languidly,
for some years longer. But the rangers, now disciplined by the
experience of protracted warfare, and vastly increased in numbers, had
grown to be more than a match for them, so that not many years elapsed
before the conclusion of a peace, which has lasted, with but occasional
interruptions, to the present day.

When danger no longer threatened the settlements, there was no further
call for these irregular troops. The companies were disbanded, and those
who had families, as a large proportion of them had, returned to their
plantations, and resumed the pursuits of industry and peace. Those who
had neither farms nor families, and were unfitted by their stirring life
for regular effort, emigrated further west. Peace settled upon our
borders, never, we hope, to be seriously broken.

But as soon as the pressure of outward danger was withdrawn, and our
communities began to expand, the seeds of new evils were
developed--seeds which had germinated unobserved, while all eyes were
averted, and which now began to shoot up into a stately growth of vices
and crimes. The pioneers soon learned that there was among them a class
of unprincipled and abandoned men, whose only motive in emigrating was
to avoid the restraints, or escape the penalties, of law, and to whom
the freedom of the wilderness was a license to commit every sort of
depredation. The arm of the law was not yet strong enough to punish
them.

The territorial governments were too busy in completing their own
organization, to give much attention to details: where states had been
formed, the statute-book was yet a blank: few officers had been
appointed, and even these were strangers to their duties and charge of
responsibility. Between the military rule of the rangers--for they were
for internal police as well as external defence--and the establishment
of regular civil government, there was a sort of interregnum, during
which there was neither law nor power to enforce it. The bands of
villains who infested the country were the only organizations known;
and, in not a few instances, these bands included the very magistrates
whose duty it was to see that the laws were faithfully executed. Even
when this was not the case, it was a fruitless effort to arrest a
malefactor; indeed, it was very often worse than fruitless, for his
confederates were always ready to testify in his favor: and the usual
consequence of an attempt to punish, was the drawing down upon the hea