Early Colonization—De Monts—Champlain—Sir William Alexander—Capture of Quebec—The Treaties—The Acadian Evangeline—Louisbourg—First Capture—Peace of Aix la Chapelle—Boundary Disputes—The Final Struggle—Deportation of the Acadians—Nova Scotia constituted a Province.
The first attempt at the colonization of Nova Scotia which was made from France was singularly unfortunate. In 1598, we read, the Marquis de la Roche left Saint Malo with a crew, almost entirely composed of convicts. He landed forty of them at Sable Island until he could select a place fit for settlement, when a westerly storm drove his ship back to France. These settlers, if they can be so called, remained unnoticed for seven years, and when they were found twelve only remained. Had it not been for De Lery, who placed some live stock here in 1518, which in the interval had greatly multiplied, they must have starved. Their houses were built of the timbers of wrecked vessels, and it would seem no little of the fuel was derived from the same source. There is a letter from one John Butt to Henry VIII., which states that in 1527, seventy years previously, he met fifteen vessels in the harbour of Newfoundland, and there is every ground to warrant the belief that individual enterprise led to constant communication between the maritime nations of Europe and America from the early days of the discovery of Newfoundland, and that very many vessels penetrated to the shores of Nova Scotia and to the St. Lawrence before the days of Verazzano and Cartier. The object being alone that of trade with the Indians, and to obtain fish, no settlement followed, and doubtless many a wreck lay on the dreary shores of the exposed island where these unfortunate men had been landed.
The first well-considered attempt at European colonization occurred under the leadership of De Monts in 1604; in which we of Canada feel the greater interest, as the founder of Canada, the illustrious Champlain, took part in it. He has himself recorded the voyage, and Lescarbot, the first chronicler of the northern portion of the continent has fully related its history. It is mentioned that when De Monts arrived, he found a free trader in one of the bays whose name is preserved, Rossignol, a marked proof which I venture to adduce as showing the frequent intercourse between the two hemispheres at that date. De Monts entered the Bay of Fundy and passed up St. Mary’s Bay, whence he proceeded to what is now known as Annapolis. Poutrincourt was of the party, and he commenced his chequered career by obtaining a grant of Port Royal from De Monts, founding a settlement there and giving it the name it bore for upwards of a century. De Monts himself passed over to Saint John whence he descended to Passamaquoddy Bay, where he built the Fort of Saint Croix. His crew suffered from scurvy during the winter. Hence he formed the opinion that the settlement was unhealthy, and accordingly he went as far south as the Penobscot. Finding the Indians unfriendly at this place, he returned to Port Royal. Here he met PontgravÉ, known as the friend and associate of Champlain, who at this date first appears on the scene.
The leaders returned to France where strong influences were exercised against them. But they reappeared in 1606 and commenced in earnest to cultivate the land. A mill was constructed, and in the height of their efforts the following year notice was received from France that the monopoly of the trade in peltry given to De Monts was revoked. De Monts’ future scene of labour was the Saint Lawrence, but Poutrincourt obtained the confirmation of De Monts’ concession to him of Port Royal, accompanied by the condition that it should maintain a Jesuit Mission.
The influence which sustained this addition was all powerful, so the two Jesuits, Biard and Masse, arrived at Port Royal.A The Jesuits could not agree with the commander of the settlement and they departed to found a colony on the Penobscot River. But in 1613, Captain Samuel Argall, from James River, in Virginia, where a settlement had been established since 1606, sailed to fish for cod in the more northern waters. His pretensions were higher than that of a fisherman, for he carried fourteen guns and a crew of sixty men. Some Indians in perfect good faith set him on the track of the new settlements, which he at once attacked and destroyed.
No attempt was made to form a settlement from the Mother Country until 1621, when what in modern language are called the Maritime Provinces were granted to Sir William Alexander. A vessel with emigrants sailed in 1622, but owing to storms, was driven to Newfoundland. James I. died in 1625, and his death led to the complications which followed on this continent. Charles I. had determined to assist the French Protestants then besieged in Rochelle, and as a portion of his operations, Kirke’s celebrated expedition against Canada, took place in 1628. Quebec was taken. The French settlements still continued with small increments in what is known as Acadia: at Port Royal, Annapolis, to the country round Minas Bay, or the Basin of Minas from Chignecto to Cobequid, and south to Windsor and Cornwallis. There were some small settlements at Cape Sable, Cape la Have and at Canso. Fifty years after this date the total population was but little over 800, so settlement could only have taken place slowly and at intervals.
In 1632 all that is now known as British America, which lies beyond the valley of the St. Lawrence, was given over to the French by treaty. But Oliver Cromwell became Protector of England, and seized the forts of St. John and Port Royal, and, what is more, in the treaty of Westminster of 1655 held Nova Scotia as a possession. In 1658 the great Englishman died, and the discreditable days of the restoration followed. In 1662 the French Ambassador received instructions to demand restitution of the country. The English King, the pensioner of France, had no resource but compliance, although the people of Massachusetts, hearing of the proposition, sent a remonstrance against the proceeding. Its only effect was to lead to delay, for in 1667 a discreditable surrender was made by the treaty of Breda. The Governor was ordered to hand over Nova Scotia to French rule. The accession of William III. led to war, and in 1690 an expedition against Port Royal ended in its capture. But by the Peace of Ryswick, 1697, Nova Scotia was again transferred to France. Port Royal was occupied and placed in a condition of defence, and it was among the grievances of the New Englanders that it was the resort of pirates who preyed on Massachusetts commerce. War again broke out in 1702. The early attempts to capture Port Royal were not successful. Had the Governor, Subercase, been sustained from France, the conquest might have been perhaps stayed. But the support he asked was not extended, and in 1710 the place was again taken. The English Government had learned some terrible lessons on the necessity of holding the territory in this direction. The massacres at York and Oyster River in 1694 and the attempt to destroy Wells must have taught her rulers that the English colonies required some firmly seated support against such attempts. The effort of France was to connect Canada by a series of outposts with the Atlantic. A fort was built on the St. John, opposite Fredericton, Naxouat, and at the Jemseg to the south. The thinly-peopled northern parts of Maine and Massachusetts were thus constantly exposed to attack, and it was manifestly necessary to the protection of New England that a garrison of sufficient strength should be established in a locality where it would be available to meet an excursion from Canada, if French encroachments were to be resisted. It was thus that attention was directed to Port Royal, which had been taken in the expedition under Nicholson in 1710, and now received the name of Annapolis, from the reigning Queen. Halifax was then unknown, and the whole settlement of Nova Scotia consisted in what went under the name of Acadia, which did not contain 1,000 souls. It was resolved, however, to hold Nova Scotia permanently, and a garrison was left at Annapolis.
It was not until 1755, forty-five years after this date, that the deportation of the Acadians took place, and what follows in the history of Nova Scotia must be remembered in connection with the relentless policy of Governor Lawrence, which enforced their banishment.
Many have formed their idea of that measure by Mr. Longfellow’s well known poem of “Evangeline,” but it must be judged in a far wider view than what is suggested by those polished hexameters. Few can deny that the measure was one bringing much suffering with it, and that many innocent persons underwent tribulation, and that there is a hard, unbending purpose running through the proceeding to cause feelings of horror and pain. This cannot be denied. But what is all war but an unvarying scene of individual misery and wrong? A private execution of the most notorious malefactor makes an appeal to one’s more merciful feelings. The real question to be considered is; was this step a merciless, treacherous, unnecessary brutality like the massacre of Glencoe, inflicting uncalled for suffering on a defenceless people, taken unawares, who had no chance given them to avoid such a fate; or was it an act of necessary policy entailed by most pressing circumstances, by consideration for the safety of a community, which the sufferers could have avoided, without the slightest sacrifice of principle, feeling or of individual right. The fact must be clearly stated. The Acadians, as a conquered people, obtained every consideration and kindness, and for years they were called upon earnestly to be loyal and to abstain from injury to those who were now their masters. No one ever received the slightest individual injury. They were treated with justice, with forbearance, with mercy. They were assured the practice of their religion, the maintenance of their property and their personal liberty. All they were asked to do was to give a solemn assurance, to become in fact and by their lives, subjects of their conquerors. Not to side with their foes, but to defend the land on which they held their property, against its enemies, and above all to abstain from encouragement of the savage Indian, whose theory of warfare was stealthy assassination. I return to the date 1710.
Port Royal was conquered, and its conquerors clearly shewed that they intended to retain it as a possession. The inhabitants never ceased from hostility in all its forms. Parties sent out to cut wood were assassinated. Travelling beyond the fort was dangerous; for the individual it was death. The enmity of the people was kept up by the missionaries with the assurance that the fort would be attacked and retaken at the first opportunity, and that British continued possession was an impossibility. War was closed by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, when Nova Scotia remained a British possession. The French retained the sovereignty of the Island of Cape Breton,B which with the Port of Louisbourg, remained an eternal threat to Nova Scotia. The Acadians were pressed by the French governor, to remove to Cape Breton. By the 14th Article of the Treaty, they had one year in which they could leave Nova Scotia. But they would not do so. At the same time, they declared to the French of Cape Breton their intention of remaining subjects of France, and that they never would take the oath of allegiance to England under any circumstances.
In 1714 Nicholson was appointed Governor of Nova Scotia, then a recognized Province. No steps appear to have been taken for some years with regard to the Acadians. The oath had been tendered and refused. It was not enforced, and they remained in this unsatisfactory condition for thirty years, when war broke out again in 1743. It was well known that, in the event of war, every Acadian would be an enemy to British rule. Mascarene was then Governor. Descended from Huguenot French, he was a man of rare ability and power. A French force attacked the fort. The attack was to have been made in connection with a French squadron. The latter not arriving, the force retired, having shewn little enterprise. The Acadians did not join the attacking army. There was a body of Indians from the main land, friendly to the English, who were sufficient to counterbalance the Nova Scotian Micmacs, and the determined defence was a guarantee against any pronounced aid from within.
If Nova Scotia was to be retained with a population ever ready to rise at the first gleam of success of the enemies of Great Britain and its religion, Louisbourg, it was evident could not be allowed to continue, a constant omen of danger and loss. Whoever first proposed the attack, and I think it must have been a necessity everywhere understood, it was Shirley, then Governor of Massachusetts, who prepared the organization by which the first taking of Louisbourg was effected, and whose energy and ability led to the expedition of 1745. William Pepperel was appointed its commander. Few such expeditions have been marked by such signal organization and completeness, a striking contrast to the contemptible result of Phipp’s expedition against Quebec in 1690, and Walker’s miserable failure in 1711. Admiral Warren commanded the naval forces. Louisbourg fell. The booty was immense, and to increase it the French flag was kept flying so that vessels from France entered the harbour to become the spoil of the conqueror. A lesson not forgotten when Boston was evacuated by the British in 1776, by the incompetent General Gage and his equally inefficient lieutenants. For the British flag, still flying on the fort, invited the English vessels unhesitatingly to sail in, if combatants, to become prisoners of war and for the stores and merchandise to be sequestrated. It is said that at Louisbourg the share of a seaman before the mast was eight hundred guineas. The efforts on the part of France to revenge this reverse were futile. The design was even to destroy Boston, but the expedition was one of the most impotent on record. Port Royal, Annapolis seemed more easy of attainment. The commandant knowing the weakness of his garrison applied for reinforcements. On the arrival of 420 men, they were sent to Minas. A French fort was then at Chignecto. An attack was at once determined. The English troops took no precaution, as if they were in full security. Led by Acadian guides to the exact locality where the men were quartered, the French arrived at 2 o’clock in the morning on 23rd January, 1747. Snow was falling so the advance was not seen until close on the sentries. The troops, attacked in bed, made a desperate resistance, but they were defeated and capitulated. Such a result would have been impossible without the assistance of the Acadians, who led the troops precisely to the points to be attacked and withheld all knowledge of the expedition.
The disgraceful peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was made in 1748. It is hard to believe that Louisbourg and Cape Breton were given back to the French under the vague clause that no conquest since the commencement of the war should be held. England, therefore, retained Nova Scotia and France Cape Breton, for the tragedy of Louisbourg to be repeated ten years later. We all recollect the toast of Blucher that the diplomatist may not lose by the pen what the soldier has gained by the sword. On this continent we have much to remind us how a few words in a treaty, indistinct and indefinite in their purport, have ignored many years of national effort, courage and determination, at the same time sacrificing remorselessly a multiplicity of private interests.
But the time had come when the quarrel between France and England should be fought out, and both powers felt that this chronic condition of war could no longer continue. In ten years the struggle had ceased. One by one the strongholds of France passed from her hands, and in ten years her flag had ceased to be a type of power on the continent. Both countries accordingly put forth their whole strength in this period: a fact of importance when the question of the treatment of the Acadians is judged. One of the first steps was the foundation of Halifax in 1749 under Cornwallis. It was done with rare organization, with perfect success. Without delay Cornwallis called upon the Acadians to take the oath of allegiance. They declined. For six years was this request avoided with ill-concealed hostility. “In fact,” said Governor Hopson in July, 1753, “what we call an Indian war is no other than a pretence for the French to commit hostilities upon His Majesty’s subjects.” The French, moreover, while recognizing the provisions of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, drew an arbitrary boundary of Nova Scotia: that of Missiquash River, now the boundary of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia; and La JonquiÈre, then Governor of Canada, sent a force under La Corne to erect a chain of forts from the Bay of Fundy to Bay Verte. They constructed Fort BeausÉjour. The Governor of Nova Scotia established Fort Lawrence, near the settlement of BeausÉjour. In 1755 it was resolved to drive the French from their position. As was looked for, the Acadians were there on the French side, but the fort was taken and called Fort Cumberland. It was these very encroachments of the French against Nova Scotia which led to the declaration of war in May of 1756. What followed I need but cursorily mention. Louisbourg again fell in 1758; Quebec in 1759. In 1760 Louisbourg was demolished, for no other port than Halifax was needed. In six months this monument of French power, which it had taken twenty-five years to raise, was levelled to the ground. All of value was transported to Halifax, many of the boucharded stones, even, having been taken there. In this year Montreal capitulated, and De Vaudreuil signed the capitulation which gave the continent to British rule.
All these facts require to be stated when the deportation of the Acadians has to be considered. What else could be done with them in this crisis? From the period when Cornwallis first arrived, in 1749, it was the one question: how to act with a body of men disloyal to the country as it was governed. Too weak to obtain a national standing, but constantly intriguing to injure the authority they lived under but would not recognize; refusing all efforts of conciliation; and, with the guarantee of possessing personal liberty, the free practice of their religion, the enjoyment of their property, they still declined to give the slightest assurance of good behaviour or fidelity. They refused even to furnish supplies to the British garrison, and they ranged themselves actually on the side of the French expeditions. They encouraged the savage to rob, and to plunder, and to murder. They complacently looked on while a vessel was looted under their eyes, and at the same time they were subject to no direct tax and had every privilege a loyal subject could ask. European writers who have alluded to this proceeding have dwelt much on the peaceful lives and the quiet, primitive habits of most of those who suffered. That fact has never been disputed. But poetry has endeavoured to sublimate their virtues to a height they never reached. The Acadians lived in rude plenty, unmarked by the least culture. Their prejudices were only developed among themselves. They were litigious and grasping, and French writers of that date complain that the specie which they received never left their possession, for they held it back for the hour of difficulty, which would have been in no way unwelcome if it ended in driving from their midst those who, with all the exaggeration on the subject, could not be called their oppressors. In September, 1755, a considerable number of the most troublesome were seized, arbitrarily, undoubtedly, and banished from the country. What the number was which were thus scattered and shipped in transports it is hard to state. Many were left behind, as the despatches of subsequent Governors clearly establish. In Grand PrÉ 1,925 were collected. At Annapolis and Cumberland many took to the woods. I cannot form any other opinion than that the number 5,000 is an exaggeration. Among the papers at the Colonial Office or at Halifax the true state of the case may be found. I am quite unable, from what I can learn, to give any estimate, but the evidence leads me to think that probably less than 3,000 were so deported. A melancholy fate of suffering, sorrow and privation; for these poor creatures were sent, homeless and destitute, to other States; but there was no unnecessary hardship and cruelty shown, and their condition was not worse than that of the immigrant who in old days sought our shores.
Undoubtedly it is a chapter of human misery, this enforced exodus, but those who suffered by it could have avoided it by a line of conduct marked by no one act in any way unworthy or humiliating. All that was called for was the acceptance of an unavoidable condition of events, beyond their control, irremediable. They refused to become friends of those who made the offer of peace and conciliation in the hour of danger and difficulty. They showed themselves to be avowed enemies. For upwards of forty years they destroyed the peace of the colony, and had at length to pay the penalty their conduct exacted, which was only with reluctance adopted as a necessity which self-preservation demanded.
It is not until 1714 that Nova Scotia ranks as a British Province. There were many mutations before it took this definite form, and in connection with its history there is the record common to most of the communities of this continent: that of misapprehension and a failure to understand its importance as an American possession.
For the hundred and seventy years which Nova Scotia has continued under British rule its population has steadily increased from various sources, and as a maritime people they have placed themselves in the highest rank. Nova Scotia thus possesses the distinction of being the oldest British Province of the Dominion.
