A few of the coolest and most intelligent men approved it, and rugged old Humphrey Marshall, the Federalist Senator from Kentucky, voted for its ratification; but the general feeling against it was intense.

Even Blount, who by this time was pretty well disgusted with the way he had been treated by the Central Government, denounced it, and expressed his belief that Washington would have hard work to explain his conduct in procuring its ratification.

[Footnote: Blount MSS., Blount to Smith, Aug.

24, 1795.] Folly of the Westerners.
Yet the Westerners were the very people who had no cause whatever to complain of the treaty.

It was not an entirely satisfactory treaty; perhaps a man like Hamilton might have procured rather better terms; but, taken as a whole, it worked an immense improvement upon the condition of things already existing.