SAVANNAHS, grassy plains by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

This brief excerpt is an epigraph that Longfellow included in *Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie* (1847). It comes from an actual petition written by Acadian exiles who found themselves in Pennsylvania. The text conveys, in straightforward bureaucratic terms, that over half of this displaced community has succumbed to hardship and illness. The impact of this tragedy is intensified by the starkness of the language—there's no embellishment or poetry in the statement, and that’s precisely the intention.

Flat, documentary, and restrained—this is what makes it so devastating. There’s no flashy rhetoric or appeals for sympathy. The writers just lay out the facts of what happened, allowing the understated tone to carry the emotional weight. It’s like stumbling upon a coroner's report hidden within the pages of a history book.

The Grand Dérangement of 1755–1764 refers to the forced removal of French-speaking Acadian settlers from Nova Scotia and nearby areas by British colonial authorities during the Seven Years' War. Thousands were put on ships and sent to British colonies along the Atlantic coast, where they often faced hostility, poverty, and a lack of support. Longfellow drew on this historical tragedy for his narrative poem *Evangeline* (1847), using documentary quotes at the beginning of sections to ground the fiction in real events. The petition included here was an actual document submitted by Acadian survivors in Pennsylvania, compelling readers to confront the human toll of colonial policies before diving into the poem's narrative.