In 1760, Taylor had followed the British army to Oswego, and there acquired a knowledge of the Indian language. He knew of the alliance between the British and Indians in 1776, and had witnessed the horrible massacres growing out of these treaty relations. The most tragic stories of Indian atrocities begin with the payment of bounties by the British for the scalps of women and children, and for the capture of men and boys who would make soldiers. Often guided by Tories, the fierce Mohawks sought out the solitary farmhouse, scalped the helpless, and, with a few prisoners, started back on their lonely return 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.