Plotting against the Acadians began 267 years ago this month

It was in June 1746, nearly a decade before the actual dispersion, that the English began to seriously push for the removal of the Acadians from their homeland.

On June 18, 1746, Gov. William Shirley of Massachusetts wrote to his superiors in London, “The enemy will soon find a way to wrest Acadia from us if we do not remove the most dangerous French inhabitants and replace them with English families.”

He’d been thinking particularly evil thoughts about the Acadians ever since the fall of the French fort at Louisbourg a year before. At that time he wrote to William Pepperell, the Massachusetts businessman and soldier who had largely financed the expedition against the French fort, “It grieves me much that I have it not in my power to send a party of 500 men to … burn Grand Pre, [the Acadians’] chief town, and open all the sluices [used by the Acadians to reclaim marshland for farming] and lay their country waste.”

The Acadians caught on quickly that they were in big trouble and knew that at least some British officials wanted them removed. They sent a delegation to Jean-Paul Mascarene, lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia, with a letter upholding their claim that they remained neutral in the battles between France and England, but nonetheless were thrown in the middle.

“You know the condition in which we are placed by both the French and the Indians in all their operations,” they wrote. “The [Indians] ravage, plunder, and kill us; the [French] overwhelm us with work and trouble. … And now from another side we are made to understand that out of Boston will come those intent on destroying us entirely, which would not be difficult, since we are already crushed in all ways.”

In November 1745, an official British said it would be a good thing if the Acadians were “transported out of [Nova Scotia] and be replaced with good Protestant subjects.”

Mascarene tried to defend the Acadians, saying that even if some of them were overly friendly to the French side, the bulk of the Acadians were simply beset by circumstances and were in trouble with somebody “no matter which side they take.” But he also agreed that “if … these Inhabitants can be removed and good Protestant Subjects transplanted in their [place], nothing can be of greater advantage to the British interest.”

All of this came to a head in June 1746, when the rumor got out that the French were going to send a huge fleet to retake Louisbourg. That’s what prompted Shirley’s letter on June 18, and another on July 28, 1746, when he wrote to London, “The Province of Nova Scotia will never be out of danger so long as the French inhabitants are tolerated.”

He renewed his argument on Nov. 21, 1746, writing to the British Prime Minister to suggest some trickery, “[The Acadians] are … alarmed at the rumor of the design to remove them. New assurances should be given by His Majesty at once; if this was done, it would have a great tendency to remove their present apprehensions of being sent off. ¼ These measures, together with the introduction of Protestant ministers and English schools, and some small encouragement by privileges to such as should conform to the Protestant religion; the disallowance of the public exercise of the Romish religion, at least after a short term of years, and forbidding Romish priests under severe penalties to come into the country.

“Just as I finished the last paragraph, a letter from Admiral Knowles was delivered to me in which he informs me that he has given his opinion to Your Grace that it will be necessary to drive all the Acadians out of Acadia.”

There was much give and take between 1746 and 1755, when the exile was finally carried out. The idea by then had been so long planted in the minds of the British that its execution was almost inevitable.

You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jhbradshaw@bellsouth.net or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.