turn journey to Canada, hundreds of miles through the forest, simply
to receive the promised reward of a few Spanish dollars from their
British allies. When DeWitt Clinton, therefore, charged the
Federalists with loving the English more than their own country, John
Taylor won the Senate by recalling Indian atrocities set on foot by
British officers, and often carried out with the assistance of British
Tories, now members of the Federalist party. Daniel Parrish, a senator
from the eastern district, having more courage than eloquence, came to
Platt's support with the most exact and honest skill, repelling the
insinuations of Clinton, and indignantly denying Taylor's tactful
argument. But when Taylor, pointing his long, well-formed index finger
at the eastern senator, expressed surprise and grief to hear one plead
the English cause whose father had been foully murdered by an Indian
while under British pay and British orders, Parrish lost his temper
and Platt his cause.

It was a sad day for Platt. So successfully did Taylor revive the old
Revolutionary hatred of the British that the Herkimer statesman's
arraignment of Governor Tompkins, offered as a substitute for DeWitt
Clinton's friendly answer, was rejected by a vote of twenty-three to
six. Coming as it did on the eve of the gubernatorial election it was
too late to retrieve his lost position. Moreover, the repeal of the
embargo had materially weakened the Federalists and correspondingly
strengthened the Republicans, since the commerce of New York quickly
revived, giving employment to the idle and bread to the hungry. The
conviction deepened, also, that a Republican administration was
sincerely impartial in sentiment between the two belligerents, and
that the present foreign policy, ineffective as it might be, fitted
the emergency better than a bolder one. Added to this, was the keen
desire of the Republicans to recover the offices which had been lost
through the apostacy of Robert Williams; and although the Federalists
struggled like drowning men to hold their ill-gotten gains, the strong
anti-British sentiment, backed by a determination to approve the
policy of Madison, swept the State, re-electing Governor Tompkins by
six thousand majority[156] and putting both branches of the
Legislature in control of the Republicans. Surely, Jonas Platt was
never to be governor.

[Footnote 156: Daniel D. Tompkins, 43,094; Jonas Platt,
36,484.--_Civil List, State of New York_ (188