-165-

JULY

     By a general proclamation on the same day, the scarcely conscious victims, “both old men and young men, as well as all the lads of ten years of age” will be ordered to assemble on September 5th. The order will be obeyed. At Grand Pre, tour hundred and eighteen unarmed men will come together and will be marched into the church. All exits closed, Winslow, the American Commander will address them:

     “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.” He then declared them to be the king’s prisoners: their wives and families included; their sons, five hundred and twenty-seven in number; their daughters, five hundred and seventy-six; their women and infants, their elderly and children—totaling one thousand nine hundred and twenty-three people. The blow will be sudden, as they will leave home but for the morning, but are never to return to their hearths. The children and they will be compelled to beg for bread.
     On the tenth of December, the exiles will be drawn up six deep and the young men, one hundred and sixty-one in number, will be ordered to march first on board the vessel. They will consent to leave their farms and cottages, as well as their herds but they refuse to be separated from their parents. At bayonet point they are driven to the shore amidst their prayers, their tears, and their hymns, accompanied by their mothers, their wives and their children who kneel and pray for the blessing of Heaven upon their heads.
     The elderly will go next: the wives and children will be required to wait until other transport vessels arrive. Delay will bring horrors. The poor wretches left behind will be kept together near the sea without proper food, clothing, or shelter. The bitter cold of December will strike the shivering, half-clad, broken-hearted sufferers.
     “The embarkation of the inhabitants goes on slowly,” Monckton will write from Fort Cumberland, “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 will be vainly spent.
     Near Annapolis, one hundred heads of families will flee to the woods, and a party will be detached to hunt them down. “Our soldiers hate them,” one officer will write, “and if they can but find a pretext to kill them, they will.” The sentinel will shoot down all prisoners seeking to escape. Nevertheless, some will flee to Quebec; three thousand will flee to Miramachi and the region south of the Ristigouche, while others will find rest along the St. John’s River or one of its branches. Others will seek shelter in the forests while still the Indians will kindly receive others. Yet, seven thousand of these banished people will be driven on board ships to be scattered among the English colonies from New Hampshire to Georgia. South Carolina alone will receive one hundred and twenty of these exiles. They will be cast ashore without resources. They will despise the poor-house as a shelter for their families; but will deplore the idea of selling themselves as laborers.
    Households will be separated, too. The colonial newspapers will carry advertisements of members of families seeking their mothers, their sons, their daughters and their friends.
     To prevent the return of these exiles, the villages from Annapolis to the Isthmus will be laid waste. In the district of Minas, two hundred homes and their more numerous barns will be burned. The English officials will dispose of the great numbers of horned cattle, hogs, sheep and horses. Forest trees will choke their orchards. The sea will dissolve their neglected dikes.
     Misfortune will doggedly follow the exiles. Those sent to Georgia will escape and put to sea in boats, coasting from harbor to harbor. They will make an attempt to return to their native land. They will reach New England but will be ordered to halt by orders from Nova Scotia. Those who settled along the St. John’s River will be driven from their new homes, and when Canada surrenders to the English, the fifteen hundred who remain south of the Ristigouche will be pursued by the venom of hatred. Once when those who settled in Pennsylvania presented a petition to the Earl of Loudoun, the British Commander-in-Chief in America, will be offended that the prayer is made in French and will seize their five principal men, men of dignity and substance. They will ship them to England requesting they be kept from ever again becoming troublesome by being consigned to service as common sailors on board ships of war. The lords of trade, more merciless than the savages and than the wilderness in winter, have desired very much that every Acadian be driven out, and when the work seems accomplished, they congratulate the king that “the Zealous endeavors of Lawrence have been crowned with an entire success.”
      “We did, in my opinion, most inhumanly,” Mr. Edmund Burke will confess, “and upon pretenses, that in the eye of an honest man are not worth a farthing, root out this poor people, innocent, deserving people, whom our utter inability to govern or to reconcile, gave us no sort of right to extirpate.” George Bancroft will add, “I know not if the annals of the human race keep the record of sorrows so wantonly inflicted, so bitter, and so perennial as fell upon the French inhabitants of Acadia. The hands of the English official seemed under a spell with regard to them, and was never uplifted but to curse them.”

3, 1775 --Massachusetts. Monday, and George Washington rides from his quarters at Cambridge and under an elm tree on the common, assumes command of the Continental army. Colonel Joseph Trumbull, Governor of Connecticut writes him, “Now be strong, and very courageous; may the God of the armies of Israel give you wisdom and fortitude, cover your head in the day of battle and danger, and convince our enemies that all their attempts to deprive these colonies of their rights and liberties are vain.”
     Mr. Washington will answer, “The cause of our common country calls us both to an active and dangerous duty; Divine Providence, which wisely orders the affairs of men, will enable us to discharge it with fidelity and success.”

3, 1897 --Scotland. At Aberdeen, David Brown dies. He has been a co-worker with Mr. R. Jamieson and Mr. A. R. Fausset in the commentary that bears their names. He has submitted the work of the Gospels, Acts, and Romans.
     He has served as director of the National Bible Society of Scotland and has opposed the “Higher Criticism” of Mr. W. Robertson-Smith, the result of which has brought the dismissal of the latter from his professorship at Aberdeen College.




 

Previous   Next