"We are now upon a great and noble Scheme of sending the neutral French out of this Province, who have always been our secret Enemies and have encouraged the Savages to cut our throats... By all Accounts, that part of the Country they possess, is as good Land as any in the World."

Pennsylvania Gazette, September 4, 1755

The years prior to the Seven Years' War were a golden age for the people of Acadia. While under the control of Britain since the end of the War of 1812, they still prospered in the decades prior to 1755. With their dikes and channels reclaiming salt marshes from the ocean tides, they created thousands of new acres of fertile farmland around the Minas Basin. Greater prosperity came through the rich fisheries and fur trade, and the British encouraged trade with the New England colonies.

The Acadians had long intermarried with the Mi'kmaq people, and became the first people to have a North American name and a political and cultural identity distinct from Europe. There was peace and stability. Families grew, the population increased, the economy thrived, and a distinctive sense of community and culture emerged.

The Acadians faced one major problem - they were a defeated people. Though their fierce sense of independence made one think otherwise, they were a conquered race. The Acadians had lived as neutrals under a succession of English and French regimes as the two European superpowers jockeyed for supremacy in North America. But the British were always concerned about the fragile neutrality of the Acadians.

Earlier attempts to extract an oath of allegiance from the Acadians had met with mixed success. However, when the French and Indian War flared up in 1754, the Acadian problem took on greater urgency for Charles Lawrence, the British Governor of Nova Scotia. He was determined to tighten the screws on the Acadians, and force them to take an oath of loyalty to the British Crown.

The Acadians were loathe to do this, since they had lived peacefully for years without swearing an allegiance that would have put them at odds with the French, were they to regain control of the region.

In fact, Lawrence and his Massachusetts allies were looking for a pretext to get rid of the Acadians entirely, and and free up their fertile lands for American colonists - an action that the Pennsylvania Gazette saw as "a great and noble scheme" to protect British interests in North America.

On June 16, 1755, Robert Monckton easily captured French Fort Beauséjour, on the Isthmus of Chignecto. He discovered that the fort held 300 armed Acadians. This discovery left Lawrence a free hand. On July 3, he and his Council met in Halifax to consider a petition from the Minas Basin Acadians, who objected to the confiscation of their boats and arms by Captain Alexander Murray of Fort Edward, near Pisiquid. Lawrence pressed the Acadians to take an unqualified oath, which they refused to do. The delegates were imprisoned and new ones summoned from Minas and Annapolis Royal.

On July 25, 1755, Lawrence met with the new Acadian leaders, and demanded that they swear an unconditional oath. He warned them that their refusal could bring dire consequences. Once again, the Acadians refused. They were worried that they might be forced to take up arms against their French brethren in Louisbourg and the Gulf, still under French control, and against their Micmac allies. Even as he negotiated with the Acadians, Lawrence was sending out agents to take inventories of their best stallions, cattle, and properties.