ity for British
impressments ceased to exist; and, since France never again came into
hostility with England, none of these grievances were revived. But in
a broader way the year 1815 and the decades following marked the end of
national hostility, for the fundamental antagonisms which, since 1763,
had repeatedly brought about irritation and conflict, began after this
time to die out.

In the first place, the defeat of the Indians in the war allowed the
people of the United States to advance unchecked into the north-west
and south-west, filling the old Indian lands, and rendering any
continuation of the restrictive diplomacy on the part of England for
the benefit of Canadian fur traders patently futile. The war was no
sooner ended than roads, trails, and rivers swarmed {245} with
westward-moving emigrants; and within a year the territory of Indiana,
which the British commissioners at Ghent had wished to establish as an
Indian reserve, was framing a State constitution. In 1819 Illinois
followed.

The revulsion of temper was illustrated in the commencement at this
time of the organized movement for settled international peace, which
may be dated from the establishment of the New York and Massachusetts
Peace Societies in 1815, and the London Peace Society in the following
year. But its most signal expression came in the remarkable agreement
by which the Canadian-American frontier has been, for nearly a century,
unfortified, and yet completely peaceful. On November 16, 1815, State
Secretary Monroe instructed Adams to propose to the British Government
that--as, "if each party augments its force there with a view to
obtaining the ascendancy over the other, vast expense will be incurred
and the danger of collision augmented in like degree"--such military
preparations should be suspended on both sides. The smaller the number
of the armed forces agreed upon, he said, the better; "or to abstain
altogether from an armed force beyond that used for the revenue."
After some suspicious hesitation, Lord Castlereagh accepted this novel
proposal; and it was {246} given effect to by an exchange of notes,
signed by Mr. Bagot, British Minister at Washington, and Mr. Rush
(Monroe's successor) on April 28 and 29, 1817, approved by the Senate a
year later, and proclaimed by the President on April 28, 1818. By
Rush-Bagot Agreement, the naval force of each Government was limited to
one small gun-boat of each power on Champlain and Ontari