The Expulsion of the Acadians: Grand Pre and South Carolina

At Mines Lieutenant-Colonel Winslow succeeded in accomplishing his unpleasant duty without resistance. On the 2d September he issued an order to the inhabitants of the districts of Grand Pre, Mines, River Canard, and vicinity, commanding all the males from ten years upward to attend at the church in Grand Pre on the following Friday, the 5th September, to hear what his majesty had authorized him to communicate to them. The inhabitants attended in obedience to this summons to the number of upwards of four hundred, and were informed by Winslow that, in consequence of their disobedience, their lands and tenements, cattle, live-stock, and all their effects, except their money and household goods, were forfeited to the crown, and they themselves were to be removed from the province. He told them, however, that he would take in the vessels with them as large a portion of their household effects as could be carried, and that families would not be separated, but conveyed in the same vessel. Finally, he told them that they should remain prisoners at the church until the time came for them to embark. At Piziquid, Captain Murray collected the male inhabitants in the same way to the number of nearly two hundred, and kept them in confinement. Considering the situation in which they were placed, they manifested but little emotion, and offered no resistance worthy of the name. The task of getting so many families together, and embarking them with their household effects, proved tedious, but finally it was accomplished, and the inhabitants of Mines and Piziquid, to the number of more than nineteen hundred persons, were got on board the transports, and carried away from their homes in Acadia to lands of which they knew nothing, and where their presence was not desired.

At Annapolis many families took the alarm when the transports arrived, and fled to the woods for safety, and much difficulty was experience din collecting them. Hunger finally compelled most of them to surrender themselves, and upwards of eleven hundred were placed on board the vessels and sent away. One vessel with two hundred and twenty-six Acadians on board was seized by them in the Bay of Fundy, and taken into St. John, and the passengers she carried were not afterwards recaptured. The total number removed from Acadia in 1755 was some-what in excess of three thousand souls. Some of them were taken to Massachusetts, some to Pennsylvania, some to Virginia, some to Maryland, some to North and South Carolina, and some even to the British West Indies, Wherever they were taken they became for the time a public charge upon the colony, and were the occasion of much correspondence between the governments which were obliged to maintain them and that of Nova Scotia. Many of those who went to Georgia and South Carolina hired small vessels and set out to return to Acadia, and the governors of those colonies were very glad to facilitate their movements northward by giving them passes to voyage along their coasts. Several hundred of those who landed in Virginia were sent by the government of that colony to England, where they remained for seven years, finally taking the oath of allegiance, and many of them returning to Acadia. A number of these people went from Virginia to the French West Indies, where they died in large numbers. The great bulk of the Acadians, however, finally succeeded in returning to the land of their birth. Some got back in the course of a few months, others did not succeed in returning until many years had elapsed, yet they succeeded, nevertheless, and the ultimate loss of population by their enforced emigration in 1755 was much less than would be supposed.

It must be admitted that the preceding narrative is, to a considerable extent, a case of special pleading, by a writer determined to put the best face on a bad matter. The deportation of a whole people, against their consent, of which there are many cases in history, is necessarily attended with hardship and suffering which only the most extreme need can justify. It cannot fairly be said that this need existed in the case of the Acadians. Though some of them were actively hostile to the English, the bulk of the people were quiet, industrious, and inoffensive, and the extent of their crime was that they refused to take an oath that would oblige them to bear arms against their countrymen. The expulsion was one of those instances in which, it being difficult to distinguish between the sheep and the wolves, they are made to suffer together. The position of the English was an awkward one, and their action, though it occasioned much suffering and proved of no special utility, had much good argument in its favor.

The resistance of the Acadians continued for twelve years longer, and not till 1767 did any considerable number of them consent to take the oath of allegiance required, though the whole country had long been English. Many of them had emigrated to the French West Indies. Of these a considerable number returned, disgusted with the government of those islands, and fully ready to take the oath. Others, who were surrounded by English colonies, did likewise. Each family, on doing so, received a grant of land from the government, and soon there arose an eagerness to take the oath of allegiance to England equal to the former determination to resist it.]