David Crockett was born in the wilds of Tennessee, August 17, 1786. He
toughened rapidly, like a bear’s cub, but he showed in addition to the
usual woodsman’s instincts the unusual qualities of great tenderness
of feeling and generosity, with a remarkable gift of wit and love of
fun. The incredible stories of his hardships at the age of twelve and
thereafter we have not room to recount. In the best sense he was a
tough boy. The closing scene of his home life—if a hut presided over
by a drunken father, and a mother who left no impression on the boy’s
character that showed itself in after years can be by any courtesy
called a home—was a dissolving view of a ragged, bare-footed urchin of
fourteen chased through the brush by a father with a large goad and a
large load of liquor. Thus David Crockett set out upon the world for
himself.
With Crockett’s story as a bear-hunter, nomadic woodsman, soldier and
Indian-fighter, exciting and marvelous as are these incidents of the
first thirty years of his life, we shall not much concern ourselves.
But I do wonder that his life-like, quaint narrative of these has not
become standard juvenile literature, along with Robinson Crusoe and
Mayne Reid’s stories of adventure. Through all these exciting though
isolated years, the young woodsman picked up a good deal of practical
knowledge, not one scrap of which he ever forgot; and withal was
developing a strange quality of unpretentious self-esteem. “The idea
seemed never to have entered his mind that there was any one superior
to David Crockett, or any one so humble that Crockett was entitled to
look down upon him with condescension. He was a genuine democrat, and
all were in his view equal. And this was not the result of thought, of
any political or moral principle. It was a part of his nature, like his
stature or complexion. This is one of the rarest qualities to be found
in any man.”[H]
He also was developing oratorical powers. He acquired unbounded
popularity at musters and frolics, in camp and in the chase by his
fun-making qualities, his homely, kindly, keen wit. His retentive
memory was an inexhaustible store-house of anecdote, and he always had
an apt illustration for any point he wanted to make. He began to taste
the sweet consciousness of power over his fellows, and to easily fall
into the position of leadership, for which nature designed him.
His first official position came to him at about the age of thirty.
There were a good many outlaws in the region where he at that time had
his cabin and claim, and society began to cohere for self-protection.
The settlers convened and appointed Crockett and others to be justices
of the peace, and a corps of stalwart young men to be constables.
These justices were really provost-marshals in power. There were no
statute laws nor courts; but there was authority enough, and Crockett
says everybody made laws according to his own notions of right. For
shooting and appropriating a hog running at large, for instance, the
sentence was to strip the thief, tie him to a tree and give him a
flogging, burn down his cabin and drive him out of the country. Soon
after, the new territory was organized into counties and Crockett was
regularly commissioned a justice by the legislature. His account of his
administration is interesting:
“I was made a squire according to law; though now the
honor rested on me more heavily than before. For, at
first, whenever I told my constable, says I, ‘catch
that fellow and bring him up for trial!’ away he
went, and the fellow must come, dead or alive. For we
considered this a good warrant, though it was only in
_verbal writing_. But after I was appointed by the
Assembly, they told me my warrants must be in _real_
writing and signed; and that I must keep a book and
write my proceedings in it. This was a hard business
on me, for I could just barely write my own name. But
to do this, and write the warrants too, was at least
a huckleberry over my persimmon. I had a pretty well
informed constable however, and I told him when he
should happen to be out anywhere and see that a warrant
was necessary and would have a good effect, he needn’t
take the trouble to come all the way to me to get one,
but he could just fill one out, and then on the trial
I could correct the whole business if he had committed
any error. In this way I got on pretty well, till by
care and attention I improved my handwriting in such a
manner as to be able to prepare my warrants and keep my
record books without much difficulty. My judgments were
never appealed from: and if they had been they would
have stuck like wax, as I gave my decisions on the
principles of common justice and honesty between man
and man, and relied on natural born sense, and not on
law learning, to guide me; for I had never read a page
in a law-book in all my life.”
Crockett made his first stump speech when he was about thirty-four
years old. A militia regiment was to be organized, and a Captain
Mathews, after promising Crockett the majority of the regiment if he
would support him for its colonel, turned against Crockett in favor of
his own son. At a great muster prepared by Mathews, he made a stump
speech in his own and his son’s favor. Crockett, entirely unabashed,
mounted the stump as soon as Mathews finished, and on the captain’s own
grounds proceeded to expose his duplicity and argue the total unfitness
of both him and his son for the command. The speech was fluent,
witty, full of anecdote, and carried the rude audience by storm. It
effectually beat both father and son. The fame of this maiden effort
traveled fast in a community where oratory was the great, if not the
only engine of popular control, and the result was that a committee
soon waited on Crockett and asked him to stand for the legislature then
about to be elected (1821). Some of his first electioneering adventures
illustrate the frankness and tact so queerly combined in him, and also
show how he got his education in politics. Hickman county wanted to
change its county seat. He says: “Here they told me that they wanted to
move their town nearer to the center of the county, and I must come out
in favor of it. I did not know what this meant, or how the town was to
be moved, and so I kept dark, going on the same identical plan that I
now find is called _non-committal_.”
On one occasion the candidates for governor of the State, Congress,
and several for legislature, some of them able stump-speakers, were
announced. As he listened, a sense of inferiority for the first time,
probably, penetrated him; he drank in all they said, and remembered it.
He says:
“The thought of having to make a speech made my knees
feel mighty weak, and set my heart to fluttering almost
as bad as my first love scrape with the Quaker’s niece.
But as luck would have it, these big candidates spoke
nearly all day, and when they quit the people were worn
out with fatigue, which afforded me a good apology for
not discussing the government. But I listened mighty
close to them, and was learning pretty fast about
political matters. When they were all done I got up and
told some laughable story and quit.”
He was elected, and in the legislature proved a good story-teller, a
formidable antagonist in repartee, and above all a good listener. He
says the first thing that he took pains to learn was the meaning of the
words “judiciary” and “government,” as up to that time he had “never
heard that there was any such thing in all nature as a judiciary.” The
halls of the Tennessee legislature were again brightened in 1823-24 by
the wit and good sense of “the gentleman from the cane” as an opponent
derisively dubbed him, very much to his subsequent regret.
Crockett was now so well known that he was put forward for Congress.
His rapid advancement staggered even his self-sufficiency, and
he objected, saying he “knowed nothing about Congress matters.”
Fortunately, perhaps, he was given time to learn more, for he was
beaten at the polls this time. It was claimed by his supporters the
result was obtained by fraud, and as the adverse majority was small, he
was urged to contest the election; but he declined, saying he did not
care enough for office to take it unless the clearly expressed will of
the people called him thereto. From hunting for men he turned with zest
to hunting for bears; his endurance, hardihood and success, and the
never-failing benevolence with which he divided the fruits of the hunt
with poor settlers, or lent a helping hand in many other ways, made him
more political capital than the best stump speeches could have done. He
killed one hundred and five bears one season. Two years later (1827)
he ran for Congress again and was triumphantly elected over two strong
opponents. Thus the bear-hunting, Indian-fighting “gentleman from the
cane,” barely able to write his name, so poor that he had to borrow
money to pay his traveling expenses to Washington, became a law-maker
of a great nation by sheer force of native talent and goodness of heart.
His fame preceded him to Washington. His prowess in arms, his dexterity
in politics, and his quaint wit had been in the papers; all his sayings
had been, as is the style of American journalism, exaggerated and
embellished and distorted, until the general impression of him was that
of a coarse, outlandish, swaggering yahoo. His appearance in Washington
dispersed these illusions thence, but the misrepresentations did not
cease in the prints. As in the case of Lincoln, every profane and
vulgar thing that cheap wit could invent was attributed to Crockett,
and received as his. Many of these false impressions survive to this
day; it is therefore proper here to give a picture of the man as he
was seen at home. It is thus reported by an intelligent gentleman who
visited his cabin just after his election. The visitor penetrated to
Crockett’s cabin eight miles through unbroken wilderness by a path
blazed on the trees. He says:
Two men were seated on stools at the door, both in
their shirt-sleeves, engaged in cleaning their rifles.
As the stranger rode up, one of the men came forward
to meet him. He was dressed in very plain homespun
attire, with a black fur cap upon his head. He was
a finely proportioned man, about six feet high,
apparently forty-five years of age, and of very frank,
pleasing, open countenance. He held his rifle in his
hand, and from his right shoulder hung a bag made of
raccoon-skin, to which there was a sheath attached
containing a large butcher-knife.
“This is Colonel Crockett’s residence, I presume,” said
the stranger.
“Yes,” was the reply, with a smile as of welcome.
“Have I the pleasure of seeing that gentleman before
me?” the stranger added.
“If it be a pleasure,” was the courteous reply, “you
have, sir.”
“Well, Colonel,” responded the stranger, “I have ridden
much out of my way to spend a day or two with you, and
take a hunt.”
“Get down, sir,” said the Colonel, cordially. “I am
delighted to see you. I like to see strangers. And the
only care I have is that I can not accommodate them as
well as I could wish. I have no corn, but my little boy
will take your horse over to my son-in-law’s. He is a
good fellow, and will take care of him.”
Leading the stranger into his cabin, Crockett very
courteously introduced him to his brother, his wife,
and his daughters. He then added:
“You see we are mighty rough here. I am afraid you will
think it hard times. But we have to do the best we can.
I started mighty poor, and have been rooting ’long ever
since. But I hate apologies. What I live upon always, I
think a friend can for a day or two. I have but little,
but that little is as free as the water that runs. So
make yourself at home.”
He seemed to have a great horror of binding himself to any man or
party. “I will pledge myself to no administration,” he said. “When
the will of my constituents is known, that will be my law; when it
is unknown my own judgment shall be my guide.” So clear and lofty an
idea had this unlearned man formed of the duties of a representative!
Well for the country if as high a standard of political duty even now
prevailed among the best and wisest legislators!
Nothing is recorded of his first term in Congress except that he
“brought down the house” every time he spoke, and once so discomfited a
colleague that a duel was talked of; upon which Crockett gave out that
if any one challenged him he should select as their weapons _bows and
arrows_.
He was re-elected in 1829. This was the Jackson tidal wave—the
inauguration of that craze of hero-worship and spoils-grabbing which
entailed its curse upon our politics, even to this day. During this
term came the turning point in Crockett’s career and a triumphant test
of the strength of his character. At first he supported Jackson’s
administration and acted with the party. But when that “constitutional
democrat” blossomed out into an unconstitutional autocrat, one man of
his party was found manly enough to act upon his own convictions. One
of these unconstitutional measures was an act to vote half a million
of dollars for disbursements made without color of law, and Crockett
opposed it. The result is best told in his own words:
“Soon after the commencement of this second term, I
saw, or thought I did, that it was expected of me that
I would bow to the name of Andrew Jackson, and follow
him in all his motions, and mindings, and turnings,
even at the expense of my conscience and judgment.
Such a thing was new to me, and a total stranger to
my principles. I know’d well enough, though, that if
I didn’t ‘hurrah’ for his name, the hue and cry was
to be raised against me, and I was to be sacrificed,
if possible. His famous, or rather I should say his
_infamous_ Indian bill was brought forward, and I
opposed it from the purest motives in the world.
Several of my colleagues got around me, and told me how
well they loved me, and that I was ruining myself. They
said this was a favorite measure of the President, and
I ought to go for it. I told them I believed it was a
wicked, unjust measure, and that I should go against
it, let the cost to myself be what it might; that I
was willing to go with General Jackson in everything I
believed was honest and right; but, further than this,
I wouldn’t go for him or any other man in the whole
creation.
“I had been elected by a majority of three thousand
five hundred and eighty-five votes, and I believed they
were honest men, and wouldn’t want me to vote for any
unjust notion, to please Jackson or any one else; at
any rate, I was of age, and determined to trust them.
I voted against this Indian bill, and my conscience
yet tells me that I gave a good, honest vote, and one
that I believe will not make me ashamed in the day
of judgment. I served out my term, and though many
amusing things happened, I am not disposed to swell my
narrative by inserting them.
“When it closed, and I returned home, I found the storm
had raised against me sure enough; and it was echoed
from side to side, and from end to end of my district,
that I had turned against Jackson. This was considered
the unpardonable sin. I was hunted down like a wild
varment, and in this hunt every little newspaper in
the district, and every little pin-hook lawyer was
engaged. Indeed, they were ready to print anything
and everything that the ingenuity of man could invent
against me.”
It proved as he had anticipated; he failed of re-election, but only by
a majority of seventy votes. Two years of bear-hunting followed, during
which Crockett thirsted for the nobler pursuit of ambition of which he
had had a taste. Some of his predictions as to Jackson’s course had
been verified, and many things conspired to open his constituents’
eyes to the high character of their representative’s course. In the
canvass of 1833 he was elected the third time, winning one of the
most remarkable political triumphs ever known in this country. He had
against him all the education, talent and wealth of his district; the
administration made it a test vote, and all that promises of reward,
threats of punishment, political and social, unlimited money, the
influence of the national banks, and every appliance that the most
tyrannical disposition ever dominant in our affairs could bring to bear
were used. Men of genius, eloquence, influence and fortune rode the
district; whiskey was free as water. The entire press opposed Crockett
with the ingenuity and abandon which only “patronage” can inspire.
More than all this the common people of the district, with whom lay
Crockett’s influence, if he had any, worshiped “Old Hickory,” under
whom many of them had fought. Against these odds the impoverished,
uneducated hunter, with no aid but his natural gifts and a clean
record, canvassed the district of seventeen counties and 100,000
inhabitants and won. This remarkable victory in Jackson’s own State,
when his popularity was at its height, gave Crockett a new and better
title to respect than any he had before presented; and it increased
the mystery hanging about this strange, uncultured genius. The world
abandoned its preconceived notions of the back-woodsman when it saw his
power; but it was at loss to conceive a true idea of him.
During this session of Congress (1833-34) Crockett wrote his
autobiography. As might be expected, it is a very unique work. Its
style is simple and vigorous; the language is Shaksperian in its
monosyllables and short sentences, but the _ensemble_ is graphic, and
as the events narrated are of the most extraordinary kind, it makes
very exciting reading. On the title page appears his famous motto:
“I leave these words for others when I’m dead;
Be always sure you’re right, then GO AHEAD!”
Crockett submitted the manuscript of this work to a critic for
revision; but he declared afterward that the reviser had not improved
the work—probably because he toned down its vigorous language. Such
expressions as “my son and me went,” occur, and spelling like this:
“hawl,” “tuff,” “scaffled,” “clomb” (for climbed); “flower” (for
flour). But he positively objected to some of the orthographical
corrections, as he said “such spelling was contrary to nature.” He
brought the narrative of his life up to the date, and concluded it as
follows:
“I am now here in Congress, this 28th day of January,
in the year of our Lord 1834; and, what is more
agreeable to my feelings, as a free man. I am at
liberty to vote as my conscience and judgment dictate
to be right, without the yoke of any party on me or the
driver at my heels with the whip in hand commanding
me to ‘gee-wo-haw!’ just at his pleasure. Look at my
arms: you will find no party handcuffs on them! Look at
my neck: you will not find there any collar with the
engraving,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. MY DOG.—ANDREW JACKSON. .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
But you will find me standing up to my rack as the
people’s faithful representative, and the public’s most
obedient, very humble servant,
“DAVID CROCKETT.”
What would not senators and representatives of to-day give for the same
independence? What health and manliness it would impart to public life,
if every legislator were thus free of handcuffs and collars!
In the spring of 1834, Crockett made his famous “starring tour” through
the East. From Philadelphia to Portland, and back to Washington, it
was a continuous ovation. Crockett and the populace were mutually
astonished; he at his receptions, and they at the actions, appearance,
and utterances of the man who had been represented to them by his
political opponents as a buffoon and semi-savage. He was more than
all impressed with the developments of wealth and enterprise in the
North; he frankly confessed the prejudices he had formed against the
Yankees, and praised their thrift and principles. He spoke well and
appropriately on each occasion, though—strange change in him!—with
evident confusion at the lionizing. He wrote of the ovation he received
on landing in Philadelphia:
“It struck me strangely to hear a strange people
huzzaing for me; it took me so uncommon unexpected,
as I had no idea of attracting attention. The folks
came crowding around me, saying, ‘Give me the hand
of an honest man.’ I thought I had rather be in the
wilderness with my gun and dogs, than to be attracting
all that fuss.”
In a happy little speech here, from the hotel balcony, he said:
“I am almost induced to believe this flattery—perhaps
a burlesque. This is new to me, yet I see nothing but
friendship in your faces.”
At a grand banquet in New York City, Crockett having been toasted as
“The undeviating supporter of the constitution and the laws,” made
this neat and characteristic hit, as he reports it:
“I made a short speech, and concluded with the story of
the red cow, which was, that as long as General Jackson
went straight, I followed him; but when he began to go
this way, and that way, and every way, I wouldn’t go
after him; like the boy whose master ordered him to
plough across the field to the red cow. Well, he began
to plough, and she began to walk; and he ploughed all
forenoon after her. So when the master came, he swore
at him for going so crooked. ‘Why, sir,’ said the boy,
‘you told me to plough to the red cow, and I kept after
her, but she always kept moving.’”
Most enthusiastic of all was his reception in Boston, where President
Jackson’s policy was most unpopular. It was even proposed to confer
on Crockett the degree of LL.D., an honor that had been awarded to
Jackson: but, unlike Jackson, Crockett had the wit to decline an honor
which neither of the two deserved.
The more he saw and heard the more humble he became. When called
up for an after-dinner speech in Boston he burst out in his honest
way—“I never had but six months’ schooling in all my life, and I
confess I consider myself a _poor tyke_ to be here addressing the most
intelligent people in the world.” If he had not culture, he had what
was far more rare in that age of truckling to one-man power—_manhood_.
It seemed as if unlettered David Crockett was the only man in public
life to stand up straight, and people acknowledged the power of true
character. The culture and wealth of the East bowed to unspoiled
manhood; it was a revelation fresh from Nature’s hand.
A few extracts from one of his more sustained and dignified efforts
will illustrate the development Crockett had attained by simple
observation. After praising New England he said:
“I don’t mean that because I eat your bread and drink
your liquor, that I feel so. No; that don’t make me see
clearer than I did. It is your habits, and manners,
and customs; your industry; your proud, independent
spirits; your hanging on to the eternal principles of
right and wrong; your liberality in prosperity, and
your patience when you are ground down by legislation,
which, instead of crushing you, whets your invention to
strike a path without a blaze on a tree to guide you;
and above all, your never-dying, deathless grip to our
glorious Constitution. These are the things that make
me think you are a mighty good people.
“I voted for Andrew Jackson because I believed he
possessed certain principles, and not because his name
was Andrew Jackson, or the ‘Hero,’ or ‘Old Hickory.’
And when he left those principles which induced me to
support him, I considered myself justified in opposing
him. This thing of man-worship I am a stranger to; I
don’t like it; it taints every action of life.
“I know nothing, by experience, of party discipline. I
would rather be a raccoon-dog, and belong to a Negro in
the forest, than to belong to any party, further than
to do justice to all, and to promote the interests of
my country. The time will and must come, when honesty
will receive its reward, and when the people of this
nation will be brought to a sense of their duty, and
will pause and reflect how much it cost us to redeem
ourselves from the government of one man. It cost the
lives and fortunes of thousands of the best patriots
that ever lived. Yes, gentlemen, hundreds of them fell
in sight of your own city.
“Gentlemen, if it is for opposing those high-handed
measures that you compliment me, I say I have done so,
and will do so, now and forever. I will be no man’s
man, and no party’s man, other than to be the people’s
faithful representative: and I am delighted to see the
noble spirit of liberty retained so boldly here, where
the first spark was kindled; and I hope to see it shine
and spread over our whole country.”
He took his seat in Congress, a central object in the political
field. His position was anomalous. Party ties were closely drawn,
and party rancor bitter as it can be only when nothing but plunder
is at stake between parties. The Democrats could not claim Crockett
so long as he antagonized their god, Jackson; and the alliance of
the Whigs he most distinctly repudiated. He was an independent, an
“unattached statesman;” the prototype of an element which has now
become formidable in our politics, but a character for whom there was
no place in those times. He was, like all eccentrics, ahead or apart
from his age, and was at first feared, then shunned, and then called
crazy by the great body of public men, whose standard of sanity was to
sacrifice manhood to party, to betray the Republic for spoils.
It was during this Congress that he created a sensation by antagonizing
benevolence of representatives at government expense. A bill had
been reported and was about to pass, appropriating a gratuity to a
naval officer’s widow. Crockett made an unanswerable argument on the
unconstitutionality of this and other such appropriations, and closed
by offering, with other friends of the widow, to give her a week of his
salary as congressman. Not a member dared to answer or to vote for the
bill, and not one followed Crockett’s example of charity at his own
expense.
But the independent, honest eccentric had reached the end of his public
career. In the next congressional election he was beaten by tricks such
as would not be tolerated at this time. One of these devices was to
announce fictitiously a large number of public meetings in Crockett’s
name on the same day. When he failed to appear, as announced, speakers
of the Jackson party, who would always arrange to be present, denounced
Crockett as afraid to face his constituents upon his “treacherous and
corrupt record in Congress.” The defeat was a surprise to him; more, it
almost broke his heart. He wrote, manfully, but pathetically, “I have
suffered myself to be politically sacrificed to save my country from
ruin and disgrace.” I may add, like the man in the play, “Crockett’s
occupation’s gone.”
Shortly after he made a farewell address to his constituents, into
which he compressed a good deal of plain speaking, or as he says,
“I put the ingredients in the cup pretty strong, I tell you: and
I concluded by telling them that I was done with politics for the
present, and that they might all go to hell and I would go to Texas.”
“When I returned home,” he adds, “I felt sort of cast down at the
change that had taken place in my fortunes; sorrow, it is said, will
make even an oyster feel poetical. Such was my state of feeling that I
began to fancy myself inspired; so I took my pen in hand, and as usual,
I went ahead.” This is