subject for information. He was answered by who again repeated what he heard say on the subject.
Councillor was in favor of writing letters to every governor in the , and also every U.S. Senator. We might by this means accomplish some good, and we might incur some evil. But he feels to lay before them every particular of our sufferings and wrongs that there may be no excuse for them. For his part if he could write he would be at it night and day. If it were not for our own writings the world would know nothing of what abuses we have suffered. Had it not been for such a course as this the sufferings of the “neutral French in Nova Scotia” would have been buried in oblivion. He wished he could write, he would send letters to every responsible man in the whether he [p. [70]]
During the mid-eighteenth century British soldiers expelled thousands of Catholic French settlers, known as Acadians, from Nova Scotia. A two-volume history of this event, titled The Neutral French; or, The Exiles of Nova Scotia, had recently been published in Rhode Island, describing how the “the injuries they sustained were inflicted in cold blood—in open and shameless violation of treaties, most solemnly guaranteeing to them protection, their liberties as freemen, the free exercise of their religion, and the protection of their property.” (Williams, Neutral French, v; see also Hodson, Acadian Diaspora, chap. 1; and Plank, Unsettled Conquest, chap. 7.)
Williams, Catherine Read. The Neutral French; or, The Exiles of Nova Scotia. 2nd ed. 2 vols. Providence, RI: By the author, 1841.
Hodson, Christopher. The Acadian Diaspora: An Eighteenth-Century History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Plank, Geoffrey. An Unsettled Conquest: The British Campaign against the Peoples of Acadia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001.