of their houses, and more than as many
barns, were consumed. The live stock which belonged to them,
consisting of great numbers of horned cattle, hogs, sheep, and horses,
were seized as spoils and disposed of by the English officials. A
beautiful and fertile tract of country was reduced to a solitude.
There was none left round the ashes of the cottages of the Acadians
but the faithful watch-dog, vainly seeking the hands that fed him.
Thickets of forest-trees choked their orchards; the ocean broke over
their neglected dikes, and desolated their meadows.
Relentless misfortune pursued the exiles wherever they fled. Those
sent to Georgia, drawn by a love for the spot where they were born, as
strong as that of the captive Jews who wept by the rivers of Babylon
for their own temple and land, escaped to sea in boats, and went
coasting from harbor to harbor; but when they had reached New
England, just as they would have set sail for their native fields,
they were stopt by orders from Nova Scotia. Those who dwelt on the St.
John's were torn from their new homes. When Canada surrendered, hatred
with its worst venom pursued the fifteen hundred who remained south of
the Restigouche. Once those who dwelt in Pennsylvania presented a
humble petition to the Earl of Loudoun, then the British
commander-in-chief in America; and the cold-hearted peer, offended
that the prayer was made in French, seized their five principal men,
who in their own land had been persons of dignity and substance, and
shipped them to England, with the request that they might be kept from
ever again becoming troublesome by being consigned to service as
common sailors on board ships-of-war. No doubt existed of the King's
approbation. The lords of trade, more merciless than the savages and
than the wilderness in winter, wished very much that every one of the
Acadians should be driven out; and, when it seemed that the work was
done, congratulated the King that "the zealous endeavors of Lawrence
had been crowned with an entire success."