Note 1008 — Chapter VII · (continued 2)

He does intimate, in some later published letters, that a taking of hostages might perhaps have sufficed. The controversy of which these letters are a part began with the anticipatory publication by Mr. Parkman of his chapter on the Acadians in Harper’s Monthly, Nov., 1884. This drew out from Mr. Philip H. Smith a paper in the Nation, Oct. 30, 1884, in which incautiously, and depending on Haliburton, he charged the English with rifling their archives to rid them of the proofs of the atrocity of the deportation. Parkman exposed his error, in the same journal, Nov. 6, 1884, and also in the N. Y. Evening Post, Jan. 20, 1885, and Boston Evening Transcript, Jan. 22. Smith transferred his challenge to the Boston Evening Transcript of Feb. 11, 1885, making a good point in quoting the Philadelphia Memorial of the Acadians, which affirmed that papers which could show their innocence had been taken from them; but he unwisely claimed for the exiles the literary skill of that memorial, which seems to have been prepared by some of their Huguenot friends in Philadelphia. A few more letters appeared in the same journal from Parkman, Akins, and Smith, but added nothing but iteration to the question. (Cf. Transcript, Feb. 25, by Parkman; March 19 by Akins; March 23, April 3, by Smith.)