unity saw months or years of toilsome service; many
failed to return to their homes, or else returned crippled, weakened,
or stricken with fatal diseases; crops were neglected, or had only
such care as could be given them by old men and boys; trade languished;
Indian depredations wrought further ruin to life and property and kept
the people continually in alarm. Until 1814, reports of successive
defeats, in both the East and West, had a depressing influence and led
to solemn speculation as to whether the back country stood in danger of
falling again under British dominion.

It was, therefore, with a very great sense of relief that the West heard
in 1815 that peace had been concluded. At a stroke both the British
menace and the danger from the Indians were removed; for although
the redskins were still numerous and discontented, their spirit of
resistance was broken. Never again was there a general uprising against
the whites; never again did the Northwest witness even a local Indian
war of any degree of seriousness save Black Hawk's Rebellion in 1832.
Tecumseh manifestly realized before he made his last stand at the Thames
that the cause of his people was forever lost.

For several years the unsettled conditions on the frontiers had
restrained any general migration thither from the seaboard States. But
within a few months after the proclamation of peace the tide again set
westward, and with an unprecedented force. Men who had suffered in their
property or other interests from the war turned to Indiana and Illinois
as a promising field in which to rebuild their fortunes. The rapid
extinction of Indian titles opened up vast tracts of desirable land, and
the conditions of purchase were made so easy that any man of ordinary
industry and integrity could meet them. Speculators and promoters
industriously advertised the advantages of localities in which they
were interested, boomed new towns, and even loaned money to ambitious
emigrants.

The upshot was that the population of Indiana grew from twenty-five
thousand in 1810 to seventy thousand in 1816, when the State was
admitted to the Union. Illinois filled with equal rapidity, and attained
statehood only two years later. Then the tide swept irresistibly
westward across the Mississippi into the great regions which had
been acquired from France in 1803. As late as 1819, the Territory of
Missouri, comprising all of the Louisiana Purchase north of the present
State of Louisiana