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]