serve as the chief manager of the lobbying effort for the Doty Treaty, reminding him that the future of the Western Outfit "depend[ed] very much" on its ratification. The new Secretary of War, John Canfield Spencer, was a steadfast supporter of the treaty and came to rely heavily on Sibley for information about relations with Native American tribes in the region. The two senators from Michigan, William Woodbridge and Augustus Seymour Porter, favored the treaty, but the main obstacle to ratification was the opposition of Senator Thomas Benton, who also chaired the Committee on Indian Affairs. Sibley enlisted help from influencers including Pierre Chouteau Jr. and Joseph Nicollet, both of whom were highly respected by Senator Benton, to convince him to change his mind. Nevertheless, Benton remained staunchly opposed, and major modifications to the treaty failed to produce any breakthrough. Sibley left Washington in April, leaving all further lobbying to Robert Stuart, his former manager at American Fur Company in Mackinac, who had by then had become superintendent of Indian affairs for Michigan. On August 29, 1842, the Senate voted against ratification of the Doty treaty with the Dakota by a vote of 26 to 2. With the defeat of the treaty, Sibley's prospects as governor of a new all-Indian territory in the northwest faded completely. Helen Sibley's biographer, Bruce A. Kohn, adds, "The lands of the Dakota would not become a homeland for indigenous peoples where Helen might have lived with her mother." Lobbyist against Winnebago relocation In October 1846, a few Winnebago leaders signed a treaty with the U.S. in which they agreed to move their people north to an unspecified tract of land between the Dakota and Ojibwe. Both Hercules L. Dousman and Henry Mower Rice were active in engineering the agreement. The treaty was contingent on land being secured from either the Dakota or the Ojibwe tribes. Dousman probably expected Sibley to persuade the Dakota to cede land for this purpose, but Sibley was firmly opposed to relocating the Winnebago as a "buffer" between the Dakota and Ojibwe. In December 1846, Sibley went to Washington to lobby against the relocation of the Winnebago, hoping to persuade Michigan Senator Lewis Cass to oppose the treaty. Dousman suspected Sibley's intentions, and the relationship between the two men cooled significantly. Despite Sibley's efforts, Congress ratified the treaty in January 1847. The Dakota remained opposed to any sale of land,