Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 5 (of 8) / The English and French in North America 1689-1763

by Unknown

CHAPTER VII.

THE WARS ON THE SEABOARD: THE STRUGGLE IN ACADIA AND CAPE BRETON.

BY CHARLES C. SMITH,

Treasurer of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

ALL through its early history Acadia, or Nova Scotia, suffered from the insecurity to life and property which arose from its repeated changes of masters. Neither France nor England cared much for a region of so little apparent value; and both alike regarded it merely as debatable ground, or as a convenient make-weight in adjusting the balance of conquests and losses elsewhere. Nothing was done to render it a safe or attractive home for immigrants; and at each outbreak of war in the Old World its soil became the scene of skirmishes and massacres in which Indian allies were conspicuous agents. Whatever the turn of victory here, little regard was paid to it in settling the terms of peace. There was hardly an attempt at any time to establish a permanent control over the conquered territory. In spite of the capture of Port Royal by Phips in 1690, and the annexation of Acadia to the government of Massachusetts in 1692, it was only a nominal authority which England had. In 1691, the French again took formal possession of Port Royal and the neighboring country. In the next year an ineffectual attempt was made to recover it; and this was followed by various conflicts, of no historical importance, in different parts of this much-harassed territory. In August, 1696, the famous Indian fighter, Captain Benjamin Church, left Boston on his fourth eastern expedition. After skirting the coast of Maine, where he met with but few Indians and no enemies, he determined to proceed up the Bay of Fundy. There he captured and burned Beaubassin, or Chignecto, and then returned to St. John. Subsequently he was superseded by Colonel John Hathorne, a member of the Massachusetts council, and an attack was made on the French fort at Nachouac, or Naxoat, farther up the river; but for some unexplained reason the attack was not pressed, and the English retreated shortly after they landed. “No notice,” says Hutchinson in his History of Massachusetts Bay, “was taken of any loss on either side, except the burning of a few of the enemy’s houses; nor is any sufficient reason given for relinquishing the design so suddenly.”[889] By the treaty of Ryswick in the following year (1697) Acadia was surrendered to France.

The French were not long permitted to enjoy the restored territory. In May, 1704, Church was again placed in command of an expedition fitted out at Boston against the French and Indians in the eastern country. He had been expressly forbidden to attack Port Royal, and after burning the little town of Mines nothing was accomplished by him. Three years later, in May, 1707, another expedition, of one thousand men, sailed from Boston under command of Colonel March. Port Royal was regularly invested, and an attempt was made to take the place by assault; but through the inefficiency of the commander it was a total failure. Reëmbarking his little army, March sailed away to Casco Bay, where he was superseded by Captain Wainwright, the second in command. The expedition then returned to Port Royal; but in the mean time the fortifications had been diligently strengthened, and after a brief view of them Wainwright drew off his forces. In 1710 a more successful attempt for the expulsion of the French was made. In July of that year a fleet arrived at Boston from England to take part in a combined attack on Port Royal. In pursuance of orders from the home government, four regiments were raised in the New England colonies, and sailed from Boston on the 18th of September. The fleet numbered thirty-six vessels, exclusive of hospital and store ships, and on board were the four New England regiments, respectively commanded by Sir Charles Hobby, Colonel Tailer, of Massachusetts, Colonel Whiting, of Connecticut, and Colonel Walton, of New Hampshire, and a detachment of marines from England. Francis Nicholson, who had been successively governor of New York, Virginia, and Maryland, had the chief command. The fleet, with the exception of one vessel which ran ashore and was lost, arrived off Port Royal on the 24th of September. The garrison was in no condition to resist an enemy, and the forces were landed without opposition. On the 1st of October three batteries were opened within one hundred yards of the fort; and twenty-four hours afterward the French capitulated. By the terms of the surrender the garrison was to be transported to France, and the inhabitants living within cannon-shot of Port Royal were to be protected in person and property for two years, on taking an oath of allegiance to the queen of England, or were to be allowed to remove to Canada or Newfoundland.[890] The name of Port Royal was changed to Annapolis Royal in compliment to the queen, and the fort was at once garrisoned by marines and volunteers under the command of Colonel Samuel Vetch, who had been selected as governor in case the expedition should prove successful. Its whole cost to New England was upward of twenty-three thousand pounds, which sum was afterward repaid by the mother country. Acadia never again came under French control, and by the treaty of Utrecht (1713) the province was formally ceded to Great Britain “according to its ancient limits.” As a matter of fact, those limits were never determined; but the question ceased to have any practical importance after the conquest of Canada by the English, though it was reopened long afterward in the boundary dispute between Great Britain and the United States.

By the treaty of Utrecht, France was left in undisputed possession of Cape Breton; and in order to establish a check on the English in Nova Scotia, the French immediately began to erect strong fortifications at Louisbourg, in Cape Breton, and invited to its protection the French inhabitants of Acadia and of Newfoundland, which latter had also been ceded to Great Britain. Placentia, the chief settlement in Newfoundland, was accordingly evacuated, and its inhabitants were transferred to Cape Breton; but such great obstacles were thrown in the way of a voluntary removal of the Acadians that very few of them joined their fellow countrymen. They remained in their old homes, to be only a source of anxiety and danger to their English masters. At the surrender of Acadia to Great Britain, it was estimated by Colonel Vetch, in a letter to the Board of Trade, that there were about twenty-five hundred French inhabitants in the country; and even at that early date he pointed out that their removal to Cape Breton would leave the country entirely destitute of inhabitants, and make the new French settlement a very populous colony, “and of the greatest danger and damage to all the British colonies, as well as the universal trade of Great Britain.”[891] Fully persuaded of the correctness of this view, the successive British governors refused to permit the French to remove to Canada or Cape Breton, and persistently endeavored to obtain from them a full recognition of the British sovereignty. In a single instance—in 1729—Governor Phillips secured from the French inhabitants on the Annapolis River an unconditional submission; but with this exception the French would never take the oath of allegiance without an express exemption from all liability to bear arms. It is certain, however, that this concession was never made by any one in authority; and in the two instances in which it was apparently granted by subordinate officers, their action was repudiated by their superiors. The designation “Neutral French,” sometimes given to the Acadians, has no warrant in the recognized facts of history.

Meanwhile the colony remained almost stationary, and attracted very little notice from the home government. In August, 1717, General Richard Phillips was appointed governor, which office he retained until 1749, though he resided in England during the greater part of the time. During his absence the small colonial affairs were successively administered by the lieutenant-governor of Annapolis, John Doucette, who held office from 1717 to 1726,[892] and afterward by the lieutenant-governors of the province, Lawrence Armstrong (1725-1739) and Paul Mascarene (1740-1749). Phillips was succeeded by Edward Cornwallis; but Cornwallis held the office only about three years, when he resigned, and General Peregrine Thomas Hopson was appointed his successor. On Hopson’s retirement, within a few months, the government was administered by one of the members of the council, Charles Lawrence, who was appointed lieutenant-governor in 1754, and governor in 1756.

In 1744 war again broke out between England and France, and the next year it was signalized in America by the capture of Louisbourg. Immediately on learning that war had been declared, the French commander despatched a strong force to Canso, which captured the English garrison at that place and carried them prisoners of war to Louisbourg. A second expedition was sent to Annapolis for a similar purpose, but through the prompt action of Governor Shirley, of Massachusetts, it failed of success. Aroused, no doubt, by these occurrences, Shirley formed the plan of capturing Louisbourg; and early in January, 1745, he communicated his design to the General Court of Massachusetts, and about the same time wrote to Commodore Warren, commanding the British fleet in the West Indies, for coöperation. His plans were favorably received, not only by Massachusetts, but also by the other New England colonies. Massachusetts voted to raise 3,250 men; Connecticut 500; and New Hampshire and Rhode Island each 300. The chief command was given to Sir William Pepperrell, a wealthy merchant of Kittery in Maine, of unblemished reputation and great personal popularity; and the second in command was Samuel Waldo, a native of Boston, but at that time also a resident of Maine.[893] The chief of artillery was Richard Gridley, a skilful engineer, who, in June, 1775, marked out the redoubt on Bunker Hill. The undertaking proved to be so popular that the full complement of men was raised within two months. The expedition consisted of thirteen armed vessels, under the command of Captain Edward Tyng, with upward of two hundred guns, and of about ninety transports. They were directed to proceed to Canso, where a block house was to be built, the stores landed, and a guard left to defend them. The Massachusetts troops sailed from Nantasket on the 24th of March, and reached Canso on the 4th of April. The New Hampshire forces had arrived four days before; the Connecticut troops reached the same place on the 25th. Hutchinson adds, with grim humor, “Rhode Island waited until a better judgment could be made of the event, their three hundred not arriving until after the place had surrendered.”[894]

The works at Louisbourg had been twenty-five years in construction, and though still incomplete had cost between five and six millions of dollars. They were thought to be the most formidable defences in America, and covered an area two and a half miles in circumference. A space of about two hundred yards toward the sea was left without a rampart; but at all other accessible points the walls were from thirty to thirty-six feet in height, with a ditch eighty feet in width. Scattered along their line were six bastions and three batteries with embrasures for one hundred and forty-eight cannon, of which only sixty-five were mounted, and sixteen mortars. On an island at the entrance of the harbor was a battery mounted with thirty guns; and directly opposite the entrance of the harbor was the grand battery, mounting twenty-eight heavy guns and two eighteen-pounders. The entrance to the town on the land-side was over a draw-bridge defended by a circular battery mounting sixteen cannon. It was these strong and well-planned works which a handful of New England farmers and fishermen undertook to capture with the assistance of a small English fleet.

Pepperrell was detained by the ice at Canso for nearly three weeks, at the end of which time he was joined by Commodore Warren with four ships, carrying one hundred and eighty guns. The combined forces reached Gabarus Bay, the place selected for a landing, on the morning of the 30th of April; and it was not until that time that the French had any knowledge of the impending attack. Two days later the grand battery fell into Pepperrell’s hands through a fortunate panic which seized the French. Thus encouraged, the siege was pressed with vigor under very great difficulties. The first battery was erected immediately on landing, and opened fire at once; but it required the labor of fourteen nights to draw all the cannon and other materials across the morass between the landing-place and Louisbourg, and it was not until the middle of May that the fourth battery was ready. On the 18th of May, Tyng in the “Massachusetts” frigate captured a French ship of sixty-four guns and five hundred men, heavily laden with military stores for Louisbourg. This success greatly raised the spirits of the besiegers, who, slowly but steadily, pushed forward to the accomplishment of their object. Warren’s fleet was reinforced by the arrival of three large ships from England and three from Newfoundland; the land-gate was demolished; serious breaches were made in the walls; and by the middle of June it was determined to attempt a general assault. The French commander, Duchambon, saw that further resistance would be useless, and on the 16th he capitulated with the honors of war, and the next day Pepperrell took possession of Louisbourg.

By the capitulation six hundred and fifty veteran troops, more than thirteen hundred militia, and other persons, to the number in all of upward of four thousand, agreed not to bear arms against Great Britain during the war, and were transported to France in fourteen ships. Seventy-six cannon and mortars fell into the hands of the conquerors, with a great quantity of military stores and provisions. The number killed on the side of the French was three hundred, and on the side of the English one hundred and thirty; but subsequently the latter suffered heavily by disease, and at one time so many as fifteen hundred were sick from exposure and bad weather. Tidings of the victory created great joy in New England, and the news was received with no small satisfaction in the mother country. Pepperrell was made a baronet, Warren an admiral, and both Shirley and Pepperrell were commissioned as colonels. Subsequently, after a delay of four years, Great Britain reimbursed the colonies for the expenses of the expedition to the amount of £200,000.

A FRENCH FRIGATE.

[After a cut in Paul Lacroix’s XVIII^me Siècle, p. 129.—Ed.]

The capture of Louisbourg was by far the most important event in the history of Nova Scotia during the war, and the loss of so important a place was a keen mortification to France. As soon as news of the fall of Louisbourg reached the French government, steps were taken with a view to its recapture and to the punishment of the English colonists by destroying Boston and ravaging the New England coast. In June, 1746, a fleet of eleven ships of the line, twenty frigates, thirty transports, and two fire-ships was despatched for this purpose under command of Admiral D’Anville; but the enterprise ended in a disastrous failure. Contrary winds prevailed during the voyage, and on nearing the American coast a violent storm scattered the fleet, driving some of the ships back to France and others to the West Indies, and wrecking some on Sable Island. On the 10th of September D’Anville cast anchor with the remaining vessels—two ships and a few transports—in Chebucto; and six days later he died, of apoplexy, it is said. At a council of war held shortly afterward it was determined to attack Annapolis, against the judgment of Vice-Admiral D’Estournelle, who had assumed the command. Exasperated, apparently, at this decision, he committed suicide in a fit of temporary insanity. This second misfortune was followed by the breaking out of the small-pox among the crews; and finally after scuttling some of the vessels the officer next in command returned to France without striking a single blow. In the spring of the following year another expedition, of smaller size, was despatched under command of Admiral De la Jonquiere; but the fleet was intercepted and dispersed off Cape Finisterre by the English, who captured nine ships of war and numerous other vessels.

Meanwhile, and before the capture of Louisbourg, the French had made an unsuccessful attempt on Annapolis, from which the besieging force was withdrawn to aid in the defence of Louisbourg, but they did not arrive until a month after its surrender. In the following year another army of Canadians appeared before Annapolis; but the place seemed to be so strong and well defended that it was not thought prudent to press the attack. The French accordingly withdrew to Chignecto to await the arrival of reinforcements expected from France. While stationed there they learned that a small body of New England troops, under Colonel Noble, were quartered at Grand Pré, and measures were speedily adopted to cut them off. The attack was made under cover of a snow-storm at an early hour on the morning of the 4th of February, 1747. It was a complete surprise to the English. Noble, who was in bed at the time, was killed fighting in his shirt. A desperate conflict, however, ensued from house to house, and at ten o’clock in the forenoon the English capitulated with the honors of war.[895] This terminated active hostilities in Nova Scotia, from which the French troops shortly afterward withdrew. By the disgraceful peace of Aix la Chapelle (1748) England surrendered Louisbourg and Cape Breton to the French, and all the fruits of the war in America were lost.

After the conclusion of peace it was determined by the home government to strengthen their hold on Nova Scotia, so as to render it as far as possible a bulwark to the other English colonies, instead of a source of danger to them. With this view an advertisement was inserted in the London Gazette, in March, 1749, setting forth “that proper encouragement will be given to such of the officers and private men, lately dismissed his Majesty’s land and sea service, as are willing to accept of grants of land, and to settle with or without families in Nova Scotia.” Fifty acres were to be allotted to every soldier or sailor, free from the payment of rents or taxes for the term of ten years, after which they were not to be required to pay more than one shilling per annum for every fifty acres; and an additional grant of ten acres for each person in a family was promised. Larger grants, with similar conditions, were to be made to the officers; and still further to encourage the settlement of the province the same inducements were offered to “carpenters, shipwrights, smiths, masons, joiners, brickmakers, brick-layers, and all other artificers necessary in building or husbandry, not being private soldiers or seamen,” and also to surgeons on producing certificates that they were properly qualified. These offers were promptly accepted by a large number of persons, but apparently by not so many as was anticipated.

In the following May Edward Cornwallis, then a member of Parliament, and uncle of the first Marquis of Cornwallis, was appointed captain-general and governor in chief, and at once embarked for Nova Scotia with the new settlers. On the 21st of June he arrived in Chebucto harbor, which all the officers agreed was the finest harbor they had ever seen; and early in July he was joined by the transports, thirteen in number, having on board upward of twenty-five hundred immigrants. The shores of the harbor were wooded to the water’s edge, “no clear spot to be seen or heard of.”[896] But by the 23d of the month more than twelve acres were cleared, and preparations were made for building. A month later the plan of the town was fully laid out, and subsequently a line of palisades was erected around the town, a square fort was built on the hill, and a space thirty feet wide cleared outside of the defensive line. By the end of October three hundred houses had been completed, a second fort had been built, and an order had been sent to Boston for lamps to light the streets in the winter nights. Halifax, as the new town was called, had already begun to wear the appearance of a settled community; and in little more than a year its first church was opened for religious services. From the first, the growth of Halifax was strong and healthy; and it soon became a place of considerable importance. So early as 1752 the number of inhabitants amounted to more than four thousand. Stringent rules were adopted to insure public order and morality; and very soon the governor and council proceeded to exercise legislative authority.[897] But their right to do this was expressly denied by the law officers at home.[898] Accordingly, in the early part of 1757 a plan was adopted for dividing the province into electoral districts, for the choice of a legislative body, and was sent to England for approval. Some exceptions, however, were taken to the plan; and it was not until October, 1758, that the first provincial assembly met at Halifax, nineteen members being present.

In the mean time, in 1755, occurred the most memorable and tragic event in the whole history of Nova Scotia. Though England and France were nominally at peace, frequent collisions took place between their adherents in Nova Scotia and elsewhere in America. Early in 1755 it was determined to dispossess the French of the posts which they had established on the Bay of Fundy, and a force of eighteen hundred men was raised in New England, for that purpose, under Lieutenant-Colonels Scott and John Winslow. The chief command of the expedition was given to Colonel Robert Monckton, an officer in the English army. The first and most honorable fruits of the expedition were the capture of the French forts at Beauséjour and at Gaspereau, both of which surrendered in June. A few weeks later Winslow became a chief instrument in the forcible removal of the French Acadians, which has given his name an unenviable notoriety. It was a task apparently at which his whole nature relucted; and over and over again he wrote in his letters at the time that it was the most disagreeable duty he had had to perform in his whole life. But he did not hesitate for a moment, and carried out with unfaltering energy the commands of his superior officers.

For more than a generation the French inhabitants had refused to take the oath of allegiance to the king of England, except in a qualified form. Upon their renewed refusal, in July, 1755, it was determined to take immediate steps for their removal, in accordance with a previous decision, “to send all the French inhabitants out of the province, if they refused to take the oath;” and at a meeting of the provincial council of Nova Scotia, held July 28th, “after mature consideration, it was unanimously agreed that, to prevent as much as possible their attempting to return and molest the settlers that may be set down on their lands, it would be most proper to send them to be distributed amongst the several colonies on the continent, and that a sufficient number of vessels should be hired with all possible expedition for that purpose.”[899] Accordingly orders were sent to Boston to charter the required number of transports; and on the 11th of August Governor Lawrence forwarded detailed instructions to Lieutenant-Colonel Winslow, commanding at Mines, and to Major John Handfield, a Nova Scotia officer, commanding at Annapolis, to ship off the French inhabitants in their respective neighborhoods. As the crops were not yet harvested, and there was delay in the arrival of the transports, the orders could not be executed until the autumn. At that time they were carried out with a sternness and a disregard of the rights of humanity for which there can be no justification or excuse. On the same day on which the instructions were issued to Winslow and Handfield, Governor Lawrence wrote a circular letter to the other English governors in America, expressing the opinion that there was not the least reason to doubt of their concurrence, and his hope that they would receive the inhabitants now sent “and dispose of them in such manner as may best answer our design in preventing their reunion.” According to the official instructions five hundred persons were to be transported to North Carolina, one thousand to Virginia, five hundred to Maryland, three hundred to Philadelphia, two hundred to New York, three hundred to Connecticut, and two hundred to Boston.

On the 4th of September Winslow issued a citation to the inhabitants in his immediate neighborhood to appear and receive a communication from him. The next day, he recorded in his journal, “at three in the afternoon, the French inhabitants appeared, agreeably to their citation, at the church in Grand Pré, amounting to four hundred and eighteen of their best men; upon which I ordered a table to be set in the centre of the church, and, having attended with those of my officers who were off guard, delivered them by interpreters the king’s orders.” After a brief preamble he proceeded to say, “The part of duty I am now upon is what, though necessary, is very disagreeable to my natural make and temper, as I know it must be grievous to you who are of the same species. But it is not my business to animadvert, but to obey such orders as I receive, and therefore without hesitation shall deliver you his Majesty’s orders and instructions.” He then informed them that all their lands, cattle, and other property, except money and household goods, were forfeited to the Crown, and that all the French inhabitants were to be removed from the province. They were, however, to have liberty to carry their money and as many of their household goods as could be conveniently shipped in the vessels; and he added, “I shall do everything in my power that all those goods be secured to you, and that you are not molested in carrying them off, and also that whole families go in the same vessel, and make this remove, which I am sensible must give you a great deal of trouble, as easy as his Majesty’s service will admit, and hope that in whatever part of the world you may fall you may be faithful subjects, a peaceable and happy people.”[900] Meanwhile they were to remain under the inspection of the troops. Toward night these unhappy victims, “not having any provisions with them, and pleading hunger, begged for bread,” which was given them, and orders were then issued that for the future they must be supplied from their respective families. “Thus ended the memorable 5th of September,” Winslow wrote in his journal, “a day of great fatigue and trouble.”[901]

Shortly afterward the first prisoners were embarked; but great delay occurred in shipping them off, mainly on account of the failure of the contractor to arrive with the provisions at the expected time, and it was not until November or December that the last were shipped. The whole number sent away at this time was about four thousand. There was also a great destruction of property; and in the district under command of Winslow very nearly seven hundred buildings were burned. The presence of the French was nowhere welcome in the colonies to which they were sent; and they doubtless experienced many hardships. The governors of South Carolina and Georgia gave them permission to return, much to the surprise and indignation of Governor Lawrence;[902] and seven boats, with ninety unhappy men who had coasted along shore from one of the Southern colonies, were stopped in Massachusetts. In the summer of 1762 five transports with a further shipment of these unfortunate people were sent to Boston, but the General Court would not permit them to land, and they were ordered to return to Halifax.[903]

The removal of the French Acadians from their homes was one of the saddest episodes in modern history, and no one now will attempt to justify it; but it should be added that the genius of our great poet has thrown a somewhat false and distorted light over the character of the victims. They were not the peaceful and simple-hearted people they are commonly supposed to have been; and their houses, as we learn from contemporary evidence, were by no means the picturesque, vine-clad, and strongly built cottages described by the poet. The people were notably quarrelsome among themselves, and to the last degree superstitious. They were wholly under the influence of priests appointed by the French bishops, and directly responsible to the representatives of the Roman Catholic Church at Quebec. Many of these priests were quite as much political agents as religious teachers, and some of them fell under the censure of their superiors for going too much outside of their religious functions. Even in periods when France and England were at peace, the French Acadians were a source of perpetual danger to the English colonists. Their claim to a qualified allegiance was one which no nation then or now could sanction. But all this does not justify their expulsion in the manner in which it was executed, and it will always remain a foul blot on the history of Nova Scotia. The knowledge of these facts, however, enables us to understand better the constant feeling of insecurity under which the English settlers lived, and which finally resulted in the removal and dispersion of the French under circumstances of such heartless cruelty.

In May of the following year, war was again declared between France and England; and two years later Louisbourg again fell into the hands of the English. In May, 1758, a powerful fleet under command of Admiral Boscawen arrived at Halifax for the purpose of recapturing a place which ought never to have been given up. The fleet consisted of twenty-three ships of the line and eighteen frigates, beside transports, and when it left Halifax it numbered one hundred and fifty-seven vessels. With it was a land force, under Jeffery Amherst, of upward of twelve thousand men. The French forces at Louisbourg were much inferior, and consisted of only eight ships of the line and three frigates, and of about four thousand soldiers. The English fleet set sail from Halifax on the 28th of May, and on the 8th of June a landing was effected in Gabarus Bay. The next day the attack began, and after a sharp conflict the French abandoned and destroyed two important batteries. The siege was then pushed by regular approaches; but it was not until the 26th of July that the garrison capitulated. By the terms of surrender the whole garrison were to become prisoners of war and to be sent to England, and the English acquired two hundred and eighteen cannon and eighteen mortars, beside great quantities of ammunition and military stores. All the vessels of war had been captured or destroyed; but their crews, to the number of upward of twenty-six hundred men, were included in the capitulation. Two years later, at the beginning of 1760, orders were sent from England to demolish the fortress, render the harbor impracticable, and transport the garrison and stores to Halifax. These orders were carried out so effectually that few traces of its fortifications remain, and the place is inhabited only by fishermen.

A year after the surrender of Louisbourg a fatal blow was struck at the French power in America by the capture of Quebec; and by the peace of Paris, in February, 1763, the whole of Canada was ceded to Great Britain. The effects of this cession, in preparing the way for the independence of the principal English colonies, cannot easily be overestimated; but to Nova Scotia it only gave immunity from the fear of French incursions, without in the slightest degree weakening the attachment of the inhabitants to England.

[CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION].

IN recent years much attention has been given to the study of Acadian history by local investigators, and important documents for its elucidation have been obtained from England and France, and the provincial archives have been put in excellent order by the commissioner of public records. To his intelligent interest in the subject we are indebted for one of the most important contributions to our knowledge of it, his Selections from the Public Documents of the Province of Nova Scotia.[904] This volume comprises a great mass of valuable papers illustrative of the history of Nova Scotia in the eighteenth century, systematically arranged. The first part consists of papers relating to the French Acadians, 1714-1755; the second part, of papers relating to their forcible removal from the province, 1755-1768; the third, of papers relating to the French encroachments, 1749-1754, and the war in North America, 1754-1761; the fourth, of papers relating to the first settlement of Halifax, 1749-1756; and the last part, of papers relating to the first establishment of a representative assembly in Nova Scotia. Mr. Akins has added a sufficient number of biographical and other notes, and has inserted a conveniently arranged Index.

Next in importance to this volume are the publications of the Nova Scotia Historical Society, which was formed in 1878, and incorporated in 1879. Since that time it has printed four small volumes of Collections, comprising many valuable papers. Of these the most important is the journal of Colonel Winslow at the time of the expulsion of the Acadians, printed (vol. iii. p. 114) from the original manuscript in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society. There are also (vol. i. p. 119) the diary of the surgeon, John Thomas, at the same time,[905] beside a journal of the capture of Annapolis in 1710, a history of St. Paul’s Church, Halifax, and other papers of historical interest and value. The fourth volume contains a Memoir of Samuel Vetch, the first English governor of Nova Scotia, with illustrative documents, and the journal of Colonel John Winslow, during the Siege of Beauséjour, in 1755.[906]

Another work of great authority, as well for the later as for the early history of Nova Scotia, is Murdoch’s History of Nova Scotia.[907] Written in the form of annals, it is somewhat confused in arrangement, and a reader or student is under the necessity of picking out important facts from a great mass of chaff; but it is a work of wide and thorough research, and should be carefully studied by every one who wishes to learn the minute facts of Nova Scotia history.

The early history of Nova Scotia, from its first settlement down to the peace of Paris in 1763, is treated with much fulness by James Hannay in a well-written narrative, which is not, however, entirely free from prejudice, especially against the New England colonies.[908] But, for thoroughness of investigation and general accuracy of statement, Mr. Hannay must hold a high place among local historians. Fortunately his labors are well supplemented by Duncan Campbell’s History of Nova Scotia,[909] which was, indeed, published at an earlier date, but which is, however, very meagre for the period when Acadia was a French colony.

Beside these, there are several county and town histories, of which the best is Dr. Patterson’s History of Pictou.[910] It is a work of diligent and faithful research, gathering up much traditional knowledge, and especially full in details respecting the origin and later fortunes of Pictou Academy. There are also a considerable number of local histories in manuscript in the archives of the Nova Scotia Historical Society.

[AUTHORITIES]

ON THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS OF NEW ENGLAND AND ACADIA, 1688-1763.

By the Editor.

A. King William’s War.—This was begun Aug. 13, 1688. A truce was concluded by Captain John Alden at Sagadahock, Nov. 19, 1690. (Hutchinson’s Massachusetts, i. 404; Mass. Hist. Collections, xxi. p. 112, from the Hutchinson papers.)

Pike and Hutchinson’s instructions for making a truce, Nov. 9, 1690, are given in James S. Pike’s New Puritan (p. 128), and (p. 131) the agreement at Wells, May 1, 1691.

Sewall (Letter Book, p. 119) writes Aug. 1, 1691, “The truce is over and our Indian war renewed. The enemy attempted to surprise Wells, but were disappointed by a party of ours [who] got into the town but about half an hour before.”

Submission and agreement of eastern Indians at Fort William Henry, in Pemaquid, Aug. 11, 1693. (Mass. Archives, xxx. 338; Mather’s Magnalia; New Hampshire Provincial Papers, ii. 110; Johnston’s Bristol, Bremen, and Pemaquid, p. 193.)

Accounts of the French capturing vessels in Massachusetts Bay (1694-95), correspondence between Stoughton and Frontenac (1695), and various plans for French expeditions to attack Boston (1696-97, 1700-1704), are in Collection de manuscrits relatifs à l’histoire de la Nouvelle France (Quebec, 1884), vol. ii.

A bill to encourage the war against the enemy is in the Mass. Archives, xxx. 358. Details of Church’s expedition in 1696 to Nova Scotia are given in Murdoch’s Nova Scotia, i. 233. Cf. also J. S. Pike’s Life of Robert Pike, the New Puritan.

Nicholas Noyes, New England’s Duty and Interest to be a Habitation of Justice and a Mountain of Holiness, an election sermon, Boston, 1698 (Sabin’s Dictionary, xiii. no. 56,229; Haven’s list in Thomas’s History of Printing, ii. p. 343; Carter-Brown, ii. 1,546), has in an appendix (pp. 89-99) an account of a visit of Grindall Rawson and Samuel Danforth to the Indians within the province, in 1698.

Submission of the eastern Indians at Pejebscot (Brunswick), Jan. 7, 1699. (New Hampshire Hist. Soc. Coll., ii. 265; N. H. Provincial Papers, ii. 299; E. E. Bourne’s Wells and Kennebunk, ch. xv.; Mass. Archives, xxx. 439.)

Submission of the eastern Indians, Sept. 8, 1699. (Mass. Archives, xxx. 447.)

Various documents concerning the making of a treaty with the eastern Indians, 1700-1701, are also in Mass. Archives, vol. xxx.

The events of this war are covered in Cotton Mather’s Decennium Luctuosum, an history of remarkable occurrences in the long war ... from 1688 to 1698, Boston, 1699. (Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, iii. p. 67.) It was reprinted in the Magnalia.

A detail of the sources on the different attacks and fights of this war is given in Vol. IV. of the present work, pp. 159-161.

B. Queen Anne’s or Governor Dudley’s War.—One of the first acts of the ministry of Queen Anne was to issue a declaration of war against France, May 15, 1702, opening what is known in Europe as the “War of the Spanish Succession.” Governor Dudley in June, 1703, went to Casco, to avert by a conference the Indian participancy in the war, if possible. Campbell, the Boston postmaster, in one of his Public Occurrences says that Dudley found the Indians at the eastward “two thirds for peace, and one third for war.” (Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., ix. 495.) These latter were the more easterly tribes, who came under French influence, and in Aug., 1703, Dudley issued at Boston a broadside declaration against the Penicooke and eastern Indians. (Haven’s list, p. 351.) Plunder and massacre along the frontier settlements at the eastward soon convinced the people of New England that they must prepare for another murderous war. (Cf. “Indian Troubles on the Coast of Maine,” documents in Maine Hist. Coll., iii. 341.)

The first organized retaliatory assault was the maritime expedition to the Bay of Fundy, led in 1704 by Col. Benjamin Church.

Church’s own part in this expedition is set forth in the Entertaining Passages,[911] where will be found Governor Dudley’s instructions to Church (p. 104). John Gyles, who in his youth had been a captive among the French and Indians, when he learned to speak French, served as interpreter and lieutenant.[912] Church’s conduct of the expedition, which had promised much and had been of heavy cost to the province, had not answered public expectation, and crossed the judgment of such as disapproved the making of retaliatory cruelties the object of war. This view qualifies the opinions which have been expressed upon Church’s exploits by Hutchinson (Hist. Mass., ii. 132); Williamson (Hist. Maine, ii. 47); and Palfrey (Hist. N. Eng., iv. 259). Hannay (Acadia, 264) calls Church “barbarous.” It is his own story and that of Penhallow which have given rise to these opinions.

Church’s instructions had not contemplated the risks of an attack on Port Royal, and in ignorance of this Charlevoix accuses the assailants of want of courage, and Dr. Shea, in editing that writer,[913] stigmatizes the devastations as “inhuman and savage,” and refers to a French account in Canada Documents[914] (III. ii. pp. 648-652) called “Expeditions faites par les Anglois de la Nouvelle Angleterre au Port Royal, aux Mines et à Beaubassin de l’Acadie.”

The French early the next year, under Subercase, inflicted similar devastation upon the Newfoundland coast, though the forts at St. John resisted an attack. There is an original account by Pastour de Costebelle, dated at Plaisance, Oct. 22, 1705, in the possession of Dr. Geo. H. Moore, which has been printed in the Mag. of Amer. Hist., Feb., 1877. Charlevoix (Shea’s translation, iv. 172) naturally relishes the misery of these savages better than he does the equally brutal business of Church.

Palfrey (iv. 269) found in the British Colonial Office a paper dated Quebec, Oct. 20, 1705, containing proposals for a peace between New England and Canada, in which Vaudreuil[915] suggested that both sides should “hinder all acts of hostility” on the part of the Indians.

Cf. for this attempted truce and for correspondence at this time between Dudley and Vaudreuil, Collection de manuscrits relatifs à l’histoire de la Nouvelle France (Quebec, 1884), vol. ii. pp. 425-28, 435-40, 452.

The Abenakis continuing to disturb the borders,[916] Dudley planned an attack on Port Royal, which should be carried out, and be no longer a threat;[917] and Subercase, then in command there, was in effect surprised in June, 1707, at the formidable fleet which entered the basin. Inefficiency in the English commander, Colonel March, and little self-confidence and want of discipline in his force, led to the abandonment of the attack and the retirement of the force to Casco Bay, where, reinforced and reinspirited by a commission of three persons[918] sent from angry Boston, it returned to the basin, but accomplished no more than before.[919]

These successive disappointments fell at a time when the two Mathers were defeated (through Dudley’s contrivances, as was alleged) in the contest for the presidency of Harvard College. This outcome made for Dudley two bitter and unscrupulous enemies, and any abuse they might shower upon him gained a ready hearing in a belief, prevalent even with fair people, that Dudley was using his own position for personal gain in illicit trade with Acadia. There have been reprinted in the second volume of the Sewall Papers three testy tracts which grew out of this conjunction of affairs. In them Dudley is charged with the responsibility of these military miscarriages, and events are given a turn which the careful historian finds it necessary to scrutinize closely.[920]

Palfrey (iv. 273) pictures the universal chagrin and details the efforts to shift the blame for the failure of this expedition. Charlevoix gives a pretty full account, but his editor claims that the English chroniclers resort to vagueness in their stories. In some copies of Diéreville’s Relation du voyage du Port Royal de l’Acadie (Amsterdam, 1710) there is an appendix on the 1707 expedition, taken from the Gazette of Feb. 25, 1708.[921]

Events were tending towards a more strenuous effort at the reduction of Acadia. Jeremiah Dummer, in London, had in 1709 presented a memorial to the ministry arguing that the banks of the St. Lawrence belonged of right to New England.[922] It is printed in The Importance and Advantage of Cape Breton, London, 1746.[923] In April, 1709, the home government despatched orders to the colonies[924] for an extended movement on Montreal by way of Lake Champlain, and another on Quebec by water,—the latter part of the plan falling to the lot of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, who were promised the coöperation of a royal fleet and a force of veterans.[925] Colonel Vetch, who was a prime mover in the proceeding, brought the messages of the royal pleasure, and was made the adjutant-general of the commander, Francis Nicholson; but the promised fleet did not come, and the few king’s ships which were in Boston were held aloof by their commanders, and a project to turn the troops, already massed in Boston, against Port Royal, since there was no chance of success against Quebec unaided, was abandoned for want of the convoy these royal ships might have afforded.[926] Nicholson, the companion of Vetch, returned to England,[927] and the next year (1710) came back with a small fleet, which, with an expeditionary force of New Englanders, captured Port Royal,[928] and Vetch was left governor of the country.[929]

ANNAPOLIS ROYAL.

One of Des Barres’ coast views (in Harvard College library).

The key of the fort at Annapolis, taken at this time, is in the cabinet of the Mass. Hist. Society. (Cf. Catal. Cab. M. H. Soc., p. 112; Proceedings, i. 101.)

Col. William Dudley under date of Nov. 15, 1710, sent to the Board of Trade a communication covering the journal of Col. Nicholson during the siege, with correspondence appertaining, and these papers from the Record Office, London, are printed in the Nova Scotia Hist. Soc. Collections, i. p. 59, as (p. 64) is also a journal from the Boston News-Letter of Nov. 6, 1710. Sabin (ix. no. 36,703) notes a very rare tract: Journal of an Expedition performed by the forces of our Soveraign Lady Anne, Queen, etc., under the command of the Honourable Francis Nicholson in the year 1710, for the reduction of Port Royal in Nova Scotia, London, 1711. A journal kept by the Rev. Mr. Buckingham is printed from the original MS., edited by Theodore Dwight, in the Journals of Madam Knight and Rev. Mr. Buckingham (New York, 1825).[930]

The war was ended by a treaty at Portsmouth, July 11, 1713. (Mass. Archives, xxix. p. 1; N. H. Hist. Soc. Coll., i. p. 83; N. H. Prov. Papers, iii. 543; Maine Hist. Soc. Coll., vi. 250; Penhallow, 78; Williamson’s Maine, ii. 67.)

There was a conference with five of the leading eastern Indians at Boston, Jan. 16, 1713-14, and this treaty is in the Mass. Archives, xxix. 22. A fac-simile of its English signatures is annexed. Another conference was held at Portsmouth, July 23-28, 1714; and this document is also preserved. (Mass. Archives, xxix. 36; Maine Hist. Soc. Coll., vi. 257.)

Dr. Shea (Charlevoix, v. 267) says that no intelligent man will believe that the Indians understood the law-terms of these treaties, adding that Hutchinson (ii. 246) admits as much.

The papers by Frederick Kidder in the Maine Hist. Soc. Collections (vols. iii. and vi.) were republished as Abnaki Indians, their treaties of 1713 and 1717, and a vocabulary with an historical introduction, Portland, 1859. (Field, Indian Bibliog., no. 829; Hist. Mag., ii. p. 84.) It gives fac-similes of the autographs of the English signers and witnesses; and of the marks or signs of the Indians.

A later conference to ratify the treaty of 1713 was published under the title of Georgetown on Arrowsick island, Aug. 9, 1717.... A conference of Gov. Shute with the sachems and chief men of the eastern Indians, Boston, 1717. (Harvard Col. library, no. 5325.24; Brinley, i. no. 431.) This tract is reprinted in the Maine Hist. Soc. Coll., iii. 361, and in the N. H. Prov. Papers, iii. 693. See further in Penhallow, p. 83; Niles, in Mass. Hist. Coll., xxxv. 338; Hutchinson, ii. 199; Williamson’s Maine, ii. 93; Belknap’s New Hampshire, ii. 47; Shea’s Charlevoix, v. 268; Palfrey’s New England, iv. 420.

Shute was accompanied to Arrowsick by the Rev. Joseph Baxter, and his journal of this period, annotated by Elias Nason, is printed in the N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., Jan., 1867, p. 45.

Of chief importance respecting this as well as other of the wars, enumerated in this section, are the documents preserved in the State House at Boston. The Mass. Archives, vol. xxix., covers Indian conferences, etc., from 1713 to 1776; vol. xxxiv. treaties with the Indians from 1645 to 1726; and vols. xxx. to xxxiii. elucidate by original documents relations of all sorts with the Indians of the east and west, as well as those among the more central settlements between 1639 and 1775.

The chief English authority for Queen Anne’s and Lovewell’s wars is The History of the wars of New England with the eastern Indians, or a narrative of their continued perfidy from the 10th of August, 1703, to the peace renewed 13th of July, 1713; and from the 25th of July, 1722, to their submission, 15th December, 1725, which was ratified August 5th, 1726. By Samuel Penhallow. Boston, 1726. The author was an Englishman, who in 1686, at twenty-one, had come to America to perfect his learning in the college at Cambridge, designing to acquire the Indian tongue, and to serve the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Indians. Trade and public office, however, diverted his attention, and he became a rich tradesman at Portsmouth and a man of consideration in the public affairs of New Hampshire. His book is of the first value to the historian and the object of much quest to the collector, for it has become very rare. Penhallow died Dec., 1726, shortly after its publication. It has been reprinted in the first volume of the N. H. Hist. Society’s Collections, and again in 1859 at Cincinnati, with a memoir and notes by W. Dodge.[931]

SIGNERS OF THE CONFERENCE.
(January 16, 1713-14.)

A more comprehensive writer is Samuel Niles, in his French and Indian Wars, 1634-1760. Niles was a Rhode Islander, who came to Harvard College the first from that colony to seek a liberal education, and, having graduated in 1699, he settled in Braintree, Mass., in 1711, where he continued till his death in 1762. Palfrey (vol. iv. 256) has pointed out that Niles did little more than add a sentence, embody a reflection, and condense or omit in the use which he made of the Memorial of Nathaniel Morton, the Entertaining Passages of Church, the Indian Wars of Hubbard, the Magnalia of Mather, and the History of Penhallow; so that for a period down to about 1745, Niles is of scarcely any original value.

Fac-simile from a copy in Harvard College library.

John Adams (Works, x. 361), who knew the author, lamented in 1818 that no printer would undertake the publication of his history. The manuscript of the work was neglected till some time after 1830 it was found in a box of papers belonging to the Mass. Hist. Society, and was subsequently printed in their Collections, vols. xxvi. and xxxv.[932]

Fac-simile slightly reduced from the copy in Harvard College library.

There are two other important contemporary printed accounts of this war.

Col. Benjamin Church furnished the memoranda from which his son Thomas constructed a book, very popular in its day, and which was published in Boston in 1716, as Entertaining Passages,[933] etc.

Cotton Mather, on the restoration of peace, reviewed the ten years’ sorrows of the war in a sermon before the governor and legislature, which was published as Duodecennium Luctuosum—the History of a long war with Indian savages and their directors and abettors, 1702-1714.[934]

GUT OF ANNAPOLIS.

Note.—The above cut represents the entrance to the Annapolis basin, as it would appear to a spectator at the position corresponding to the letter B in the words “Baye Françoise” in the northwest corner of the map on the opposite page. It follows on a reduced scale one of the coast scenes made by the British engineers to accompany the hydrographic surveys, published by Des Barres, just before the American Revolutionary War, and which frequently make part of the Atlantic Neptune. A modern drawing of the view looking outward through the gut is given in E. B. Chase’s Over the Border (Boston, 1884), where will be found a view of the old block house in Annapolis (p. 64), which stood till 1882.

The map (on the opposite page) is by the royal (French) engineer Nicolas Bellin, and was published by Charlevoix in his Histoire de la Nouvelle France, and is reproduced in Dr. Shea’s translation of Charlevoix, v. p. 170; and on a reduced scale in Gay, Pop. Hist. U. S., iii. p. 125. A MS. plan (1725) is noted in the Catalogue of the King’s Maps in the British Museum, i. p. 38; as also are other plans of 1751, 1752, 1755. One of date 1729 by Nathaniel Blackmore is plate no. 27 in Moll’s New Survey of the Globe. One of 1733 is in the North collection of maps in Harvard College library, vol. ii. pl. 11. One of 1779, after a manuscript in the Dépôt des Cartes in Paris, is no. 11 in the Neptune Americo-Septentrional. This Bellin map may be compared with the draughts of the basin made in the early part of the preceding century by Lescarbot, published in his Histoire de la Nouvelle France (1609), and by Champlain as given in his Voyages du Sieur de Champlain Xaintongeois (1613),—both of which maps are produced in the present History, Vol. IV. pp. 140, 141.

There is on a previous page a view of the town and fort of Annapolis at the upper end of the basin. Various papers respecting Annapolis Royal, as it was called after coming into English possession, can be found in the Belknap Papers (MSS.) in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society, including letters from Governor Richard Phillips, Lieutenant-Governor John Doucett, and Paul Mascarene. The history of Nova Scotia so much centres in Annapolis, previous to the founding of Halifax, that all the histories of Acadia and Nova Scotia tell the story of the picturesque and interesting region in which the town is situated. (Cf. Vol. IV. p. 156.)

Jacques Nicolas Bellin, the maker of the opposite map, as he was of all the maps given by Charlevoix, was born in Paris in 1703, and died in 1772. He was one of the principal hydrographers of his time in France, and was the earliest to hold a governmental position in the engineer department of the Marine. He has left a large mass of cartographical work, chiefly given on a large scale in his Neptune Français (1753 in folio) and his Hydrographie Française (1756 in folio). The same, with other maps reproduced on a smaller scale, constitute his Petit Atlas Maritime (1764, five volumes in quarto). All of these publications contain maps of American interest, and in 1755 he printed a special contribution to the study of American cartography, Mémoires sur les cartes des côtes de l’Amérique septentrionale.

The uneasy disposition of the times upon the conclusion of the peace may be followed in Gov. Shute’s letter to the Jesuit Father Rasle, Feb. 21, 1718 (Mass. Hist. Coll., v. 112); in the conference with the Penobscots[935] and Norridgewocks, at Georgetown, Oct. 12, 1720 (Mass. Archives, xxix. 68); and in the letter of the eastern Indians (in French) to the governor, July 27, 1721 (Mass. Hist. Coll., xviii. 259).

C. Lovewell’s or Gov. Dummer’s War.—There are documents from the Penhallow Papers relative to the Indian depredations at the eastward in the N. E. Hist. and Gen. Register, 1878, p. 21. Some of them antedate the outbreak of the war. Charlevoix (Shea’s ed., vol. v. 268) tells the story of the counter-missions of the French and English; and the Indians, incited by the French, made demands on the English, who held some of their chiefs as hostages in Boston. (Mass. Hist. Coll., 2d ser., viii. 259; N. Y. Col. Docs., x. 903; Kip, Jesuit Missions, 13.) The seeming truce with the Abenakis was further jeopardized by the act of seizing (Dec., 1721) the younger Baron de St. Castin, when he was taken to Boston for examination. After a detention of five months he was set at liberty.[936] A more serious source of complaints with the Indians before the war was the attempt to seize Father Rasle in Jan., 1722, by an expedition sent to Norridgewock under Col. Westbrook, but in the immediate charge of Capt. Harmon. (N. Y. Col. Docs., ix. 910; Rasle in Kip, 15.) Rasle was warned and escaped, but the party found letters from Vaudreuil in his cabin, implicating the Quebec governor as having incited the increasing depredations of the Indians.[937]

The war began in the summer of 1722. Gov. Shute made his declaration, July 25, 1722 (Mass. Archives, xxxi. 106), and the Rev. Benjamin Wadsworth, at the Thursday lecture, Aug. 16, made it the subject of his discourse. (Brinley, i. no. 429.)

In March, 1723, Col. Thos. Westbrook made a raid along the Penobscot. (Mass. Hist. Coll., xxii. 264; N. Y. Col. Docs., ix. 933.)

Capt. Jeremiah Moulton, under orders of Col. Westbrook, made a scouting expedition in the early summer of 1723, and dated at York, July, 4, his report to Lieut.-Gov. William Dummer, which is printed in the Maine Hist. and Genealog. Recorder, i. p. 204. (Cf. Penhallow, 96; Niles in Mass. Hist. Coll., xxxv. 345; Williamson, ii. 120.) In 1723 there was an Indian raid on Rutland, in which the Rev. Joseph Willard and two children were killed, and two others were carried off. (Cf. Israel Loring’s Two Sermons, Boston, 1724, cited in Brinley, i. no. 1,928.)

A conference was held at Boston, August 22, 1723, of which there is a printed account among the Belknap Papers (MSS.), in the Mass. Hist. Soc. library.

On the 21st July, 1724, there was another conference with the Indians held at St. Georges fort. (Mass. Archives, xxix. 154.)

In Aug., 1724, Moulton and Harmon were sent to make an end of Rasle’s influence. They surprised the Norridgewock settlement, and Rasle was killed in the general slaughter. The opposing chroniclers do not agree as to the manner of his death. Charlevoix (Shea’s ed., v. 279) says he was shot and mutilated at the foot of the village cross. The English say they had intended to spare him, but he refused quarter, and had even killed a captive English boy in the confusion. His scalp and those of other slain were taken to Boston.[938]

In Nov., 1724, Capt. John Lovewell and two others had petitioned to be equipped to scour the woods to the eastward after Indians, and, the legislature acceding (Nov. 17) to their request, Lovewell enrolled his men and made three campaigns in quick succession. The journal of his second expedition (Jan.-Feb., 1724-5) is in the Mass. Archives, vol. lxxxvi., and is printed by Kidder in the N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., Jan., 1853, and in his Expeditions of Capt. John Lovewell. It was on the third of these expeditions, May 9, 1725, that Lovewell encountered the Indians near a pond in Fryeburg, Maine, now known as Lovewell’s pond, upon whose wood-girt surface the summer tourist to-day looks down from the summit of the Jockey-Cap. Their leader was killed early in the action, which lasted all day, and only nine of the English who remained alive were unwounded when the savages drew off.

The news reached Boston on the 13th of May. Kidder gives the despatches received by the governor, with the action of the council upon them. On the 17th an account was printed in the Boston Gazette, which is also in Kidder. The day before (May 16) the Rev. Thomas Symmes, of Bradford, who had gathered his information from some of those who had escaped, delivered a sermon in that town, which, when printed with an “historical preface or memoirs of the battle at Piggwacket,” became popular, and two editions were printed at Boston during the same year. Both editions are of the greatest rarity. The first is called: Lovewell lamented, or a Sermon occasion’d by the fall of the brave Capt. John Lovewell and several of his valiant company in the late heroic action at Piggwacket. Boston, 1725.[939] The other edition was entitled: Historical memoirs of the late fight at Piggwacket; with a sermon occasion’d by the fall of the brave Capt. John Lovewell and several of his valiant company.... The second edition, corrected. Boston, 1725.[940] A third edition was printed at Fryeburg, with some additions, in 1799. The narrative, but not the sermon, was later printed in Farmer and Moore’s Historical Collections, i. 25. At Concord (N. H.), in 1861, it was again issued by Nathaniel Bouton, as The original account of Capt. John Lovewell’s Great Fight with the Indians at Pequawket, May 8, 1725.[941] Mr. Frederic Kidder, in N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg.,[942] Jan., 1853 (p. 61), printed an account of Lovewell’s various expeditions, with sundry documents from the Massachusetts Archives, which, together with the second edition of Symmes, were later, in 1865, embodied in his Expeditions of Capt. John Lovewell and his encounters with the Indians, including a particular account of the Pequauket battle.[943] This is a faithful reprint of the Symmes tract, while those of Farmer and Moore, and of Bouton, introduce matters from other sources. The bibliography of Symmes’s sermon is traced in Dr. S. A. Green’s Groton during the Indian Wars, p. 134.

The relations of the French to the Abenaki war during 1724-25 are shown in various documents printed in the N. Y. Coll. Docs., vol. ix., as when the French ministry prompts the governor of Canada to sustain the savages in their struggle with the English (p. 935); a memoir is registered upon their condition (p. 939); Intendant Begon reports on the war (p. 941); other letters are written (p. 945); and the ministry again counsel the governor to instigate further hostilities (p. 956).

A journal of a scout by Westbrook, beginning June 23, 1725, is among the Belknap Papers (MSS.).

Four eastern sagamores came to Boston, Nov. 10, 1725 (Mass. Archives, xxix. 191; Murdoch’s Nova Scotia, i. 429), and a treaty with them was signed Dec. 15, 1725, known as “Dummer’s treaty” (Mass. Archives, xxxiv.), which was ratified at Falmouth, Aug. 6, 1726. (Mass. Archives, xxix. 230; xxxiv. See also Penhallow, 117; N. H. Hist. Coll., i. 123; N. H. Prov. Papers, iv. 188; Niles in Mass. Hist. Coll., xxxv. 360; Williamson, ii. 145, 147; Palfrey, iv. 443.)

This treaty was separately printed under the title of Conference with the Indians at the ratification of peace held at Falmouth, Casco Bay, by Governour Dummer, in July and August, 1726. Boston, 1726, pp. 24. It was reprinted in 1754. (Cf. Brinley, i. 432, 434; Harvard College library, 5325.32.)

There was another Indian treaty at Casco Bay, July 25, 1727. (Mass. Archives, xxix. 256.) In Akins’s Pub. Doc. of Nova Scotia is a fac-simile of a copy of this treaty, attested by Dummer, evidently made to be used by Cornwallis in 1749, in negotiating another treaty. (Cf. N. H. Hist. Coll., ii. 260, where the treaty is printed; and the explanation of the Indians in N. Y. Col. Docs., ix. 966.)

This treaty of 1727 was separately printed as Conference with the Eastern Indians at the further ratification of the peace, held at Falmouth, in Casco Bay, in July, 1727. Boston, 1727, pp. 31. It was reprinted in 1754. (Cf. Brinley, i. 433, 434.)

Cf. also Conferences of Lieut.-Gov. Dummer with the Eastern Indians in 1726 and 1727. Boston, 1754. For the treaties of 1726-27, see also Maine Hist. Coll., iii. 377, 407; N. H. Prov. Papers, iv. 255-258; Palfrey, iv. 444.

There is in the Mass. Archives (xxix. 283) the document which resulted from a conference with the Eastern Indians in the council chamber in Boston, Dec. 9-Jan. 15, 1727-28.

Dr. Colman’s memoir of the troubles at the eastward in 1726-27 is in the Mass. Hist. Coll., vi. 108. (Cf. Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., x. 324.)

The French were disconcerted by the treaty of 1727, as sundry papers in the N. Y. Col. Docs., vol. ix., show. They reiterate their complaints of the English encroachments on the Indians’ lands (p. 981); observe great changes in the Abenakis since they made peace with the English (p. 990); and the king of France tells the Canadians he does not see how the Indians could avoid making the treaty with the English (p. 995).[944]

The letters of caution, which Belcher was constantly writing (1731-1740) to Capt. Larrabee, in command at Fort George, Brunswick, indicate how unstable the peace was. (N. E. Hist. & Gen. Reg., Apr., 1865, p. 129.) The continued danger from French intrigue is also shown in Colman’s memoir, etc., in Mass. Hist. Coll., vi. 109, and in the repeated conferences of the next few years: Conference of his Excellency Governor Belcher with the chiefs of the Penobscot, Norridgewock, and Ameriscoggin tribes at Falmouth, July, 1732. Boston, reprinted at London. (Haven in Thomas, ii. p. 428; Carter-Brown, iii. 482; Harv. Coll. lib., 5325.33; Brinley, i. no. 435.)

A Conference held at Deerfield, the 27th of August [to Sept. 1], 1735, by his Excellency, Jonathan Belcher, and Ountaussoogoe and others, etc. [Boston, 1735]. (Brinley, i. no. 437.) This tract is reprinted in the Maine Hist. Coll., iv. 123.

LOVEWELL’S FIGHT.
From the map in Bouton and Kidder.

Conference with the Penobscots at the council chamber in Boston, June, 1736. (Mass. Archives, xxix. 317.)

The nine Penobscot chiefs who held this conference were lodged with one John Sale in Boston, who renders an account of his charges for twenty-four days’ entertainment of them, which is suggestive. He charges for three half-pints of wine, per day, each; for twelve pence worth of rum per day, each; for 120 gallons of cider; for damage done in breaking of sash doors, frames of glass, China bowl, double decanter, and sundry glasses and mugs; for two gross of pipes and tobacco; for candles all night; for showing them the rope-dancers; for washing 49 of their “greasy shirts;” and “for cleaning and whitewashing two rooms after them.” The following “memorandum” is attached: “They eat for the most part between 50 and 60 pounds of meat per day, beside milk, cheese, etc. The cider which they drank I sold for twelve shillings per quart. Besides, they had beer when they pleased. And as for meat, they had the best, as I was ordered.”

Conference with the Penobscots and Norridgewocks, June 28-July 6, 1738. (Mass. Archives, xxix. 336.)

Conference with the Penobscots at the council chamber in Boston, Aug. 25-Sept. 2, 1740. (Mass. Archives, xxix. 364.)

Conference with the Penobscots, Dec. 3, 1741. (Mass. Archives, xxix. 376.)

“Projets sur la prise de l’Acadie, 1741.” (Parkman MSS. in Mass. Hist. Soc., New France, i. p. 1.)

Conference held at the Fort at St. George in the County of York, the 4th of August, 1742, between William Shirley, Governor, and the Chief Sachems and Captains of the Penobscott, Norridgewock, Pigwaket or Amiscogging or Saco, St. John’s, Bescommonconty or Amerescogging and St. Francis tribes of Indians, August, 1742. (Carter-Brown, iii. no. 703; Brinley, i. no. 440. Cf. Williamson, ii. 209.)

D. King George’s, Shirley’s, or Five Years’ War.—France had declared war against England, Mar. 15, 1744 (Coll. de Manuscrits, Quebec, iii. p. 196), and the capitulation of Canso had taken place, May 24. (Ibid., iii. p. 201.) In July, 1744, Pepperrell and others, including some chiefs of the Five Nations, met the Penobscots at St. Georges and agreed to join in a treaty against the Cape Sable Indians. The Penobscots did not keep the appointment. War was declared against the Cape Sable and St. John’s Indians, Oct. 19, 1744. The General Court of Massachusetts offered a reward for scalps; and a proclamation was made for the enlistment of volunteers, Nov. 2, 1744. (Mass. Archives, xxxi. 506, 514; printed in W. W. Wheildon’s Curiosities of History, Boston, 1880, pp. 107, 109.)

The most brilliant event of the war was impending.

The French had begun the construction of elaborate defences at Louisbourg in 1720. A medal struck in commemoration of this beginning is described in the Transactions (1872-73, p. 75) of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec.

It has always been open to question from whom came the first suggestion of the expedition of 1745. The immediate incentive seems to have been a belief, prompted by the reports of prisoners released from Canso, that Louisbourg could be captured, if attacked before relief could reach it from France. Judge Robert Auchmuty, of Roxbury, developed a plan for the capture in the Gentleman’s Magazine for July, 1745,—the same number in which was also printed the news of the attack and capture. When the paper was reprinted in a thin folio tract shortly afterwards, he or some one for him emphasized his claim to the suggestion in the title itself as follows: The importance of Cape Breton to the British Nation, humbly represented by Robert Auckmuty [sic], Judge, &c., in New England. N. B. Upon the plan laid down in this representation the island was taken by Commodore Warren and General Pepperill the 14th of June, 1745. London, 1745.[945]

It is claimed on behalf of William Vaughan that he suggested the expedition to Governor Wentworth, of New Hampshire, who in turn referred him to Governor Shirley. An anonymous tract, published in London in 1746, The Importance and Advantage of Cape Breton truly stated and impartially considered,[946] often assigned to William Bollan, and believed by some to have been inspired by Vaughan, says that Vaughan had “the honor of reviving, at least, if not of having been the original mover or projector,” of the expedition, since it is claimed that Lieutenant-Governor Clarke, of New York,[947] had suggested the attack to the Duke of Newcastle as early as 1743. Douglass (Summary, etc., i. 348) says that Shirley was taken with the “hint or conceit” of Vaughan, “a whimsical, wild projector.” Hutchinson says that Vaughan “was called the projector of the expedition,” and Belknap accords him the priority in common report.[948] When Thomas Prince came to dedicate his sermon, preached on the Thanksgiving day following the triumph, he inscribed it to Shirley as the “principal former and promoter of the expedition;” but the language hardly claims the origination, though Shirley was generally recognized as the moving spirit in its final determination.[949]

PEPPERRELL.

After a painting, now owned by Mrs. Anna H. C. Howard, of Brooklyn, N. Y., and which has descended from Pepperrell. (Cf. Penna. Mag. of Hist., iii. p. 358.) This likeness, painted in London in 1751 by Smibert, is also engraved in Parsons’ Life of Pepperrell, in Drake’s Boston, and in the N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., Jan., 1866, where Dr. Parsons gives a genealogy of the Pepperrell family. There is in the Memorial Hist. of Boston (ii. 114) an engraving after an original full-length picture in the hall of the Essex Institute at Salem,—artist unknown. See also Higginson’s Larger History, p. 188.

A sword of Pepperrell is shown in the group of weapons engraved in Vol. III. p. 274. (Cf. Catal. Cab. Mass. Hist. Soc., p. 123; Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., v. 373; and Parsons’ Life of Pepperrell.) Views of the Pepperrell mansion at Kittery, where considerable state was kept, are given in Parsons (p. 329), and in a paper on Pepperrell by J. A. Stevens in the Mag. of Amer. History, vol. ii. 673. Cf. also Lamb’s Homes of America (1879), and Appleton’s Journal, xi. 65.

The earliest account of this mettlesome enterprise, which showed special research and opportunities, was that of Dr. Belknap in his History of New Hampshire, which was written in 1784, less than forty years after the event, and when he might have known some of the participants. The most important of the Pepperrell Papers had fallen into his hands, and he made good use of them, after which he deposited them in the cabinet of the Massachusetts Historical Society, where they now are, bound in two volumes, covering the years 1699-1779, but chiefly concerning the Louisbourg expedition.

PEPPERRELL ARMS.

This cut of the Pepperrell arms is copied from one in the Mag. of Amer. Hist., Nov., 1878, p. 684.

With them in the same depository are the Belknap Papers, three volumes,[950] as well as a composite volume, Louisbourg Papers, devoted entirely to the expedition.[951] Others of the scattered papers of Pepperrell have since been found elsewhere. Dr. Usher Parsons, in his Life of Pepperrell,[952] beside using what Belknap possessed, sifted a mass of papers found in an old shed on the Pepperrell estate. This lot covered the years 1696-1759, and some of them were scarcely legible. The mercantile letters and accounts among them yielded little, but there was a smaller body of Pepperrell’s own letters and those of his correspondents, which proved of more or less historical value.

Unremitting search yielded gain to Dr. Parsons in other directions. Some manuscripts coming from a Kittery house into the hands of Capt. Luther Dame, of Newburyport, were reported upon by Col. A. H. Hoyt in the New England Hist. and Geneal. Reg. (Oct., 1874, p. 451), in a paper afterwards reprinted by him, separately, with revision; but they throw no considerable light upon the Louisbourg siege. They would add little to what Parsons presents in chronologically arranged excerpts from letters and other records which make up his account of the expedition.[953]

Of all other contemporary accounts and aids, most, so far as known, have been put into print, though George Bancroft quotes a journal of Seth Pomeroy,[954] not yet in type; and there are papers which might still be gleaned in the Mass. Archives. There are in print the instructions of Shirley, and a correspondence between Pepperrell and Warren (Mass. Hist. Collections, i. 13-60); letters of Wentworth and Shirley on the plan of attack, and other letters of Shirley (Provincial Papers of New Hampshire, vol. v. pp. 931, 949, etc.); and many others of Pepperrell, Warren, Shirley, etc. (Rhode Island Colonial Records, vol. v.). The Colonial Records of Connecticut (vol. ix.) for this period give full details of the legislative enactment regarding the part that colony bore in the expedition; but the absence of most of the illustrative documents from her archives during that interval deprives us, doubtless, of a correspondence similar to that which is included in the Rhode Island printed Records.

Shirley’s letters to Governor Thomas, of Penna., respecting the preparations for the Louisbourg expedition, are in Penna. Archives, i. 667, etc.

Stray letters and documents of some interest, but throwing no essential light upon historical events, are found in the N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., v. 88; xii. 263; xix. 225, etc.

Various accounts of the siege, of no great extent were published soon after its close. Chief among them was an Accurate journal and account of the proceedings of the New England land forces, during the late expedition against the French settlements on Cape Breton to the time of the surrender of Louisbourg, Exon, 1746 (40 pp.). The manuscript of this journal was sent to England by Pepperrell to his friend Capt. Henry Stafford; and as printed it was attested by Pepperrell, Brig.-General Waldo, Col. Moore, Lieut.-Col. Lothrop, and Lieut.-Col. Gridley.[955] This journal was printed, with some curious verbal differences, as an appendix to a Letter from William Shirley, Esq., to the Duke of Newcastle, with a Journal of the Siege of Louisbourg, London, 1746. It was by vote of the legislature, Dec. 30, 1746, reprinted in Boston, once by Rogers and Fowle, and again by J. Draper.[956] An account by Col. James Gibson, published in London in 1745, as a Journal of the late siege by the troops of North America against the French at Cape Breton,[957] contained a large engraved plan of the siege, of which a reduced fac-simile is annexed.[958] The narrative was edited in Boston in 1847 by Lorenzo D. Johnson, under the misleading title A Boston merchant of 1745. Other diaries of the siege, of greater or less extent, have been printed, like Wolcott’s,[959] in the Collections (vol. i.) of the Connecticut Historical Society; Curwen’s in his letters (Hist. Collections Essex Institute, vol. iii. 186), and in his Journal, edited by Ward (p. 8); Craft’s journal (Hist. Coll. Essex Inst., iv. p. 181); that of Adonijah Bidwell, the chaplain of the fleet (N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., April, 1873); and the folio tract entitled A particular Account of the taking of Cape Breton by Admiral Warren and Sir William Pepperell, with a description of the place ... and the articles of capitulation, By Philip Durell, Esq., Capt. of his majesty’s ship “Superbe.” To which is added a letter from an officer of marines, etc., etc., London, 1745. Durell’s account is dated June 20, 1745, in Louisbourg harbor. Douglass gives the force by sea and land before Louisbourg. Summary, etc., i. 350.

A list of the commissioned officers of the expedition, drawn from the Belknap Papers, is edited by Charles Hudson in the N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., Oct., 1870.[960] In Ibid., April, 1868, a list of 221 names of the common soldiers had been printed; but in July, 1871, a much longer enumeration is made out by Mr. Hudson from the Pepperrell papers, the Council Records, and other sources. Potter in the N. H. Adj.-General’s Report, ii. (1866, pp. 61-76), afterwards published as Mil. Hist. of N. H., gives the New Hampshire rolls of Louisbourg soldiers.

On the occasion of a Thanksgiving (July 18, 1745) in Boston, two sermons preserve to us some additional if slight details. That of Thomas Prince, Extraordinary events the doings of God and marvellous in pious eyes, Boston and London, 1745 (Harv. Coll. lib., 4375.42 and 43), is mainly reprinted in S. G. Drake’s Five Years’ French and Indian Wars, p. 187; and that of the Rev. Charles Chauncy, the brother-in-law of Pepperrell, Marvellous Things done by the right hand and holy arm of God in getting him the victory, was printed both in Boston and London.[961]

The capture of Louisbourg and the question of the disposition of the island at the peace led to several expositions of its imagined value to the British Crown, among which may be named:—

The importance and advantage of Cape Breton considered, in a letter to a member of Parliament from an inhabitant of New England, London, 1746. (Brinley, no. 69.) This is signed “Massachusettensis.”[962]

Two letters concerning some farther advantages and improvements that may seem necessary to be made on the taking and keeping of Cape Breton, London, 1746. (Carter-Brown, iii. no. 822.)

The importance and advantage of Cape Breton, truly stated and impartially considered. With proper maps, London, 1746. (Carter-Brown, iii. no. 823.) The maps follow those of Bellin in Charlevoix. Its authorship is usually ascribed to William Bollan. (Sabin, ii. 6,215.)

The great importance of Cape Breton demonstrated and exemplified by extracts from the best writers, French and English, London, 1746. This is a plea against the surrender of it to the French. It is dedicated to Governor Shirley, and contains Charlevoix’s map and plan. (Carter-Brown, iii. no. 821.)

An accurate description of Cape Breton, Situation, Soil, Ports, etc., its Importance to France, but of how much greater it might have been to England; with an account of the taking of the city by the New England forces under General Pepperell in 1745, London, 1755.

Memoir of the principal transactions of the last war between the English and French in North America, from 1744 to the conclusion of the treaty at Aix-la-Chapelle, containing in particular an account of the importance of Nova Scotia and Cape Breton to both nations (3d ed., London, reprinted, Boston, 1758.)

Douglass (Summary, etc.), the general historian nearest the time, was an eager opponent of Shirley, and in his account of the expedition he ascribes to good luck the chief element in its success. He calls it “this infinitely rash New England Corporation adventure, though beyond all military or human probability successful.” (Summary, etc., 1751, ii. p. 11.) “Fortified towns are hard nuts to crack, and your teeth have not been accustomed to it,” wrote Benjamin Franklin from Philadelphia to his brother in Boston. (Franklin’s Works, vii. 16.)[963]

Accounts of the expedition enter necessarily into the more general narratives, like those of Hutchinson (Mass. Bay); Chalmers (Revolt, etc.); Minot (Massachusetts); Gordon (Amer. Rev.); Marshall (Washington); Bancroft (United States); Grahame (United States); Williamson (Hist. of Maine); Murdoch (Nova Scotia, ii. ch. 5); Haliburton (Nova Scotia); Stone (Sir Wm. Johnson, vol. i.); Palfrey (Compendious Hist. of New England, iv. ch. 9); Bury (Exodus of the Western Nations, ii. ch. 6); Gay (Pop. Hist. United States); Drake (Boston). The Memorial Hist. Boston (ii. 117) and Barry’s Massachusetts (ii. 140, etc.) give numerous references. Joel T. Headley has a popular narrative in Harper’s Monthly, xxviii. p. 354. Garneau (Hist. du Canada, 4th ed., ii. 190) offers the established French account. Cf. Lettre d’un habitant de Louisbourg contenant une relation exacte de la prise de l’Ile Royale par les Anglais, Quebec, 1745. (Sabin, x. no. 40,671.)[964]

The present condition of the site of Louisbourg is described by Parsons (Life of Pepperrell, 332); by Parkman (Montcalm and Wolfe); by J. G. Bourinot in his “The old forts of Acadia” in Canadian Monthly, v. 369; and in the Canadian Antiquarian, iv. 57.

Maps, both French and English, showing the fortifications and harbor of Louisbourg are numerous.

Both editions of Charlevoix’s Histoire de la Nouvelle France, the duodecimo in six volumes, and the quarto in three volumes issued in 1744, the year before the siege, have plans of Louisbourg and its fortifications, and the same are reproduced in Dr. Shea’s translation of Charlevoix. They are the work of Nicholas Bellin, and to the same draughtsman belongs Le Petit Atlas Maritime, 1764, in the volume of which devoted to North America, there are other (nos. 23, 24) plans of the harbor and fortifications.

Following French sources is a Plan des fortifications de Louisbourg, published at Amsterdam by H. de Leth about 1750. A “Plan special de Louisbourg” is also to be found on the map published by N. Visscher at Amsterdam, called “Carte Nouvelle contenant la partie de l’Amérique la plus septentrionale.”

Among the French maps is one “levé en 1756,” after a plan of Louisbourg, preserved in the Dépôt des Cartes de la Marine in Paris. This appeared in 1779 in the Neptune Americo-Septentrional, “publiée par ordre du Roi;” and another, dated 1758, “levé par le ch^ev. de la Rigaudiere,” was accompanied by a view, of which there is a copy in the Mass. Archives; Docs. collected in France, Atlas, ii. 5. In this last (composite) Atlas (ii. nos. 44, 45) are maps of the town and harbor, and a large plan of the fortifications, marked “Tome i. no. 23,” which can probably be identified.

CAPE BRETON, 1746.

Reduced fac-simile of the “Map of the Island of Cape Breton as laid down by the Sieur Bellin, 1746,” annexed to The Importance and Advantage of Cape Breton, truly stated and impartially considered, London, 1746. A general map of the island of Cape Breton, with Bellin’s name attached, is found in the several editions of Charlevoix and in the Petit Atlas maritime, par le S. Bellin, 1764. The earliest more elaborate survey of this part of the coast was the one published by J. F. W. Des Barres, in 1781, in four sheets, The South East Coast of Cape Breton Island, surveyed by Samuel Holland. A map by Kitchen was published in the London Mag., 1747.

Richard Gridley,[965] of Massachusetts Bay, who was present as an officer of the artillery, made a plan of the fortifications after the surrender, and this, called a Plan of the City and Fortifications of Louisbourg from surveys made by Richard Gridley in 1745, was engraved and published by Jefferys, in 1758, and was used by him in his History of the French Dominions in America, London, 1760 (p. 124), and in his General Topography of North America and the West Indies, London, 1768 (no. 25).[966]

GRIDLEY’S PLAN AS REDUCED IN BROWN’S CAPE BRETON.

LOUISBOURG, 1745.

From a survey made by Richard Gridley, lieut.-col. of the train of artillery. A fac-simile of part of the plate in Jeffery’s French Dominions in America, p. 125.

LOUISBOURG (Set of Plans, etc.)

Gridley’s surveys have been the basis of many of the subsequent English plans. The draught reduced from Gridley in Richard Brown’s History of the Island of Cape Breton (London, 1869) is herewith given in fac-simile, and is understood by the following key:—

A. Dauphin bastion and circular battery.
B. King’s bastion and citadel.
C. Queen’s bastion.
D. Princess’ bastion.
E. Bourillon bastion.
F. Maurepas bastion.
G. Batterie de la Gréve.

1, 1, etc. Glacis.
2, 2, etc. Covered way.
3, 3, etc. Traverses.
4, 4, etc. Ditch.
5, 5, etc. Parapet.
6, 6, etc. Ramparts.
7, 7, etc. Slopes of same.
8, 8, etc. Places of arms.
9, 9, etc. Casemates.

10, 10, etc. Guard houses.
11, 11, etc. Wooden bridges.

12. Governor’s apartments.
13. Church.
14. Barracks.
15. Powder magazine.
16. Fortification house.
17. Arsenal and bake-house.
18. Ordnance.
19. General storehouse.
20. West gate.
22. East gate.
23. Gates in quay curtain (b. b. b.).
24. Parade.
25. Nunnery.
26. Hospital and church.

a. a. Palisade, with ramparts for small arms.

c. c. Picquet (raised during the siege).

Another plan of an early date is one, likewise annexed, which appeared in A set of plans and forts in America, reduced from actual surveys, 1763, and published in London.[967] The plan which George Bancroft added to his History of the United States, in one of the early editions, was used again by Parsons in his Life of Pepperrell.

FROM BROWN’S CAPE BRETON.

VIEW OF LOUISBOURG.

A reduced sketch from a painting owned by Mrs. Anna H. C. Howard of Brooklyn, N. Y., which came to her by descent from Sir William Pepperrell. The canvas is very dark and obscure, and the artist may have missed some of the details, particularly of the walls along the shore. The point of view seems to be from the northwest side of the interior harbor, near the bridge (seen in the foreground), which spans one of the little inlets, as shown in some of the maps. This position is near what are called “Hale’s Barracks” in the draft of the town and harbor on the preceding page. The dismantled ships along the opposite shore are apparently the French fleet, while an English ship is near the bridge.

The following letter describes the present condition of the ground:—

Boston, June 4, 1886.

My dear Mr. Winsor,—It gives me great pleasure to comply with your request, and to give my recollections of Louisburg as seen in September last.

The historical town of that name, or rather the ruin of the old fortress, lies perhaps three miles from the modern town, which is a small village, situated on the northeasterly side of the bay or harbor. The inhabitants of the neighborhood live, for the most part, by fishing and other business connected with that branch of industry, eking out their livelihood by the cultivation of a rocky and barren soil. The road from the village to the old fortress runs along the western shore of the bay, passing at intervals the small houses of the fishermen and leaving on the left the site of the Royal Battery, which is still discernible. This was the first outpost of the French taken at the siege, and its gallant capture proved subsequently to be of the greatest service to the English. From this point the ruins of the fortress begin to loom up and show their real character. Soon the walls are reached, and the remains of the former bastions on the land side are easily recognized. This land front is more than half a mile in length, and stretches from the sea on the left to the bay on the right, forming a line of works that would seem to be impregnable to any and all assaults. From its crown a good idea can be gained of the size of the fortifications, which extend in its entire circuit more than a mile and a half in length, and inclose an area of a hundred and twenty acres, more or less. The public buildings within the fortress were of stone, and, with the help of a guide, their sites can easily be made out. The burying-ground, on the point of land to the eastward, where hundreds of bodies were buried, is still shown; and the sheep and cattle graze all unconscious of the great deeds that have been done in the neighborhood. Taken all in all, the place is full of the most interesting associations, and speaks of the period when the sceptre of power in America was balancing between France and England; and Louisburg forms to-day the grandest ruin in this part of the continent.

Very truly yours,

Samuel A. Green.

It follows an English plan procured by Mr. Bancroft in London, and closely resembles the sketch owned by a descendant of Pepperrell, and herewith given. Haliburton in his History of Nova Scotia gives a similar plan, as well as a draught of the harbor. The plan of the town and the vicinity which is given by Brown in his Cape Breton is also reproduced herewith. The earliest of the more elaborate charts of the harbor is that published by Des Barres in Oct., 1781. We find a rude sketch of the Island battery in Curwen’s Journal as edited by Ward (Boston, 4th ed. 1864), which was sent by that observer from Louisbourg, July 25, 1745. A reproduction of this sketch, herewith given, needs the following key:—

PLAN OF ISLAND BATTERY.

“The embrasures in the front are not more than three feet above the ground.

1. Fronting mouth of harbor: 22 embrasures; 21 guns, 36 and 48 pounders.

2. Barracks.

3. Sally-ports.

4. Wall framed of timber, and covered with plank, and filled with stone and lime, in which is an embrasure with a 48 pounder.

5. Wall, defended with two small swivels.

6. The place at which whale-boats might easily land 500 men.

7. One entire rock, perpendicular on the face, and absolutely impossible to be climbed.

8. Piquet of large timber, fastened by iron clamps, drilled into the solid rock.

9. Commandant’s apartment, five feet high.

10. The gate under the wall, about four feet wide, formed like a common sally-port; not straight, but made an angle of 160 degrees. Ten men can prevent ten hundred making their way; this wall has but four guns and two swivels.

“I paced the island, and judged it to be about 56 yards wide and 150 long at the widest part, nearly.”

There is in the Collections of the Maine Hist. Soc. (viii. p. 120) a life of Lieut.-Col. Arthur Noble, who, by order of Brigadier Waldo, led on May 23 the unsuccessful attack on this battery.

The Catalogue of the king’s maps in the British Museum (vol. i. 718, etc.) shows plans of the town and fortifications (1745) in MS. by Durell and Bastide; others of the town and harbor (1755) by William Green; with views by Bastide (1749), Admiral Knowles (1756), Ince (1758, engraved by Canot, 1762), and Thomas Wright (1766).

Jefferys also published in copperplate A view of the landing of the New England forces in the expedition against Cape Breton, 1745. (Carter-Brown, iii. p. 335.) A copy of this print belongs to Dr. John C. Warren of Boston.

Three months after the fall of Louisbourg there was another treaty with the eastern Indians, Sept. 28-Oct. 22, 1745. (Mass. Archives, xxix. 386.) The renewed activity of the French is shown in the N. Y. Col. Docs., x. p. 3.

A little later, Dec. 12, 1745, Shirley made his first speech to the Massachusetts Assembly after his return to Boston, and communicated the King’s thanks for “setting on foot and executing the late difficult and expensive enterprise against Cape Breton.”[968]

The next event of importance in the Acadian peninsula was the attack of the French upon an English post, which is known as the “battle of Minas.”

The English accounts (Boston Weekly Post Boy, March 2 and 9, 1747), which give the date Jan. 31, old style, and the French (official report), Feb. 11, new style, are edited by Dr. O’Callaghan with the articles of capitulation, in the New Eng. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., April, 1855, p. 107. For general references see Haliburton’s Nova Scotia, ii. 132; Williamson’s Maine, ii. 250; Hannay (p. 349) and the other histories of Nova Scotia.

ENTRANCE OF MINES BASIN.

One of Des Barres’ coast views 1779. (In Harvard College library.)

Douglass (Summary, etc., i. 316) says: “Three companies from Rhode Island were shipwrecked near Martha’s Vineyard; two companies of New Hampshire went to sea, but for some trifling reason put back and never proceeded. The want of these five companies was the occasion of our forces being overpowered by the Canadians at Minas with a considerable slaughter.”

CAPE BAPTIST.

One of Des Barres’ coast views, marked A view of Cate Baptist in the entrance into the basin of Mines, bearing W. by N., two miles distant. (In Harvard College library.)

The French account of these transactions of the command of Ramezay is in a “Journal de la compagne du détachement de Canada à l’Acadie et aux Mines en 1746 et 1747” (June, 1746, to March, 1747). It is in the Parkman MSS. in the Mass. Hist. Society, New France, i. pp. 59-153. For the attack at Minas in particular see the “Relation d’une expédition faite sur les Anglois dans les pays de l’Acadie, le 11 Fév., 1747, par un détachement de Canadiens,” dated at Montreal, 28 Sept., 1747, and signed Le Chev. de la Corne. (Ibid., pp. 155-163.) Cf. also N. Y. Col. Docs., x. 78, 91.

The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, Oct., 1748, was proclaimed in Boston, May 10, 1749, and a reprint of it issued there.

Shirley (June 3, 1749) writes to Gov. Wentworth that he had agreed with nine Indian chiefs, then in Boston, to hold a conference at Casco bay, Sept. 27. (N. H. Prov. Papers, v. 127.)

Meanwhile the English government, in pursuance of an effort to anglicize the peninsula,[969] had planned the transportation to Nova Scotia of an equipped colony under Edward Cornwallis, which arrived at Chebucto harbor in the summer of 1749, and founded Halifax. A treaty with the Indians was held there Aug. 15, 1749. (Mass. Hist. Coll., ix. 220.) There is a full-size fac-simile of the document in Akins’s Public Doc. of Nova Scotia. It was in confirmation of the Boston treaty of Dec. 15, 1725, which is embodied in the new treaty.

Another treaty with the eastern Indians was made at Falmouth, Oct. 16, 1749. (Mass. Archives, xxix. 427; xxxiv.; Mass. Hist. Coll., ix. 220; N. H. Hist. Soc. Coll., ii. 264; Williamson’s Maine, i. 259, taken from Mass. Council Records, 1734-57, p. 108; Hutchinson, iii. 4.)

This treaty was proclaimed in Boston, Oct. 27. Cf. Journal of the proceedings of the commissioners appointed for managing a treaty of peace at Falmouth, Sept. 27, 1749, between Thomas Hutchinson, John Choate [and others], commissioned by Gov. Phips, and the eastern Indians, Boston [1749]. (Brinley, i. no. 441; Harv. Col. lib. 5325.39.) This tract is reprinted in Maine Hist. Coll., iv. 145.

There was another conference with the Penobscots and Norridgewocks, Aug. 3-8, 1750. (Mass. Archives, xxix. 429.)

A tract to encourage emigration to the new colony at Halifax was printed in London in 1750, and reprinted in Dublin: A genuine account of Nova Scotia, to which is added his majesty’s proposals as an encouragement to those who are willing to settle there. Cf. the German tract: Historische und Geographische Beschreibung von Neu-Schottland, Franckfurt, 1750. (Carter-Brown, iii. no. 935.) Counter-statements not conducive to the colony’s help, appeared in John Wilson’s Genuine narrative of the transactions in Nova Scotia since the settlement, June, 1749, till Aug. 5, 1751 ... with the particular attempts of the Indians to disturb the colony, London, 1751. (Carter-Brown, iii. no. 966.)

There are papers relating to the first settlement of Halifax in Akins’s Documents, 495; and a paper on the first council meeting at Halifax, by T. B. Akins, in the Nova Scotia Hist. Soc. Coll., vol. ii. See also Murdoch’s Nova Scotia, ii. ch. 11. Various maps of Halifax and the harbor were made during the subsequent years. The Catalogue of the king’s maps (i. 483) in the British Museum shows several manuscript draughts. A small engraved plan was published in the Gentleman’s Magazine, 1750, p. 295. A large map, dedicated to the Earl of Halifax, is called: Carte du havre de Chibucto avec le plan de la ville de Halifax sur la coste de l’Accadie ou Nova Scotia, publiée par Jean Rocque, Charing Cross, 1750.[970]

A smaller Plan des havens von Chebucto und der stadt Halifax was published at Hamburg, 1751. Jefferys issued a large Chart of the Harbor of Halifax, 1759, which was repeated in his General Topography of North America and West Indies, London, 1768. A “Plan de la Baye de Chibouctou nommée par les Anglois Halifax,” bears date 1763. Another is in the Set of plans and forts (No. 7) published in London in 1763. In the Des Barres series of coast charts of a later period (1781) there is a large draft of the harbor, with colored marginal views of the coast.

In 1752-54 there were other conferences with the eastern Indians.

Instructions for treating with the eastern Indians given to the commissioners appointed for that service by the Hon. Spencer Phips ... in 1752, Boston, 1865. Fifty copies printed from the original manuscript, for Samuel G. Drake. (Sabin, xv. 62,579; Brinley, i. no. 443.)

Journal of the proceedings of Jacob Wendell, Samuel Watts, Thomas Hubbard, and Chamber Russel, commissioners to treat with the eastern Indians, held at St. Georges, Oct. 13, 1752, in order to renew and confirm a general peace, Boston, 1752. (Sabin, ix. 36,736; Brinley, i. no. 442.) The original treaty is in the Mass. Archives, xxxiv.

A conference held at St. George’ s on the 20th day of September, 1753, between commissioners appointed by [Gov.] Shirley and the Indians of the Penobscot [and Norridgewock] tribes, Boston, 1753. (Brinley, i. no. 444; Sabin, no. 15,436; Harv. Coll. lib., 5325.42.) Cf. the treaty in Maine Hist. Coll., iv. 168. The original treaties with the Penobscots at St. Georges (Sept. 21) and the Norridgewocks at Richmond (Sept. 29) are in the Mass. Archives, xxxiv.

A journal of the proceedings at two conferences begun to be held at Falmouth, 28th June, 1754, between William Shirley, Governor, etc., and the Chiefs of the Norridegwock Indians, and on the 5th of July with the Chiefs of the Penobscot Indians, Boston, 1754. (Brinley, i. no. 444; Sabin, ix. 36,730; N. H. Prov. Papers, vi. 292.) The original treaties with the Norridgewocks, July 2, and Penobscots, July 6, 1754, are in the Mass. Archives, xxxiv.

THE NECK OF THE ACADIAN PENINSULA.

E. Old French War.—This was begun in April, 1755. There was a declaration of war against the Penobscots, Nov. 3, 1755. (Mass. Archives, xxxii. 690.)

Meanwhile, towards the end of April, 1755, Cornwallis at Halifax had sent Lawrence[971] to the neck of the peninsula[972] of Nova Scotia to fortify himself on English ground, opposite the French post at Beauséjour. Instigated by the French priest, Le Loutre, the Micmacs[973] were so threatening and the French were so alarmingly near that the English, far outnumbered, withdrew; but they returned in the autumn, better equipped, and began the erection of Fort Lawrence. The French attempted an “indirect” resistance through the Indians and some indianized Acadians, and were, in the end, driven off; but not until the houses and barns of neighboring settlers had been burned, with the aim of compelling the Acadians to fly to the French for shelter and sustenance.[974] The French now began a fort on the Beauséjour hill. A petty warfare and reprisals, not unmixed with treachery, became chronic, and were well set off with a background of more portentous rumors.[975] It happened that letters crossed each other, or nearly so, passing between Lawrence (now governor) and Shirley, suggesting an attack on Beauséjour. So the conquest was easily planned. Shirley commissioned Col. John Winslow to raise 2,000 men, and but for delay in the arrival of muskets from England this force would have cast anchor near Fort Lawrence on the first of May instead of the first of June. Monckton, a regular officer, who had been Lawrence’s agent on the Boston mission, held the general command over Winslow, a provincial officer. The fort surrendered before the siege trains got fairly to work. Parkman, who gives a vivid picture of the confusion of the French, refers for his authorities to the Mémoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760; Pichon’s Cape Breton, and the journal of Pichon, as cited by Murdoch in his Hist. of Nova Scotia.[976] The captured fort became Fort Cumberland; Fort Gaspereau, on the other side of the isthmus, surrendered without a blow. Rouse, the Boston privateersman, who had commanded the convoy from Boston, was sent to capture the fort at the mouth of the St. John, and the Indians, whom the French had deserted on Rouse’s approach, joyfully welcomed him.

FORT BEAUSÉJOUR AND ADJACENT COUNTRY.

Part of a folding map, “Fort Beauséjour and adjacent country, taken possession of by Colonel Monckton, in June, 1755;” in Mante’s Hist. of the Late War (London, 1772), p. 17. Cf. Des Barres’ Environs of Fort Cumberland, 1781, and various drawn maps in Catal. King’s Library (Brit. Mus.), i. 281.

Three hundred of the young Acadians, the so-called “neutral French,” were found among the defenders of Beauséjour.[977] The council at Halifax had no easy question to solve in determining the next step to be taken.

COLONEL MONCKTON.

After a mezzotint preserved in the Amer. Antiq. Soc. library, in which he is called “Major-General, and Colonel of the Seventeenth Foot, and Governor of New York,” as he later was. Cf. other mezzotints noted in J. C. Smith’s Brit. Mezzotint Portraits, ii. 883; iv. 1,525, 1739. There is a portrait in Entick’s Hist. of the Late War, v. 355. See account of Monckton in Akins’s Nova Scotia Docs., 391.

With the documentary evidence now in hand, chiefly the records of the French themselves, we can clearly see the condition which the English rather suspected than knew in detail.[978] They indeed were aware that the neutrals of Chignecto in 1750 had been in effect coerced to crossing the lines at the neck, while the burning of their houses and barns had been accomplished to prevent their return. They further knew that this gave an increased force of desperate and misguided men to be led by priests like Le Loutre, and encouraged by the French commanders, acting under orders of the central government at Quebec. They had good reason to suspect, what was indeed the fact, that the emissaries of the Catholic church and the civil powers in Canada were confident in the use they could in one way and another make of the mass of Acadians, though still nominally subjects of the British king.[979] Their loyalty had always been a qualified one. A reservation of not being obliged to serve in war against the French had been in the past allowed in their oath; but such reservation had not been approved by the Crown, though it had not been practically disallowed. It was a reservation which in the present conjunction of affairs Governor Lawrence thought it inexpedient to allow, and he required an unqualified submission by oath. He had already deprived them of their arms. The oath was persistently refused and the return of their arms demanded. This act was in itself ominous. The British plans had by this time miscarried in New York and Pennsylvania, and under Braddock the forces had suffered signal defeat. The terms of the New England troops in Acadia were fast expiring. With these troops withdrawn, and others of the Acadian garrisons sent to succor the defeated armies farther west, and with the Canadian government prompted to make the most of the disaffection toward the English and of the loyalty to the French flag which existed within the peninsula, there could hardly have been a hope of the retention of the country under the British flag, unless something could be done to neutralize the evil of harboring an enemy.[980] “In fact,” says Parkman, “the Acadians, while calling themselves neutrals, were an enemy encamped in the heart of the province.”[981] Colonel Higginson (Larger History, etc.) presents the antithesis in a milder form, when he says, “They were as inconvenient as neighbors as they are now picturesque in history.” It has been claimed that the cruelty of deportation might have been avoided by exacting hostages of the Acadians. That involves confidence in the ability of an abjectly priest-ridden people to resist the threats of excommunication, should at any time the emissaries of Quebec find it convenient to sacrifice the hostages to secure success to the French arms. Under such a plan the English might too late learn that military execution upon the hostages was a likely accompaniment of a military disaster which it would not avert. The alternative of deportation was much surer, and self-preservation naturally sought the securest means. Simply to drive the Acadians from the country would have added to the reckless hordes allured by the French in 1750, which had fraternized with the Micmacs, and harassed the English settlements. To deport them, and scatter them among the other provinces, so that they could not combine, was a safer and, as they thought, the only certain way to destroy the Acadians as a military danger. It was a terrible conclusion, and must not be confounded with possible errors in carrying out the plan. The council, taking aid from the naval commanders, decided upon it.[982]

The decision and its execution have elicited opinions as diverse as the characters of those who have the tender and the more rigid passions mixed in them in different degrees. The question, however, is simply one of necessity in war to be judged by laws which exclude a gentle forbearance in regard to smaller for the military advantages of larger communities.

GEN. JOHN WINSLOW.

After an original formerly in the gallery of the Mass. Hist. Soc., but now in Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth. Cf. Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., xx. 192, and Mem. Hist. Boston, ii. 123. The sword of General Winslow, shown in the cut (Vol. III. p. 274), has also been transferred to Plymouth, as well as the portraits of Governor Edward and Governor Josiah Winslow. (Ibid., pp. 277, 282.) Other engravings of General Winslow are given in Raikes’ Hon. Artillery Co. of London (1878), i. p. 348, and in Gay’s Pop. Hist. U. S., iii. 276.

Writers of the compassionate school have naturally sought to heighten the enormity of the measure by pictures of the guilelessness of the people, who were the sufferers. It was not long after the event when the Abbé Raynal played upon such sympathetic responses in his description[983] of the Acadians, setting forth an ideal simplicity and content to which Longfellow in his Evangeline has added the unbounded charms of his verse. That the Acadians were a prolific people might argue content, but Hannay (Acadia, ch. xvi.), who best traces their mutations and growth, shows evidences that this fruitfulness had not been without some admixture, at least, with the Micmacs.[984] Though it is the usual assertion that bastardy was almost unknown among them, Hannay adduces testimony to their licentiousness which he deems sufficient.[985] We may pick out the most opposite views regarding the comforts of their daily life. A French authority describes their houses as “wretched wooden boxes, without ornament or convenience;”[986] but George Bancroft[987] and many others tell us, after the Raynal ideal, that these same houses were “neatly constructed and comfortably furnished.”

A simple people usually find it easy to vary the monotony of their existence by bickerings and litigations; and if we may believe the French authorities whom Hannay quotes, the Acadians were no exception to the rule, which makes up for the absence of excitements in a diversified life by a counterbalance of such evils as mix and obscure the affections of society.

Their religious training prompted them to place their priests in the same scale of infallibility with their Maker, while the machinations of Le Loutre[988] ensnared them and became, quite as much as that “scrupulous sense of the indissoluble nature of their ancient obligation to their king,”[989] a great cause of their misfortunes. To glimpses of the character of the Acadians which we get in the published documents, French and English, of their own day, we can add but few estimates of observers who were certainly writing for the eye of the public. There is a rather whimsical, but, as Parkman thinks, a faithful description of them, earlier in the century, to be found in the Relation of Diéreville.

Let us now observe some of the mutations of opinion to which allusion has been made. Gov. Lawrence, in his circular letter to the other colonies, naturally set forth the necessity of the case in justification. Edmund Burke, not long after, judged the act a most inhumane one, and “we did,” he says, “upon pretences not worth a farthing, root out this poor, innocent, deserving people, whom our utter inability to govern or to reconcile gave us no sort of right to extirpate.” But this was in the guise of a running commentary from a party point of view, and in ignorance of much now known. The French, English, and American historians nearest the event take divergent positions. Raynal started the poetic ideal, to which reference has been made. It must not be forgotten, however, that the Abbé had a purpose in his picture, aiming as he did to set off by a foil the condition of the French peasantry at a period preceding the French Revolution.[990] Entick[991] commends the measure, but not the method of its execution. A pamphlet published in London in 1765, setting forth the sacrifices of the province during the French and Indian wars, referring to the deportation, says: “This was a most wise step,” but the exiles “have been and still remain a heavy bill of charge to this province.”[992] Hutchinson[993] simply allows that the authors of the movement supposed that self-preservation was its sufficient excuse. When Minot[994] surveyed the subject, he was quite as chary of an opinion. He probably felt, as indeed was the case, that no one at that time had access to the documents on which a safe judgment could be based. The first distinct defence of the English came when Raynal’s views were printed, in translation, in Nova Scotia in 1791. Secretary Bulkely and Judge Deschamps now published a vindication of the English government, but it was necessarily inadequate in the absence of proof. It served not much purpose, however, in diverting the general opinion from the channels of compassion. In 1787, the Rev. Andrew Brown, a Scotchman, was called to settle over a church in Halifax. He remained till 1795, when he returned to Scotland, where he lived till 1834, a part of the time occupying the chair of rhetoric in the University of Edinburgh, which had been previously filled by Dr. Blair. During his sojourn in Nova Scotia, and down to so late a period as 1815, he collected materials for a history of the province. His papers, including original documents, were discovered serving ignoble purposes in a grocer’s shop in Scotland, and bought for the collections of the British Museum. Transcripts from the most interesting of them relating to the expulsion of the Acadians have been made at the instance of the Nova Scotia Record Commission, and have been printed in the second volume of the Collections of the Nova Scotia Historical Society. They consist of letters and statements from people whom Brown had known, and who had taken part in the expulsion, with other contemporary papers regarding the condition of the Acadians just previous to their removal. Brown’s own opinion of the act classed it, for atrocity, with the massacre of St. Bartholomew.

Robert Walsh, in his Appeal from the Judgment of Great Britain (2d ed. 1819, p. 86), says: “It has always appeared to me that the reason of state was never more cheaply urged or more odiously triumphant than on this occasion.” He follows Minot in his account.

Judge Thomas C. Haliburton approached the subject when he might have known, among the very old people of the province, some whose earliest recollections went back to the event, or to its train of succeeding incidents. Haliburton’s sympathy is unmistakably aroused, and failing to find in the records of the secretary’s office at Halifax any traces of the deportation, his deduction is that the particulars were carefully concealed. For such an act he finds no reason, save that the parties were, “as in truth they well might be,” ashamed of the transaction. “I have therefore,” he adds, “had much difficulty in ascertaining the facts.” He seems to have depended almost wholly upon Hutchinson, Raynal, and Minot, and through the latter he got track of the journal of Winslow. Haliburton’s Nova Scotia was published in 1829,[995] and Hutchinson’s third volume had only the year before (1828) been printed in England from his manuscript. Of Winslow’s journal he seems to have made but restricted use.[996] Haliburton’s allegations in respect to the archives of Halifax were founded on a misconception. The papers which he sought in vain in fact existed, but were stored away in boxes, and the archive-keepers of Haliburton’s day apparently had little idea of their importance. A recent writer (Smith’s Acadia, p. 164) hastily infers that this careless disposition of them was intentional. Parkman says that copies of the council records were sent at the time to England and are now in the Public Record Office; but it does not appear that Haliburton sought them; and had he done so, if we may judge from the printed copy which we now have of them, he would have discovered no essential help between July, 1755, and January, 1756. It was not till 1857 that the legislative assembly of Nova Scotia initiated a movement for completing and arranging the archives at Halifax, and for securing in addition copies of documents at London and Quebec,—the latter being in fact other copies from papers in the archives at Paris.

Between 1857 and 1864, Thomas B. Akins, Esq., acting as record commissioner of the province, bound and arranged, as appears by his Report of Feb. 24, 1864, and deposited in the legislative library of the province, over 200 volumes of historical papers. The most important of these volumes for other than the local historian, and covering the period of the present volume appear to be the following:—

Despatches from the Lords of Trade to the governor at Annapolis, 1714-48; and to the governor at Halifax, 1749-99.

Despatches from the governors of Nova Scotia to the Lords of Trade, 1718-1781; and to the Secretaries of State, 1720-1764 (all from the State Paper Office).

Despatches from the governor at Louisbourg to the Sec. of State, 1745-48 (from State Paper Office).

Despatches from the governor of Mass. to the Sec. of State, 1748-51 (State Paper Office).

Documents from the files of the legislative council, 1760-1829; and of the assembly, 1758-1831, with

Miscellaneous papers, 1748-1841.

Acadia under French rule, 1632-1748 (copied from the transcripts in Canada from the Paris archives[997]).

Tyrell’s (Pichon’s) paper relating to Monckton’s capture of Fort Cumberland, 1753-1755.

Council minutes at Annapolis, 1720-49.

Crown prosecutions for treason, 1749-88.

Royal instructions to the governors, 1720-1841.

Royal proclamations, 1748-1807.

Orders of the Privy Council, 1753-1827.

Indians, 1751-1848.

But before this arranging of the Halifax Archives was undertaken, Bancroft in his United States[998] had used language which he has allowed to stand during successive revisions: “I know not if the annals of the human race keep the records of sorrows so wantonly inflicted, so bitter and so perennial, as fell upon the French inhabitants of Acadia.” About the same time the Canadian historian, Garneau,[999] simply quotes the effusions of Raynal. The publication of the Neutral French, by Catharine R. Williams, in 1841, a story in which the writer’s interest in the sad tale had grown with her study of the subject on the spot,[1000] followed by the Evangeline of Longfellow in 1847, which readily compelled attention, drew many eyes upon the records which had been the basis of these works of fiction. The most significant judgment, in consequence, made in America was that of the late President Felton, of Harvard University, in the North American Review (Jan., 1848, p. 231), wherein he called the deportation “a most tyrannical exercise of superior force, resting for its justification not upon sufficient proofs, but upon an alleged inevitable state necessity.” This gave direction to current belief.[1001] Barry (Massachusetts, ii. 200) wrote as if Raynal had compassed the truth. Chambers’ Journal (xxii. 342, or Living Age, xliv. 51) called an article on the subject “The American Glencoe.” In 1862, Mr. Robert Grant Haliburton, a son of Judge Haliburton, gave token of a new conception in the outline of a defence for the British government, which he drew in an address, The Past and the Future of Nova Scotia (Halifax, 1862). A more thorough exposition was at hand. Mr. Akins had been empowered to prepare for publication a selection of the more important papers among those which he had been arranging. In 1869 a volume of Selections, etc., appeared. In his preface Mr. Akins says: “Although much has been written on the subject, yet until lately it has undergone little actual investigation, and in consequence the necessity for their removal has not been clearly perceived, and the motives which led to its enforcement have been often misunderstood.” The views which he enforces are in accord with this remark. Mr. W. J. Anderson followed up this judgment in the Transactions[1002] of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec, and termed the act “a dreadful necessity.” The old view still lingered. It was enforced by Célestin Moreau in his Histoire de l’Acadie Françoise de 1598 à 1755 (Paris, 1873), and Palfrey, in the Compendious Hist. of New England (1873), which carried on the story of his larger volumes, leaves his adhesion to a view adverse to the English to be inferred. As to the character of the Acadians, while he allows for “a dash of poetry” in the language of Raynal, he mainly adopts it.[1003]

In 1879 Mr. James Hannay, perceiving the necessity of a well-ordered history, to embody in more readable shape the vast amount of material which Beamish Murdoch in his History of Nova Scotia[1004] had thrown into the form of annals, published his History of Acadia from its first discovery to its surrender to England by the Treaty of Paris (St. John, N. B., 1879). Hannay embodied in this book the most elaborate account which had yet been written of the deportation, and referring to it in his preface he says: “Very few people who follow the story to the end will be prepared to say that it was not a necessary measure of self-preservation on the part of the English authorities in Nova Scotia.”

Still the old sympathies were powerful. Henry Cabot Lodge in his Short History of the English Colonies[1005] (1881) finds the Acadians “harmless.” Hannay’s investigations were not lost, however, on Dr. George E. Ellis, who in his Red Man and White Man in North America (Boston, 1882) prefigured the results which two years later were to be adduced by Parkman.

Meanwhile, Mr. Philip H. Smith published at Pawling, N. Y., a book, doubly his own, for he inserted in it rude wood-cuts of his own graving. The book, which was coarsely printed on an old Liberty job press, was called Acadia, a lost chapter in American history,—why lost is not apparent, in view of the extensive literature of the subject. He refers vaguely to fifty authorities, but without giving us the means to track him among them, as he in an uncompromising way condemns the course of the British government. He is found, however, to draw largely from Judge Haliburton, and to adopt that writer’s assertion of the loss or abstraction of records. A few months later Mr. Parkman published the first volume of his Montcalm and Wolfe, using some material, particularly from the French Archives, which his predecessors had not possessed.[1006] In referring to the deportation, he says that its causes have not been understood[1007] by those who follow or abet the popular belief. Though he does not suggest any alternative action, he sets forth abundantly the reasons which palliate and explain a measure “too harsh and indiscriminate to be wholly justified.”[1008]

Widely different statements as to the number of those deported have been made. Lawrence in his circular letter,[1009] addressed (Aug. 11, 1755) to the governors of the English colonies, says that about 7,000 is the number to be distributed, and it is probably upon his figures that the Lords of Trade in addressing the king, Dec. 20, 1756, place the number at near 7,000. “Not less than 6,000 at least” is the language of a contemporary letter.[1010] That these figures were approximately correct would appear from the English records, which foot up together for the several centres of the movement—Beaubassin, Fort Edward, Minas, and Annapolis—a little over 6,000, as Parkman shows. The Canadian government in making a retrospective census in 1876, figured the number of Acadians within the peninsula in 1755 at 8,200. In giving 18,000 as the number of Acadians in 1755, Haliburton must have meant to include all of that birth in the maritime provinces, for he accepts Lawrence’s statement that 7,000 were deported. P. H. Smith[1011] uses these figures (18,000) so loosely that he seems to believe that all but a few hundred of them were removed. Rameau, a recent French authority, makes the number 6,000.[1012] Hannay, a late New Brunswick writer, allows only 3,000, but this number seems to have been reached by ignoring some part of the four distinct movements, as conducted by Monckton, Winslow, Murray, and Handfield. Minot accepts this same 3,000, and he is followed by Gay in the Popular Hist. of the United States, and by Ellis in his Red Man and White Man in North America.

Gov. Lawrence agreed with some Boston merchants, Apthorp and Hancock, to furnish the transports for conveying the exiles away.[1013] These contractors furnished the necessary flour, bread, pork, and beef for the service. The delay of the vessels to arrive seems to have arisen from Lawrence’s not giving timely notice to the contractors, for fear that the Acadians might learn of the intention.[1014] Winslow had told those who came under his supervision, that he would do everything in his power to transport “whole families in the same vessel.” Parkman thinks (i. 279) that the failures in this respect were not numerous. Smith, with little regard for the confusion which the tardy arrival of the transports occasioned, thinks they indicate that Winslow violated his word as a soldier. One of the actors in the movement, as reported in the Brown Papers (Nova Scotia Hist. Soc. Coll., ii. 131), says that “he fears some families were divided, notwithstanding all possible care was taken to prevent it.”

Hutchinson (iii. 40) says: “Five or six families were brought to Boston, the wife and children only, without the husbands and fathers, who by advertisements in the newspapers came from Philadelphia to Boston, being till then utterly uncertain what had become of their families.”

Miss Caulkins (New London, p. 469) says more were landed at New London than at any other New England port. The Connecticut Colony Records (vol. x. pp. 452, 461, 615) show how the Acadians were distributed throughout the towns, and that some were brought there from Maryland.

The journals of the House of Representatives in Massachusetts (1755-56) note the official action which was taken in that province respecting them. There are two volumes in the Mass. Archives (vols. xxiii., xxiv.) marked “French Neutrals,” which explain that for fifteen years (1755-1769) the charge of their support entered more or less into the burdens of the towns among which they were then scattered.[1015] A committee was in charge of benefactions which were bestowed upon them, and papers relating to their doings make part of the collection of old documents in the Charity Building in Boston.

Hutchinson (iii. 40), who had personal knowledge of the facts, says of their sojourn in Massachusetts: “Many of them went through great hardships; but in general they were treated with humanity.” He also tells us (iii. 41) that he interested himself in drafting for them a petition to the English king to be allowed to return to their lands or to be paid for them; but they refused to sign it, on the ground that they would thereby be cut off from the sympathy of the French king.

When in the spring of 1756 Major Jedediah Preble returned with some of the New England troops to Boston, he was directed by Lawrence to stop at Cape Sable and seize such Acadians as he could find.[1016] Though Smith (p. 252) says he did not see fit to obey the order, a letter from him, dated April 24, 1756, printed in the N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., 1876, p. 19, shows that he carried out the order and burnt the houses. When these newer exiles arrived at Boston, the provincial authorities declined to receive them. A vessel was hired to convey them to North Carolina, but the captives refused (May 8, 1756) to reëmbark. (Ibid., p. 18.) In 1762 the work of deportation was still going on, and five more transports arrived in Boston, but these seem largely to have been gathered outside the peninsula. They were returned by the Massachusetts authorities to Halifax, with the approval of the Lords of Trade and General Amherst, who thought there was no longer occasion to continue the deportation.[1017]

The Pennsylvania Gazette of Sept. 4, 1755, the day before the action of Winslow at Minas, informed that province of the intended action in Nova Scotia. The exiles were hardly welcome when they came. Governor Morris wrote to Shirley (Penna. Archives, ii. 506; Col. Rec., vi. 712) that he had no money to devote to their support, and that he should be obliged to retain, for guarding them, some recruits which he had raised for the field.[1018] There were kind people, however, in Philadelphia, of kindred blood, among the descendants of Huguenot emigrants, and their attention to the distresses of the exiles renders it possible for Akins to say: “They appear to have received better treatment at the hands of the government of Philadelphia than was accorded to them in some of the other provinces.” (Select. from Pub. Docs. of Nova Scotia, p. 278.) Haliburton (i. 183), averred that the proposition was made in Pennsylvania to sell the neutrals into slavery. Mr. William B. Reed, in a paper on “The Acadian exiles, or French neutrals in Pennsylvania (1755-57),” published in Memoirs (vol. vi. p. 283) of the Penna. Hist. Soc.,[1019] refutes the assertion. The poor people seem to have had less fear of provoking the ill-will of France than their brethren in Massachusetts had shown, and a petition to the king of Great Britain is preserved, apparently indited for them, as Robert Walsh, Jr., in his Appeal from the Judgment of Great Britain respecting the United States (Philadelphia, 1829, p. 437), printed it “from a draft in the handwriting of Benezet,” one of the Philadelphia Huguenots. It is reprinted in the appendix of Smith’s Acadia (p. 369). Another document is preserved to us in A Relation of the Misfortunes of the French Neutrals as laid before the Assembly of the Province of Pennsylvania by John Baptist Galerm, one of the said People. It constitutes a broadside extra of the Pennsylvania Gazette of about February, 1756,—the document being dated Feb. 11. It sets forth the history of their troubles, but did not specifically ask for assistance, which was, however, granted when the neutrals were apportioned among the counties. It is reprinted in the Memoirs (vi. 314) of the Penna. Hist. Soc., in Smith’s Acadia (p. 378), and in Penna. Archives; iii. 565. Walsh (p. 90) says that, notwithstanding charitable attentions, more than half of those in Pennsylvania died in a short time.

Daniel Dulany, writing of the Acadians arriving in Maryland in 1755, says that they insist on being treated as prisoners of war,—thereby claiming to be no subjects. “They have almost eat us up,” he adds; “as there is no provision for them, they have been supported by private subscription. Political considerations may make this [the deportation] a prudent step, for anything I know, and perhaps their behavior may have deservedly brought their sufferings upon them; but ‘t is impossible not to compassionate their distress.”[1020]

In Virginia Governor Dinwiddie received them with alarm, at a time when their countrymen were scalping the settlers on the western frontiers. He seemed to suppose from Lawrence’s letter that 5,000 were coming, but only 1,140 actually arrived. He writes that they proved lazy and contentious, and caballed with the slaves, and tried to run away with a sloop at Hampton. He managed to maintain them till the assembly met, when he recommended that provision should be made for their support; but the clamor against them throughout the colony was so great that the legislature directed their reshipment to England at a cost of £5,000. When Governor Glen, of Carolina, sent fifty more of them to Virginia, Dinwiddie sent them north.[1021]

In the Carolinas and Georgia they were not more welcome. Jones[1022] says that the 400 received in Georgia went scattering away. Dinwiddie reports[1023] that in these southern colonies vessels were given them, and that at one time several hundreds of them were coasting north in vessels and canoes, so that the shores of the Dominion were opened to their descents for provision as they voyaged northward. When Dinwiddie sent a sloop after some who had been heard of near the capes, they eluded the search. When Lawrence learned of this northern coursing, he sent another circular letter to the continental governors, begging them to intercept the exiles and destroy their craft.[1024] Some such destruction did take place on the Massachusetts coast,[1025] and others were intercepted on the shores of Long Island.[1026]

In Louisiana many of them ultimately found a permanent home, and 50,000 “Cajeans,” as they are vulgarly called, constitute to-day a separate community along the “Acadian coast” of the Mississippi, in the western parts of the State.[1027] After the peace and during the next few years they wandered thither through different channels: some came direct from the English colonies,[1028] others from Santo Domingo, and still others passed down the Mississippi from Canada, where their reception had been even worse than in the English colonies.[1029]

Until recent years have given better details, the opinions regarding the ultimate fate of most of the Acadians have remained erroneous. So little did Hutchinson know of it that he speaks (iii. 42) of their being in a manner extinct, the few which remained being mixed with other subjects in different parts of the French dominions. Later New England writers have not been better informed. Hildreth (United States, ii. 459) says that “the greater part, spiritless, careless, helpless, died in exile.” Barry (ii. 204) says, “They became extinct, though a few of their descendants, indeed, still live at the South!” The later Nova Scotia authorities have come nearer the truth. Murdoch says very many of them returned within a few years. Rameau, in his Une Colonie féodale, speaks of 150 families from New England wandering back by land. Some of them, pushing on past their old farms, reached the bay of St. Mary’s, and founded the villages which their descendants now occupy. Those which returned, joined to such as had escaped the hunt of the English, counted 2,500, and in 1871 their numbers had increased to 87,740 souls. Rameau, in an earlier work, La France aux Colonies: Études sur le développement de la race française hors de l’Europe: Les Français en Amérique, Acadiens et Canadiens (Paris, 1859), had reached the same conclusion (p. 93) about the entire number of Acadians within the peninsula (16,000) as already mentioned, and held that while 6,000 were deported (p. 144), about 9,000 escaped the proscription (p. 62). He traces their wanderings and enumerates the dispersed settlements.

A more recent writer, Hannay (pp. 406, 408), says: “The great bulk of the Acadians, however, finally succeeded in returning to the land of their birth.... At least two thirds of the 3,000 (?) removed eventually returned.”

The guide-books and a chapter in Smith’s Acadia tell of the numerous settlements now existing along the Madawaska River, partly in New Brunswick and partly in Maine, which are the villages of the progeny of such as fled to the St. John, and removed to these upper waters of that river when, after the close of the American Revolution, they retired before the influx of the loyalists which settled in the neighborhood of the present city of St. John.[1030]

After an engraving by Ravenet. Cf. David Ramsay’s Mil. Memoirs of Great Britain, or a History of the War, 1755-1763 (Edinburgh, 1779), p. 192; and John Entick’s Hist. of the Late War, iii. p. 443.

Lord Loudon’s abortive attempt on Louisbourg has been mentioned in another place.[1031] Parkman gives the authorities. (Montcalm and Wolfe, i. 473; cf. Barry’s Massachusetts, ii. 223.)

An agreement (Sept. 12) for the supply of arms, etc., between sundry merchants and others of Maine and certain men, “for an intended scout or cruise for the killing and captivating the Indian enemy to the eastward,” to be under the command of Joseph Bayley, Jr., for sixty days from Sept. 20, 1757, is in the Maine Hist. and Geneal. Recorder, i. p. 11.

The journal (1758) of Captain Gorham’s rangers and other forces under Major Morris, in a marauding expedition to the Bay of Fundy, is given in the Aspinwall Papers, in Mass. Hist. Coll., xxxix. 222.

Franquet, who a year or two before the war began was sent by the French to strengthen Louisbourg and inspect the defences of Canada, kept a journal, which Parkman uses in his Montcalm and Wolfe.

Admiral Knowles, in the memorial for back pay which he presented in 1774 to the British government, claimed the credit of having planned the movements for this second capture of Louisbourg.

The most authoritative contemporary account of the siege of 1758, on the English side, is contained in the despatches of Amherst and Boscawen sent to Pitt, extracts from which were published as A journal of the landing of his majesty’s forces on the island of Cape Breton, and of the siege and surrender of Louisbourg (22 pp.). What is called a third edition of this tract was printed in Boston in 1758.[1032] The so-called journal of Amherst was printed in the London Magazine, and is included in Thomas Mante’s Hist. of the Late War in North America (London, 1772).

Of the contemporary French accounts, Parkman says he had before him four long and minute diaries of the siege. The first is that of Drucour, the French commander, containing his correspondence with Amherst, Boscawen, and Desgouttes, the naval chief of the French. Tourville, who commanded the “Capricieux,” one of the French fleet, kept a second of these diaries. A third and fourth are without the names of their writers. They agree in nearly all essential particulars.[1033] The Parkman MSS., in the Mass. Hist. Society’s library, contain many letters from participants in the siege, which were copied from the Paris Archives de la Marine. The manuscript of Chevalier Johnstone, a Scotch Jacobite serving with the French, gives an account of the siege, which is described elsewhere (post, in chapter viii.) and has been used by Parkman. The Documents Collected in France—Massachussetts Archives (vol. ix. p. i.) contains one of the narratives.

FROM BROWN’S CAPE BRETON.

VIEW OF LOUISBOURG.

From the northeast. One of Des Barres’ coast views. (In Harvard College library.) Dr. A. H. Nichols, of Boston, possesses a plan of Louisbourg made by Geo. Follings, of Boston, a gunner in the service. He has also a contemporary sketch of the fort at Canso.

ENTRANCE TO LOUISBOURG HARBOR.

One of Des Barres’ coast views, 1779. (In Harvard College library.) A contemporary view showing the town from a point near the light-house is given in Cassell’s United States, i. 528.

The printed materials on the French side are not nearly so numerous as on the English. Of importance is Thomas Pichon’s[1034] Lettres et Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire du Cap Breton (a la Haye, 1760), of which there is an English translation, of the same year, purporting to be copied from the author’s original manuscript.[1035]

After the print in Entick’s Gen. Hist. of the Late War, 3d ed., vol. iv. p. 90. See the engraving from Knox’s journal, on another page, in ch. viii.

Of individual experiences and accounts there are, on the English side, John Montresor’s journal, in the Coll. of the N. Y. Hist. Soc., 1881 (p. 151);[1036] An Authentic Account of the Reduction of Louisbourg in June and July, 1758, by a Spectator (London, 1758),[1037] which Parkman calls excellent, and says that Entick, in his General History of the Late War (London, 1764),[1038] used it without acknowledgment. The same authority characterizes as admirable the account in John Knox’s Historical Journal of the Campaigns in North America, 1757-1760[1039] (vol. i. p. 144), with its numerous letters and orders relating to the siege. Wright, in his Life of Wolfe, gives various letters of that active officer. Parkman also uses a diary of a captain or subaltern in Amherst’s army, found in the garret of an old house at Windsor, Nova Scotia. Some contemporary letters will be found in the Grenville Correspondence (vol. i. pp. 240-265);[1040] and other views of that day respecting the event can be gleaned from Walpole’s Memoirs of George the Second (2d ed., vol. iii. 134).[1041] Of the modern accounts, the most considerable are those in Warburton’s Conquest of Canada (N. Y., 1850, vol. ii. p. 74), Brown’s History of Cape Breton, and the story as recently told with unusual spirit and acquaintance with the sources in Parkman’s Montcalm and Wolfe (vol. ii. chap. xix).

Amherst had wished to push up to Quebec immediately upon the fall of Louisbourg, but the news from Abercrombie and some hesitancy of Boscawen put an end to the hope. Chatham Correspondence, i. 331-333.

The reports of the capture reached London August 18. (Grenville Correspondence, i. p. 258.)

Jenkinson writes (Sept. 7, 1758), “Yesterday the colours that were taken at Louisbourg were carried in procession to Saint Paul’s; the mob was immense.” (Grenville Corresp., i. 265.)

Speaking of Amherst’s success at Louisbourg, Burrows, in his Life of Lord Hawke (London, 1883, p. 340), says: “So entirely has the importance of this place receded into the background that it requires an effort to understand why the success of Boscawen and Amherst should have been thought worthy of the solemn thanks of Parliament, and why the captured colors of the enemy should have been paraded through the streets of London.”

Mr. William S. Appleton, in the Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., vol. xi. pp. 297, 298, describes three medals struck to commemorate the siege of 1758. Cf. also Trans. Quebec Lit. and Hist. Soc., 1872-73, p. 79.

A view of Louisburg in North America, taken from near the light-house, when that city was besieged in 1758, is the title of a contemporary copperplate engraving published by Jefferys. (Carter-Brown, iii. p. 335.) Cf. the view in Cassell’s United States, i. 528.

The plan of the siege, here presented, is reproduced from Brown’s Hist. of Cape Breton (p. 297):—

Key: The French batteries to oppose the landing were as follows:—

C. One swivel.
D. Two swivels.
E. Two six-pounders.
F. One twenty-pounder and two six-pounders.
G. One seven-inch and one eight-inch mortar.
H. Two swivels.
I. Two six-pounders.
K. Two six-pounders.
N. Two twelve-pounders.
O. Two six-pounders.
P. Two twenty-four pounders.
Q. Two six-pounders.
R. Two twelve-pounders.

The points of attack were as follows:—

A. Landing of the first column.
B. Landing of the second column.

These troops carried the adjacent batteries and pursued their defenders towards the city. The headquarters of the English were now established at H Q, while the position of the various regiments is marked by the figures corresponding to their numbers. Three redoubts (R 1, 2, 3) were thrown up in advance, and two block-houses (B H 1, 2) were built on their left flank; and later, to assist communication with Wolfe, who had been sent to the east side of the harbor, a third block-house (B H 3) was constructed. Then a fourth redoubt was raised at Green Hill (G H R 4) to cover work in the trenches. Meanwhile the English batteries at the light-house had destroyed the island battery, and the French had sunk ships in the channel to impede the entrance of the English fleet. The first parallel was opened at T, T1, T2, and a rampart was raised, E P, to protect the men passing to the trenches. Wolfe now erected a new redoubt at R 5, to drive off a French frigate near the Barachois, which annoyed the trenches; and another at R 6, which soon successfully sustained a strong attack. The second (T 3, 4) and third (T 5, 6) parallels were next established. A boat attack from the English fleet outside led to the destruction and capture of the two remaining French ships in the harbor, opening the way for the entrance of the English fleet. At this juncture the town surrendered.

Cf. also the plans in Jefferys’ Natural and Civil Hist. of the French Dominions in North America (1760), and in Mante’s Hist. of the War (annexed). Parkman, in his Montcalm and Wolfe, ii. 52, gives an eclectic map. Father Abraham’s Almanac, published at Philadelphia and Boston in 1759, has a map of the siege.

Treaty at Halifax of Governor Lawrence with the St. John and Passamaquoddy Indians, Feb. 23, 1760. (Mass. Archives, xxxiv.; Williamson, i. 344.)

Conference with the Eastern Indians at Fort Pownall, Mar. 2, 1760. (Mass. Archives, xxix. 478.)

Pownall’s treaty of April 29, 1760. Brigadier Preble’s letter, April 30, 1760, respecting the terms on which he had received the Penobscots under the protection of the government. (Mass. Archives, xxxiii.) Conference with the Penobscots at the council chamber in Boston, Aug. 22, 1763. (Mass. Archives, xxix. 482.) Cf. on the Indian treaties, Maine Hist. Soc. Collections, iii. 341, 359. The treaty of Paris had been signed Feb. 10, 1763.

[THE MAPS AND BOUNDS OF ACADIA.]

By the Editor.

The cartography of Acadia begins with that coast, “discovered by the English,” which is made a part of Asia in the map of La Cosa in 1500.[1042] The land is buried beneath the waves, west of the land of the king of Portugal, in the Cantino map of 1502.[1043] It lies north of the “Plisacus Sinus,” as a part of Asia, in the Ruysch map of 1508.[1044] It is a vague coast in the map of the Sylvanus Ptolemy of 1511.[1045] For a long time the eastern coast of Newfoundland and neighboring shores stood for about all that the early map-makers ventured to portray; called at one time Baccalaos, now Corterealis, again Terra Nova; sometimes completed to an insular form, occasionally made to face a bit of coast that might pass for Acadia, often doubtless embracing in its insularity an indefinite extent that might well include island and main together, vaguely expressed, until in the end the region became angularly crooked as a part of a continental coast line. The maps which will show all this variety have been given in previous volumes. The Homem map of 1558[1046] is the earliest to give the Bay of Fundy with any definiteness. There was not so much improvement as might be expected for some years to come, when the map-makers followed in the main the types of Ruscelli and Ortelius, as will be seen by sketches and fac-similes in earlier volumes.

In 1592 the Molineaux globe of the Middle Temple[1047] became a little more definite, but the old type was still mainly followed. In 1609 Lescarbot gave special treatment to the Acadian region[1048] for the first time, and his drafts were not so helpful as they ought to have been to the more general maps of Hondius, Michael Mercator, and Oliva, all of 1613, but Champlain in 1612[1049] and 1613[1050] did better. The Dutch and English maps which followed began to develop the coasts of Acadia, like those of Jacobsz (1621),[1051] Sir William Alexander (1624),[1052] Captain Briggs in Purchas (1625),[1053] Jannson’s of 1626, and the one in Speed’s Prospect, of the same year.[1054] The Dutch De Laet began to establish features that lingered long[1055] with the Dutch, as shown in the maps of Jannson and Visscher; while Champlain, in his great map of 1632,[1056] fashioned a type that the French made as much of as they had opportunity, as, for instance, Du Val in 1677. Dudley in 1646[1057] gave an eclectic survey of the coast. After this the maps which pass under the names of Covens and Mortier,[1058] and that of Visscher with the Dutch, and the Sanson epochal map of 1656[1059] among the French, marked some, but not much, progress. The map of Heylin’s Cosmographie in 1663, the missionary map of the same year,[1060] and the new drafts of Sanson in 1669 show some variations, while that of Sanson is followed in Blome (1670). The map in Ogilby,[1061] though reëngraved to take the place of the maps in Montanus and Dapper,[1062] does not differ much.

ACADIA.

To complete the two centuries from La Cosa, we may indicate among the French maps a missionary map of 1680,[1063] that of Hennepin,[1064] the great map of Franquelin (1684),[1065] the “partie orientale” of Coronelli’s map of 1688-89,[1066] and the one given by Leclercq in the Établissement de la Foy (1691). The latest Dutch development was seen in the great Atlas of Blaeu in 1685.[1067]

With the opening of the eighteenth century, we have by Herman Moll, a leading English geographer of his day, a New Map of Newfoundland, New Scotland, the isles of Breton, Anticoste, St. Johns, together with the fishing bancks, which appeared in Oldmixon’s British Empire in America, in 1708,[1068] and by Lahontan’s cartographer the Carte générale de Canada, which appeared in the La Haye edition (1709) of his travels, repeated in his Mémoires (1741, vol. iii.). A section showing the southern bounds as understood by the French to run on the parallel of 43° 30′, is annexed.

From 1714 to 1722 we have the maps of Guillaume Delisle, which embody the French view of the bounds of Acadia.

In 1718 the Lords of Trade in England recognized the rights of the original settlers of the debatable region under the Duke of York,—which during the last twenty years had more than once changed hands,—and these claimants then petitioned to be set up as a province, to be called “Georgia.”[1069]

In 1720, Père Anbury wrote a Mémoire, which confines Acadia to the Nova Scotia peninsula, and makes the region from Casco Bay to Beaubassin a part of Canada.[1070]

In March, 1723, M. Bohé reviewed the historical evidences from 1504 down, but only allowed the southern coast of the peninsula to pass under the name of Acadia.[1071]

In 1731 the crown took the opinion of the law-officers as to the right of the English king to the lands of Pemaquid, between the Kennebec and the St. Croix, because of the conquest of the territory by the French, and reconquest causing the vacating of chartered rights; and this document, which is long and reviews the history of the region, is in Chalmers’ Opinions of Eminent Lawyers, i. p. 78, etc.

In 1732 appeared the great map of Henry Popple, Map of the British Empire in America and the French and Spanish settlements adjacent thereto. It was reproduced at Amsterdam about 1737. Popple’s large MS. draft, which is preserved in the British Museum,[1072] is dated 1727. When in 1755 some points of Popple told against their claim, the English commissioners were very ready to call the map inaccurate. We have the Acadian region on a small scale in Keith’s Virginia, in 1738. The Delisle map of North America in 1740 is reproduced in Mills’ Boundaries of Ontario (1873). The English Pilot of 1742, published at London, gives various charts of the coast, particularly no. 5, “Newfoundland to Maryland,” and no. 13, “Cape Breton to New York.”

Much better drafts were made when Nicolas Bellin was employed to draw the maps for Charlevoix’s Nouvelle France,[1073] which was published in 1744. These were the Carte de la partie orientale de la Nouvelle France ou du Canada (vol. i. 438), a Carte de l’Accadie dressée sur les manuscrits du dépost des cartes et plans de la marine (vol. i. 12),[1074] and a Carte de l’Isle Royale (vol. ii. p. 385), beside lesser maps of La Heve, Milford harbor, and Port Dauphin. These are reproduced in Dr. Shea’s English version of Charlevoix. Bellin’s drafts were again used as the basis of the map of Acadia and Port Royal (nos. 26, 27) in Le petit atlas maritime, vol. i., Amérique Septentrionale, par le S. Bellin (1764).

The leading English and French general maps showing Acadia at this time are that of America in Bowen’s Complete System of Geography (1747)[1075] and D’Anville’s Amérique Septentrionale (Paris), which was reëngraved, with changes, at Nuremberg in 1756, and at Boston (reprinted, London) 1755, in Douglass’s Summary of the British Settlements in North America. It is here called “improved with the back settlements of Virginia.”[1076]

The varying territorial claims of the French and English were illustrated in a Geographical History of Nova Scotia, published at London in 1749; a French version of which, as Histoire géographique de la Nouvelle Écosse, made by Étienne de Lafargue, and issued anonymously, was published at Paris in 1755, but its authorship was acknowledged when it was later included in Lafargue’s Œuvres.[1077] The Mémoire which Galissonière wrote in December, 1750, claimed for France westward to the Kennebec, and thence he bounded New France on the water-shed of the St. Lawrence and Mississippi.[1078] In 1750-51 Joseph Bernard Chabert was sent by the French king to rectify the charts of the coasts of Acadia, and his Voyage fait par ordre du Roi en 1750 et 1751 dans l’Amérique Septentrionale pour rectifier les cartes des côtes de l’Acadie, de l’îsle Royale, et de l’îsle de Terre Neuve, Paris, 1753, has maps of Acadia and of the coast of Cape Breton.[1079]

In 1753 the futile sessions of the commissioners of England and France began at Paris. Their aim was to define by agreement the bounds of Acadia as ceded to England by the treaty of Utrecht (1713),[1080] under the indefinite designation of its “ancient limits.” What were these ancient limits? On this question the French had constantly shifted their grounds. The commission of De Monts in 1603 made Acadia stretch from Central New Brunswick to Southern Pennsylvania, or between the 40th and 46th degrees of latitude; but, as Parkman says, neither side cared to produce the document. When the French held without dispute the adjacent continent, they never hesitated to confine Acadia to the peninsula.[1081] Equally, as interest prompted, they could extend it to the Kennebec, or limit it to the southern half of the peninsula. Cf. the Mémoire sur les limites de l’Acadie (joint à la lettre de Begon, Nov. 9, 1713), in the Parkman MSS. in Mass. Hist. Soc., New France, i. p. 9.

In July, 1749, La Galissonière, in writing to his own ministry, had declared that Acadia embraced the entire peninsula; but, as the English knew nothing of this admission, he could later maintain that it was confined to the southern shore only. Cf. again Fixation des limites de l’Acadie, etc., 1753, among the Parkman MSS. in Mass. Hist. Soc., New France, i. pp. 203-269.

On this question of the “ancient limits,” the English commissioners had of course their way of answering, and the New England claims were well sustained in the arguing of the case by Governor Shirley, of Massachusetts,[1082] who with William Mildmay was an accredited agent of the English monarch. The views of the opposing representatives were irreconcilable,[1083] and in 1755 the French court appealed to the world by presenting the two sides of the case, as shown in the counter memoirs of the commissioners, in a printed work, which was sent to all the foreign courts. It appeared in two editions, quarto (1755) and duodecimo (1756), in three and six volumes respectively, and was entitled Mémoires des Commissaires du Roi et de ceux de sa Majesté Britannique. Both editions have a preliminary note saying that the final reply of the English commissioners was not ready for the press, and so was not included.[1084] This omission gave occasion to the English, when, the same year (1755), they published at London their Memorials of the English and French commissaries concerning the limits of Nova Scotia or Acadia, to claim that, by including this final response of the English commissioners, their record of the conference was more complete. This London quarto volume[1085] contained various documents.[1086]

In 1757 a fourth volume was added to the quarto Paris edition, containing the final reply of the English commissioners, and completing the record of the two years’ conference. The four volumes are a very valuable repository of historical material; and, from printing at length the documents offered in evidence, it is a much more useful gathering than the single English volume, which we have already described. The points of difference between the two works are these:—

The memorial of Shirley and Mildmay (Jan. 11, 1751), given in French only in the Paris edition, and accompanied by observations of the French commissioners in foot-notes, is here given in French and English, but without the foot-notes. The English memorial of Jan. 23, 1753, lacks the observations of the French commissioners which accompany it in their vol. iv.[1087]

Among the “pièces justificatives” in the London edition, various papers are omitted which are given in the Paris edition. The reason of the omission is that they already existed in print. Such are the texts of various treaties, and extracts from printed books.

The London edition prints, however, the MS. sources among these proofs, but does not give the observations of the French commissioners which accompany them in the Paris edition. Among the papers thus omitted in the London edition are the provincial charter of Massachusetts Bay and Gen. John Hill’s manifesto, printed at Boston from Charlevoix.

Vol. iv. of the Paris edition has various additional “pièces produites par les commissaires du Roi,” including extracts from Hakluyt, Peter Martyr, Ramusio, Gomara, Fabian, Wytfliet, as well as the English charters of Carolina (1662-63, 1665) and of Georgia (1732).

The Paris edition was also reprinted at Copenhagen, with a somewhat different arrangement, under the title Mémoires des commissaires de sa Majesté très chrétienne et de ceux de sa Majesté Britannique. À Coppenhague, 1755.

THE FRENCH CLAIM, 1755.

Key of the French Map: Limits proposed by English commissaries, Sept. 21, 1750, and Jan. 11, 1751 (exclusive of Cape Breton),------

By the treaty of Utrecht, ++++++

Port Royal district, by the same treaty,——————

Grant to Sir William Alexander, Sept. 10, 1621, ...........

Cromwell’s grant to La Tour, Crown, and Temple, Aug. 9, 1656, ══════

What was restored to France by the treaty of Breda includes Cromwell’s grant and the country from Mirlegash to Canseau.

Denys’ government (1654), shaded horizontally.

Charnesay’s government (1638), shaded obliquely.

La Tour’s government (1638), shaded perpendicularly.

THE ENGLISH CLAIM, 1755.

Key of the English Map: Claim of the English under the treaty of Utrecht (1713), marked ——————

Grant to Sir William Alexander (1621), and divided by him into Alexandria and Caledonia, being all east of line marked ·─·─·─·─

According to Champlain (1603-1629), all, excepting Cape Breton, east of this line, ......

Grants of Louis XIII. and XIV. (1632-1710), the same as the claim of the English for Nova Scotia or Acadia.

Nova Scotia, enlarged westward to the Kennebec, as granted to the Earl of Sterling (Alexander).

Acadia proper, as defined by Charlevoix in accordance with the tripartite division, shaded perpendicularly.

Charnesay’s government (1638), ══════

La Tour’s government (1638), +++++++

Cromwell’s grant to La Tour, Crown, and Temple, being the same ceded to France by the treaty of Breda (1667), ———

Norembega, according to Montanus, Dapper, and Ogilby, is the country between the Kennebec and Penobscot.

The Etechemin region, as defined by Champlain and Denys, shaded obliquely.

JEFFERYS’ NOVA SCOTIA.

All three of the editions in French have a map, marking off the limits of Acadia under different grants, and defining the claims of France. It is engraved on different scales, however, in the two Paris editions, and shows a larger extent of the continent westerly in the Copenhagen edition. The fourth volume of the quarto Paris edition has also a map, in which the bounds respectively of the charters of 1620, 1662, 1665, and 1732 (Virginia, Carolina, and Georgia), claimed by the English to run through to the Pacific, are drawn.[1088]

Thomas Jefferys, the English cartographer, published at London in 1754 his Conduct of the French with regard to Nova Scotia from its first settlement to the present time. In which are exposed the falsehood and absurdity of their arguments made use of to elude the force of the treaty of Utrecht, and support their unjust proceedings. In a letter to a member of Parliament.[1089]

The map of the French claims and another of the English claims are copied herewith from Jefferys’ reproduction of the former and from his engraving of the latter, both made to accompany his later Remarks on the French Memorials concerning the limits of Acadia, printed at the Royal Printing-House at Paris, and distributed by the French ministers at all the foreign courts of Europe, with two maps exhibiting the limits: one according to the system of the French, the other conformable to the English rights. To which is added An Answer to the Summary Discussion,[1090] etc. London, T. Jefferys, 1756.[1091]

Both of these Jefferys maps were included by that geographer in his General Topography of North America and the West Indies, London, 1768, and one of them will also be found in the Atlas Amériquain, 1778, entitled “Nouvelle Écosse ou partie orientale du Canada, traduitte de l’Anglais de la Carte de Jefferys publiée à Londres en May, 1755. A Paris par Le Rouge.” Jefferys also included in the London edition of the Memorials (1755) a New map of Nova Scotia and Cape Britain, with the adjacent parts of New England and Canada,[1092] which is also found in his History of the French Dominion in North and South America, London, 1760, and also in his General Topography, etc. A section of this map, showing Acadia, is reproduced herewith.[1093]

The great map of D’Anville in 1755[1094] enforced the extreme French claim, carrying the boundary line along the height of land from the Connecticut to Norridgewock, thence down the Kennebec to the sea. The secret instructions to Vaudreuil this same year (1755) allow that the French claim may be moved easterly from the Sagadahock to the St. Georges, and even to the Penobscot, if the English show a conciliatory disposition, but direct him not to waver if the water-shed is called in question at the north.[1095]

A German examination of the question appeared at Leipzig in 1756, in Das Brittische Reich in Amerika ... nebst nachricht von den Gränzstreitigkeiten und Kriege mit den Franzossen. It is elucidated with maps by John Georg Schrübers.[1096]