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From: <>
Subject: Acadians and the American Revolution.
Date: Tue, 2 Jan 2001 17:23:39 EST


There has been a number of posts on the mailing list concerning the role the
Acadians played in the American Revolution and the Civil War.
While researching my Landry Family and the Acadian history that played a
major part in their lives, I found the following:

Let's start with when it all began.

The embarkation of the Acadians from The Minas area during the Expulsion had
begun on October 8, 1755 and continued until the 28th of October. In order to
hasten the undertaking, the ships were overloaded and to make room for even
more, the Acadians were forced to leave practically all of their goods on
shore, where they were found still lying on the shore by the English settlers
who came six years later.

Gayarre in his "History of Louisiana" - vol 4, pp 120-121 describes the
Acadian expulsion to another expulsion that took place earlier in history.


"Thus like the Messenians, after their noble and protracted struggle for
independence against Sparta, being subjugated, were remorselessly driven away
by their implacable foes from their blood-stained hearths and honored graves
of their ancestors, to wander through Greece in search of pity and
assistance, an of a new home for the houseless exile in the land of
strangers. Thus at a later period, and by a more awful decree Jerusalem was
torn from her foundations, and the Jews sown broad-cast over the face of the
earth, to be beasts of burden, the dogs, the footstools of every nation, or
rather to be the swine of the human species, herding through so many
centuries in the troughs and sewers of society, and battening upon its dregs
and offals.
The miserable outcasts (Acadians) who, by an English decree, had been
made the Messenians and the Jews of America, could never be reconciled to
their fate, and in the words of Williamson, retained an unconquerable dislike
of the English. The race which in Acadia had deprived them of everything, of
all that is dear to the human heart, was the very same race that they met in
Massachusetts, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and all the other English
colonies to which they were transported."


INTERESTING OBSERVATION
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Twenty?one years after the deportation of the Acadians from Acadia, and
the New Englanders' callous, cruel and prejudicial treatment as "Papist"
French traitors and enemies of the Colonists, The Colonists revolted against
the tyranny of England, and one of their first acts was to seek the aid of
France in their war of independence from England. As a matter of fact, the
Massachusetts Colony had to repeal her law of prohibiting French people from
entering her border in order that Count Rochambeau and his French troops
could join Washington and the Colonists in their war against England.


ACADIANS DEFEND THEIR HOME AGAINST THE BRITISH IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION:


On February 6, 1778, as the Revolutionary war raged on in the New England
colonies, France signed an alliance with the United States and enters the war
against the English. Lafayette declares that the plight of the Acadians
helped convince him to join Washington in the Revolutionary War against
England.
And eight to ten years after our Acadian ancestors had established
themselves in Louisiana, and were continuing their struggle for dignity and
freedom, they are called to defend their homes against the British in the
American Revolution.

On June 1779, Spain declared war on Great Britain and ordered Spanish
Colonial Governor of Louisiana, Bernado de Galvez to organize an expedition
and capture the forts at Mobile and Pensacola and to attack and clear the
English from the banks of the Mississippi.
In organizing the expedition, Galvez calls on the Militia from the Acadian
Coast, the Attakapas and Opelousas posts and Pointe Coupée to make up a total
force of 14,000. (Gayarre - History of Louisiana vol. III p. 125-126)
Galvez and his army of Louisiana French volunteers (including many Acadians)
capture the British strongholds of Fort Bute at Bayou Manchac, across from
the Acadian settlement at St. Gabriel. And on September 21, they attack and
capture Baton Rouge and then Natchez. The Opelousas Militia was in the
detachment that captured Natchez. (Citizen Soldiers: Southwest Louisianans
Defend the Nation By. Milke Jones - Lake Charles Press)
An account of the action of the Acadians is written by Gayarre in his
History of Louisiana vol. III p. 131:

"The Louisiana Militia behaved with extraordinary disipline and fortitude. It
was found difficult to restrain their ardor, particularly that of the
Acadians, who, at the sight of the British troops, being in flamed with rage
at their recollection of their old injuries, were eager to rush on those who
had desecrated their hearths, burned their paternal roofs to the ground, and
driven them into exile like miserable outlaws and outcasts".

Then Let's not forget the Acadians' participation in the war of 1812 (Battle
of new Orleans in 1815) when the British are soundly defeated at New Orleans.

Don Landry

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