Abstract
This paper examines the way in which American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie challenged the sensibilities of the English-speaking community of nineteenth-century Nova Scotia. Longfellow's evocative description of the cruel and unnecessary expulsion of the Acadians suggested that the province was built on an act of immorality which tainted all subsequent achievements. Nova Scotia historians attempted to counter Longfellow's picture of events by undermining his credibility as an historian: the poet was just that, a poet. Their actions in turn prompted a response from the Acadian community, for whom Evangeline had become a symbol of renewal. With racial passions inflamed, arguments on both sides degenerated into squalid accusations of bias and suppression of evidence. This debate took the reputation of some of Nova Scotia's finest historians down with it.
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