Conceived in Liberty Volume 2 - Ludwig von Mises Institute

tunates to all parts of the hemisphere. Shortly after the expulsion began,
Lawrence received the king's order not to molest the Acadians. Reasoning
as the typical bureaucrat, Lawrence rationalized his disobeying the king's
order: once begun, even if in error, the expulsion process could not be reversed!
By the end of the year, over six thousand Acadians were deported
and their property confiscated or destroyed. A remnant remained hiding
in the woods. Some of the ships were decimated by smallpox. The Acadians
were shipped to Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland,
Pennsylvania, and Connecticut, with Lawrence instructing their governors
to dispose of the refugees in such a way as to prevent them from
remaining together as a people. In some of the colonies, the younger Acadians
were conscripted as indentured servants for a few months.
Typical of the cold treatment of the Acadians in the American colonies
was that of South Carolina, where about a third of the Acadians were sent.
They were immediately thrown into custody. Soon after, they were compulsorily
dispersed, quotas being sent to all of the parishes of the colony.
Finally they were given permission to go where they wished, the bulk of
them deciding to migrate to French Canada.
Pennsylvania's treatment of the hapless refugees was particularly illnatured,
and was capped by bitter attacks by Pennsylvania's Governor
Robert Hunter Morris and New Jersey's Governor Jonathan Belcher (father
of Nova Scotia's pliable chief justice). Morris and Belcher raised the alarm
about an imminent, giant subversive Roman Catholic conspiracy in the
colonies' midst—an unholy potential alliance of Acadians, Irish, and German
Catholics. All these groups were attacked by the governors as "rebels and
traitors"; besides, the colonies had "too many strangers" already. Only the
generosity of the Quakers made the lot of the coercively dispersed Acadians
at all tolerable.
New York led in seizing Acadian youth and forcing them into the
bondage of indentured service. All the men were placed under arrest and
dispersed by quota among the various districts in the province. Massachusetts
received over one thousand Acadians, many filtering down through
the wilderness from Nova Scotia. A tract of land was set aside for Acadians
in Worcester, but when many began to move to Boston, the city's selectmen
expelled them to the outlying districts. Virginia expelled all of its
Acadians, most of whom moved to French Louisiana.
Some Acadians who had left voluntarily for New Brunswick, made the
mistake of asking for readmission to Acadia. Granted the permission, they
were promptly placed in vassalage in Nova Scotia or deported to France
and England. Also unfortunate were the fifteen hundred who ended up
in supposedly hospitable Quebec. There, however, they were treated cruelly,
robbed of their remaining possessions by the French commander, and allowed
virtually no food. Many died from smallpox. After the British con-
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