American Legend: The Real-Life Adventures of David Crockett (23 page)

But above all Crockett’s optimism always shone through, despite the circumstances, and he was heartened by his improving health. Though he received devastating news from home that his niece, Rebecca Ann Burgin, had been killed in a tragic accident at Crockett’s mill (her head crushed by oxen), he maintained his pledge to Elizabeth to swear off hard alcohol, and was quite obviously moved enough by the event to reconsider his own behavior:

I have altered my cours in life a great deal sence I reached this place and have not tasted one drop of Arden Spirits sence I arrived here nor never expect to while I live nothing stonger than cider I trust that god will give me fortitude in my undertaking I have never made a pretention to religion in my life before I have run a long race tho I trust that I was called in good time for my wickedness by my dear wife who I am—certain will be no little astonished when she gets information of my determination.

Crockett added in the same letter to George Patton, in reference to his niece, his heartfelt and honest condolences, relating how much he cared for the young girl: “I thought almost as much of her as one of my own I hope she is this day in eternal happiness where I am endeavoring to make my way.”
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Crockett’s references to religion, and to his pride in staying on the straight and narrow, suggest that Elizabeth gave him some ultimatums before he left for the session. He would mend his ways as he could, curtailing his consumption so as to remain in control, even if he never quit altogether. And the language in his letter to Patton reveals that, for all his bravado, Crockett had a sensitive, vulnerable streak.

Crockett loitered in Washington City long enough to see one positive political outcome, the inauguration on March 4 of Old Hickory as the seventh president of the United States. Large crowds lined the streets, and many packed the White House to get a chance to shake hands with the great military leader about to lead a nation. Crockett would have been among the throng, but for him the victory was likely bittersweet, since he was now at the very least feeling uncertain about his role in party politics, and probably suspicious about whether he belonged to any party at all. He might have raised his eyebrows at part of Jackson’s inaugural address, when the new leader declared “I shall keep steadily in view the limitations as well as extent of executive power.”
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In Jackson he saw a powerful statesman, a man of his kind in theory but in fact above his rank and station, with his elegant and sprawling Hermitage, his libraries and guest quarters, his separate cooking rooms. Crockett could only dream of such dwellings, still wondering whether he could catapult himself to planter status, while questioning whether or not that was his real goal. He would have time to think about it on the road. And so David Crockett rode for home, the confusing and contradictory halls of Congress behind him as he clomped along for yet another temporary reunion with his family in the new Weakley County home where they had settled, at least for a time.

TEN

Crockett’s Declaration of Independence

D
ESPITE FEELING PHYSICALLY BETTER than he had in recent memory, Crockett arrived home psychologically battered. Learning to be thick-skinned was one thing, but not knowing friends from enemies was quite another, and by now Crockett had begun to look over his shoulder. To complicate matters, he faced a short campaign season ahead, and probable ire from Elizabeth at home, having incurred another significant debt, this one for $700, in order to square up his bills at the boarding house and finance his journey back to Tennessee.
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Crockett had developed a pattern of borrowing and spending more than he had, then spending months or years to work off the debt. As a lad he had witnessed the same cycle in his father, and try as he might, he could not seem to shake it. That burden of debt load prefigured the American Way for the twentieth-century American middle class, but all Crockett knew at the time was that he must remain solvent if he could, and that meant some brief “howdies” at home, then off to circulate in his district and see what kind of damage had been sustained by the papers and his inability to push the land bill through.

Crockett spent less than two weeks at home attending matters of the farm, and likely having words with Elizabeth about his perpetual absence, before striking out on a three-week sojourn through his own and adjacent districts that was part campaigning and part damage control. In addition to the embarrassing accounts relating his alleged behavior at the presidential dinner, a March 7 lampoon in the
Jackson Gazette
derided his campaign techniques as unethical, citing his drunkenness and penchant to buy votes with booze, despite his having sworn off the stuff in the last session. The cartoon ran an image of Crockett exclaiming that he could always find willing constituents “who will sell both body and soul for good liquor. Let alone their votes.”
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But Crockett was renewed physically, perhaps the result of his temperate lifestyle, and he hit the hoistings hard, making important political visits along the trail. It appeared that his old nemesis Adam Alexander would also run for Congress again, and this fact pleased rather than worried Crockett. Confident that he could thrash Alexander once again, he went so far as to boast that he would outstrip him by 5,000 votes.
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He moved through the districts, acting as the independent he had become, relying on his tried and trusted antics. In Memphis he made a stump speech from the deck of a flatboat very much like the one that had marooned him there, naked, back in 1826, an episode that had been elevated into lore around the city.
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To adoring crowds he retold the barrel-stave disaster, exaggerating the details for effect, and once he knew he had the audience under his thumb he made the broad boast that he could “jump higher into the bay, make a bigger splash, and wet himself less than any other man in the crowd.”
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To his great surprise a monolith of a man took the bet, and Crockett begged off, paying up to the great delight of everyone, and the politics quickly turned to partying, more storytelling, and tavern camaraderie.

But while Crockett was busy winning votes in the only way he knew how, his tactics fueled the fire of the opposition and allowed them to continue their onslaught of slurs. Though it was still unclear to Crockett what the sources of the accusations were, the press and its readership devoured them. Broadsheets, newspaper articles, and rumors circulated citing Crockett’s gaming, debauchery, even adultery.
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Crockett fended off some claims, ignoring most, while narrowing his eyes to discover their source. Alexander himself was certainly in the mix as his only real opponent, but Crockett had to wonder if larger forces were at work, perhaps those inside the Jackson camp, or allies of Polk.

In Nashville Crockett visited with his friend and colleague Sam Houston, who was in the throes of personal and professional upheaval: he had just resigned his gubernatorial post and separated from his wife, Eliza Allen. The entire state of Tennessee was in shock over the news, and during their meeting Crockett asked Houston what his plans were now. Houston remembered fondly his years living among the Cherokee, and he considered the Indians his brothers. He painfully recalled how, in his role as an Indian agent and infantry lieutenant, he had helped drive his own family of the Cherokee nation, the Hiwassee, into exile in the Arkansas Territory. Houston told Crockett that he intended to go once again to be among his people, this time in Arkansas.
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Although neither would have known it at the time, the independent and maverick ideals of the two men would meet again some years later, becoming immortalized—in quite different ways—on the rugged Texas plains.

Crockett’s skills as an orator and campaigner, coupled with his familiarity with the people and region, made him a formidable opponent in 1829. But his fierce, even obstinate independence remained ill suited to party politics. Crockett took everything personally, and he often had difficulty seeing the larger scheme of things, the apparatuses of politics beyond the hand-to-hand combat of a stump campaign. As a result, he failed to understand that the feisty independence which made him popular as a candidate also ostracized him and made him potentially dangerous in the eyes of the Jacksonian Democrats as well as the Whigs, the anti-Jackson group formed within the Democrats. The upshot was that Crockett was in the process of becoming a man without a party. At the time, “Jackson forces were trying their best to make Crockett an object lesson—the first in American politics—of the price to be paid for the sin of breaking ranks.”
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They viewed such independence as treason. The problem was, the naïve good ol’ boy never saw it coming. He was too busy hamming it up on the stump trying to get reelected.

His efforts that spring and summer paid off, and by close of the election in August, Crockett had indeed routed Alexander. Though he failed to equal his brash prediction of crushing him by more than 5,000 votes, he did manage the significant margin of 6,773 to Alexander’s 3,641, receiving 64 percent of the vote.
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Despite all the mudslinging, Crockett had emerged victorious once again, confirming his belief, if not in politics proper, in himself and his ability to convince people that he was right, that he was a man with their best interests at heart. He had also learned to refine his image somewhat—at least in part to keep the hawkeyed Elizabeth appeased—and also as a role for the benefit of his constituents—playing on his newfound religious conviction, his at least temporary sobriety, and his balance of earthy backwoodsman and sophisticated gentleman. That was a difficult balance, for he knew that he needed to speak the language of the folk so as not to appear as though he was succumbing to the lure of the city. At the same time, he understood that he must possess some of the refinements of gentlemanly culture, lest he appear the boor depicted by some of his foes.
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It would be a duality he would attempt to perfect during his entire run at politics, a kind of “image schizophrenia” that would eventually tear away at him. But for the moment, he considered himself the darling of Western Tennessee, and to a large extent he was. In fact, his name and aura were beginning to attract attention beyond the small sphere of his home state. His persona was taking on a life of its own. And at the same time, he seemed to represent the sharecropper’s yearnings for independence, their humble desire for opportunity, that hopeful if tenuous vision shared by thousands of settlers migrating west and trying to make a go of it on the land.
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So it was that David Crockett returned to Washington City when the Twenty-First Congress convened on December 7, 1829, and immediately took up his obsession, the land bill. In a bold move, Crockett set out to extricate the issue from the Committee on Public Lands, headed by Polk, and position it instead within a special or select committee, which he himself would chair. He received a bit of impetus from the Henry Clay faction, and perhaps to his surprise, his motion was granted over Polk’s vehement protestations. Crockett’s desire was confirmed in a vote of 92 to 65, “approving his amendment and rejecting Polk’s.”
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The tide appeared to be shifting Crockett’s direction, if only temporarily, and it looked to him like he might finally get some action on his coveted bill. He now had a stronghold on the committee, and he believed naïvely that things boded well. For weeks Crockett’s committee wrangled over the wording of the bill, and at last Crockett felt like the iron must be hot enough to strike, so on December 31 he moved that the House reconsider the Tennessee Land Bill, but to his continued chagrin his motion was denied.
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After weeks of further debate, much of it vitriolic, Crockett proposed a revised version of the bill in early January, but it failed once again. An optimist to the very end, Crockett must have begun to sense some futility, as well as understand that something larger than the merits of the bill were at stake and being debated here. It had become personal, and Crockett was being singled out and alienated for his break with Jackson.
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Against his nature and his political tendencies, Crockett and his committee finally came forth with a revised bill, one that made some concessions. The bill’s central tenet was to cede to Tennessee 444,000 acres in the Western District, equivalent to the sum of the 640 acres in each of the state’s townships set aside for “common schools.”
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The state would be able to sell the land and apply the profits toward education, but it would also give squatters the option of buying, at twelve and a half cents per acre, up to 200 acres that they either intended to improve or had already improved.

Crockett could only shake his head, outwardly hopeful at the compromise he had made. He later admitted that “this is the best that I could do for my constituents.”
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Delegates of North Carolina balked at the bill’s terms, claiming that their warrants were being overlooked, and on May 3 it was defeated 90 to 69. Livid, Crockett quickly moved for the bill, in further revised form, to be reconsidered, though by now he appeared to be begging. He was floundering, with only Cave Johnson remaining an ally among his own Tennessee delegation, and his motion was tabled until the following autumn session. It was a bitter defeat for Crockett, and a confusing one, especially when things had looked so promising just weeks before. Even a man as politically obstinate as David Crockett must have suspected collusion. He was proud enough to interpret the failure of his bill as due not to his own shortcomings, but to more widespread and venal operations that were beyond his abilities to counter.