"Many of your people who visit here, and come to the island," continued Pierre, "send me books and histories that are printed from time to time dealing with the question of the deportation."
"Yes," said Winslow, "I have just read a book by one, a well-known Canadian writer, who most unfairly and slightingly deals with your people, and ignores utterly the latest accepted statements of history."
"Our families bear witness to the hatred of the New England people to the unfortunate and homeless race when they were thrown helpless among them. Many tales of cruelty are told of those days."
"It is a sad story," said Winslow. "My own kinsman, I am sorry to say, when he wrote his journal, was filled with apprehension that your Grand-Pré people were likely to rise, unarmed as they were, against his soldiers, and he dealt with them in a way only excused by the stern demands of discipline and a soldier's duty. He had to restrain his men from acts of brutality and oppression they were too apt to practise. It is too evident that to have been an Acadian was to be liable to almost any outrage at the hands of the rude soldiery. But the otherwise worthy colonel was somewhat vain, and made history for himself. He made the statement in his journal, and permits the belief, that all the Acadians were captured and removed. Among his private papers are statements to the contrary, however, and he regretted his connection with the deportation to his dying day. He was under orders. He fulfilled his most unpleasant duty, but one may read his protest upon every page of his journal. His pride was that of a soldier in the strict performance of his duty."
"There was no desire on the part of Governor Lawrence," continued Winslow, warmly, "to have the people treated kindly. They were of no further use in Nova Scotia. Indeed, they were on land that he desired to get from them for other people, and they had large stocks of cattle that would become confiscate when they were removed. Their return to their homes was contrary to his desire and against the success of his scheme. He endeavored in every way to prevent this. He made little attempt to arrange that they should find homes in New England, and, indeed, he found that they would not be permitted to land in many places. Yet he worked out his devilish plan to get rid of them at any cost, and he threw them upon the charity of the other provinces. If many died on the way to our country, packed as they were like animals in the holds of the small vessels, and without help or hope when they were landed at various points down our coast, and if disease thinned their ranks and hunger and fatigue killed, these were agents he was glad to have the aid of to lessen the possibility of any great number ever returning to the lands that they had been taken from. He was a most brutal man, with strength of purpose to accomplish anything and to bend others to his desires."