by David Fisher
Ironically, considering his feelings about Jackson—in 1833 he told reporters, “Look at my neck and you will not find any collar with a label, ‘My Dog, Andrew Jackson’”—he actually helped the president survive the first presidential assassination attempt in American history. On the afternoon of January 30, 1835, an unemployed house painter named Richard Lawrence, who believed he was King Richard III, approached Jackson as he left the capitol, drew his pistol and, at point-blank range, pulled the trigger. Incredibly luckily for the president, the gun misfired. The sixty-seven-year-old Jackson began hitting his attacker with his cane. Crockett and several other men leaped on Lawrence and dragged him to the ground. In the melee, the madman managed to pull a second pistol from under his coat and fire at Jackson from inches away—and that gun also misfired! Thanks to Crockett, several other men, and amazing good fortune, the president’s life was saved—although no one ever has been able to figure out why either gun, much less both of them, misfired. Lawrence spent the rest of his life in an asylum.
To reinforce his growing reputation, Crockett “authored” another book, A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett, written by Himself, and for the only time in his life visited the Northeast, on what arguably was one of the first celebrity publicity tours. He traveled from Baltimore to Philadelphia by steamboat and train, the first time he had ridden on the latter. The Whigs had gathered a large, enthusiastic crowd to greet him when he arrived in Philadelphia, which he described as “the whole face of the earth covered with people.” From there he went to New York, where, once again, delighted crowds turned out to see him. He spent an evening at the theater and toured the roughest area of the city, a pro-Jackson slum known as Five Points. It was so filthy, he remarked, that the people there were “too mean to swab hell’s kitchen,” a phrase that later coined the nickname for an uptown slum. When he reached Boston, again the welcoming crowds turned out, and he toured Faneuil Hall and visited various factories. He dined at the leading restaurants and sipped champagne “foaming up as if you were supping fog out of speaking trumpets.”
Although his congressional district had been gerrymandered by the pro-Jackson legislature in 1833, he had still managed to win that election. But the frontier was moving westward, and Tennessee was being settled by people who didn’t know Crockett and instead were vocal in their admiration for President Jackson. In the congressional election of 1835, Crockett’s opponent, Adam Huntsman, who had lost a leg in the Creek War, made Crockett’s inability to get a land bill passed by Congress in three terms a major issue in the campaign. Huntsman was supported by both President Jackson and Tennessee’s Governor Carroll and beat Crockett by 230 votes.
During the campaign, Crockett had promised several times to move to Texas if he was defeated or if Jackson’s vice president, Martin van Buren, was elected president. What probably surprised everyone was that this was a campaign promise Crockett intended to keep. On November 1, 1835, dressed in his hunting suit and wearing a coonskin cap, he gave Old Betsy to his son John Wesley Crockett and, following the trail blazed by his friend Sam Houston, set out for Texas with three friends, telling his constituents, “Since you have chosen to elect a man with a timber toe to succeed me, you may all go to hell and I will go to Texas.”
Many have speculated on the real reasons he went to Texas. Texas is an Indian word, meaning “friends,” but for hundreds of years it had been unsettled by whites. The territory had been claimed by France and Spain, then became Mexico’s when it won its independence from Spain in 1821. The Mexican government initially had welcomed American settlers to the territory, believing they would control the Indians living there. But by 1826, the Anglos wanted to rid themselves of Mexican control and establish an independent state that they intended to name Fredonia. The leader of the original settlers, Stephen Austin, went to Mexico City to petition for recognition as a separate Mexican state, with the right to form its own legislature. Instead, he was arrested and thrown into a dungeon.
But the spirit of independence had caught hold. In 1835, seventeen thousand of the twenty thousand people living in Texas were Americans. Austin returned to Texas after spending eight months in prison and immediately began forming militias to fight for Anglo rights under the Mexican constitution. Mexican leader Santa Anna threatened an invasion to quell the uprising. The Texas War for Independence began at the battle of Gonzales in October 1835. A month later, Texas declared its independence, naming Sam Houston its commander in chief. It was a situation ripe for heroics.
Davy Crockett did not go to Texas to die at the Alamo but rather to live in a country he described in a letter to his children as “the garden spot of the world. The best land and the best prospects for health I ever saw, and I do believe it is a fortune to any man to come here.” There obviously were many reasons for him to leave Tennessee: He had been defeated by the Jacksonians and abandoned by the Whigs; he was separated from his wife; he was in debt and had no source of income; and for a man who had spent much of his life pursuing adventure, he lacked any current challenges. It also was the right place to reestablish his reputation: Many people had begun wondering if all the attention and publicity had changed him. His exploits had been so obviously exaggerated that some doubted there was much truth to any of them. And it was not in his nature to back away from a fight.
The Alamo, Midnight, lithograph by Frank Callcott
It’s impossible to know what his expectations were when he rode to Texas. Although it’s clear that he intended to become a land speculator and perhaps make “a fortune yet for my family, bad as my prospect has been,” some historians believe he planned to become involved in the politics of the new republic, maybe even run for president. He did write that he expected to be elected to the planned constitutional convention. When he learned the provisional government was offering 4,600 acres of good growing land to any man willing to fight for Texas’s freedom, he announced, “As the country no longer requires my services, I have made up my mind to go to Texas. I start anew upon my own hook, and may God grant that it be strong enough to support the weight that may be hung upon it.”
When he finally reached Nacogdoches in January 1836, he received a “harty [sic] welcome to the country,” which included a cannon salute and invitations to social events held in his honor. In Nacogdoches, with sixty-five other men, he volunteered with the Texas Volunteer Auxiliary Corps, taking an oath to fight for six months in return for 4,600 acres. Before signing the oath, he insisted the word republican be inserted to ensure he would not be obliged to serve a dictatorship. In early February, provisional government president Sam Houston ordered him to lead a squad of expert riflemen to reinforce San Antonio de Bexar.
Until the preceding December, San Antonio had been occupied by more than a thousand Mexican soldiers. But after a five-day battle, the Mexican army had been defeated and had surrendered all property, guns, and ammunition to the Texans. The furious Santa Anna was determined to demonstrate to the settlers that resistance to Mexican rule was futile by retaking San Antonio—whatever the cost. He made it clear that there would be no quarter given, no prisoners taken; this would be a lesson the Texans would never forget. When 1,800 Mexican troops arrived in San Antonio on February 23, the 145 Texans—among them Davy Crockett—moved into the fortified mission called the Alamo.
Historians have been studying—and debating—the details of the battle for the Alamo for years without reaching agreement as to precisely how it unfolded. Apparently Sam Houston initially told his commander in San Antonio, Colonel William B. Travis, to destroy the mission and withdraw, believing his troops lacked the manpower and supplies necessary to defend it. Had Travis been able to comply with those instructions, most of the garrison could have survived, but he allowed his men to vote on whether to stay—and rather than retreat, they elected to stay and fight. When Santa Anna arrived and demanded their surrender, Travis responded with a cannon shot.
The Alamo was a small fortress, protected by limestone-block walls eight feet hig
h and about three feet thick. Santa Anna’s army immediately began bombarding the mission, his artillery moving closer each day. On the twenty-fifth, an estimated three hundred Mexican troops crossed the San Antonio River and reached a line of abandoned shacks less than one hundred yards from the walls. It was an important strategic position from which to launch an assault; the Texans had to dislodge them. While the Alamo’s cannons and Crockett’s marksmen provided cover, a small group of volunteers reached the shacks and burned them down.
Travis pleaded for reinforcements, warning that his troops were running out of ammunition and supplies. On the twenty-sixth, 420 men with four artillery pieces set out from the fort at Goliad to relieve the garrison. When this force was unable to successfully ford the San Antonio River, they turned back, although about twenty men volunteered to try to reach the Alamo.
“The enemy … treated the bodies with brutal indignation.” They were thrown onto a pile and burned. The remains are believed to be in this casket in San Antonio’s San Fernando Cathedral.
Little is known about what was going on inside the Alamo during the siege, although one of the few survivors of the battle, a woman named Susanna Dickinson, wrote that Davy Crockett had entertained the garrison with his violin and storytelling. In records found after the massacre, Colonel Travis wrote of observing Crockett everywhere in the Alamo “animating men to do their duty.” It was also reported that Crockett had killed five Mexicans in succession as they tried to fire a cannon at the walls, and some claimed that he came within a whisker of killing Santa Anna, who had wandered into rifle range. There is some evidence that Crockett had managed to sneak out through Mexican lines to locate the small band of reinforcements waiting at Cibolo Creek and guide them into the Alamo. Several months after the battle, the Arkansas Gazette reported, “Col. Crockett, with about 50 resolute volunteers had cut their way into the garrison through the Mexican troops only a few days before the fall of San Antonio.” The meaning of that is clear, and it erases any doubts about his courage and his integrity: Crockett had made his way out of what appeared to be a hopeless situation and could have escaped. Instead, he fought his way back inside to make a final stand with his men.
“Remember the Alamo” was the battle cry that led Sam Houston’s troops to victory at the Battle of San Jacinto six weeks later—and Americans have never forgotten the sacrifices made there. Above, a map of the Alamo based on Santa Anna’s battlefield map; opposite, top left, Newell Convers Wyeth’s Last Stand at the Alamo; top right, an imagined Crockett fighting his last battle; bottom, William H. Brooker’s engraving Siege of the Alamo, March 6, 1836
Santa Anna’s army, which had been reinforced and numbered four thousand troops, attacked before dawn on March 6, advancing, according to Henry Howe in The Great West, “amid the discharge of musketry and cannon, and were twice repulsed in their attempt to scale the walls.” Susanna Dickinson later testified that when the attack began, Crockett had paused briefly to pray, then started fighting. After a fierce battle, Mexican troops breached the north outer walls. Although most of the defenders withdrew to the barracks and chapel, Crockett and his men stood in the open and fought. They fired their weapons until they were out of ammunition, then used their rifles as clubs and knives until they were overwhelmed.
It isn’t known how Davy Crockett died. There are several conflicting reports. A slave named Ben, who also survived the battle, claimed he had seen Crockett’s body surrounded by “no less than 16 Mexican corpses,” including one with Crockett’s knife still buried in it. Henry Howe reported, just fifteen years after the battle, that “David Crockett was found dead surrounded by a pile of the enemy, who had fallen beneath his powerful arm.” Most historians believe he was killed by a bayonet as he clubbed attackers with his rifle. He was forty-nine years old.
As happens often when heroes die without witnesses, alternative stories have persisted. One claims that Crockett and several other men either surrendered or were captured and brought before Santa Anna, who ordered their immediate execution. The purported eyewitness to that, a Mexican lieutenant named José Enrique de la Peña, supposedly wrote in a diary, found and published almost one hundred fifty years later, that Crockett had been executed, and “these unfortunates died without complaining and without humiliating themselves before their torturers.”
There were only three survivors: Susanna Dickinson and her young child and the black slave, Ben. “The enemy,” wrote Howe, “exasperated to the highest degree by this desperate resistance, treated the bodies with brutal indignation.” Although there were some reports of mutilation, it is generally agreed that the bodies were thrown onto a pile and burned. The number of Mexicans who died in the attack is estimated at between six hundred and sixteen hundred men. Texans were shocked by the massacre. Almost immediately, “Remember the Alamo” became the rallying cry of the Texas army of independence. Less than two months later, on April 21, General Sam Houston’s army captured Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto, and the Republic of Texas was born.
The legend of Davy Crockett grew even larger after his death. A book entitled Col. Crockett’s Exploits and Adventures in Texas … Written by Himself was published the summer after his death and, while clearly a work of fiction, served to reinforce his heroic sacrifice. Another story circulated claiming that Crockett was last seen standing at his post swinging his rifle as Mexican troops poured through a break in the walls. The memoir of Santa Anna’s personal secretary, Ramón Martínez Caro, published in 1837 in Mexico, reported, “Among the 183 killed there were five who were discovered by General Castrillón hiding after the assault. He took them immediately to the presence of His Excellency who had come up by this time. When he presented the prisoners, he was severely reprimanded for not having killed them on the spot, after which he turned his back upon Castrillón while the soldiers stepped out of their ranks and set upon the prisoners until they were all killed.” Although this was purportedly an eyewitness account, there is no direct evidence that Crockett was one of these men.
Crockett became a symbol of the spirit of Texas and America, a man who willingly gave his life for freedom. His last known words, written to his daughter weeks before his death, have often been quoted: “I am rejoiced at my fate. I would rather be in my present situation than be elected to a seat in Congress for life. Do not be uneasy about me, I am with my friends … Farewell, David Crockett.”
His son John Wesley Crockett served two terms in Congress and finally was able to pass an amended version of the land bill that his father had initially introduced. Like so many others, he spent years trying to uncover the facts of his father’s death—but in his lifetime no reliable witnesses stepped forward.
More than one hundred twenty years later, the larger-than-life character Davy Crockett, the King of the Wild Frontier, was introduced to a new generation of young people in a television series—coonskin cap, tall tales, and all—that captivated the nation and had millions of Americans singing his praises, saluting his courage, and romanticizing the frontier way of life.
KIT CARSON
Duty Before Honor
Many years later, in the warmth of his own memories, Kit Carson would describe what happened at the rendezvous in Green River as an “affair of honor.” Although few mountain trappers took much note of the year, Carson put it at the summer of 1835. For those men, who mostly lived in small roaming bands, a rendezvous was an important event. Hundreds of mountain men and natives from local tribes would camp together for a month or, as he wrote in his autobiography, “as long as the money and credit of the trappers last” to trade goods and tales. Coffee, sugar, and flour, then considered luxuries, sold for two dollars a pint, and ordinary blankets for as much as twenty-five dollars apiece. There were daily contests, including shooting, archery, and knife and tomahawk throwing; there was fiddling and dancing; there was drinking and revelry; and, naturally, there was gambling and brawling. The laws of these camps were whatever the strongest men could enforce, and arguments often
were settled with rifles at twenty paces. Among the people at this particular meeting on the Green River in Wyoming was an especially disagreeable French Canadian trapper named Joseph Chouinard, who was said to be “exceedingly overbearing” and who, “upon the slightest pretext … was sure to endeavor to involve some of the trappers in a quarrel.” Other trappers avoided him, until one day he violently grabbed a beautiful young Arapaho woman named Singing Grass. Holding tightly on to her arms, he began kissing her and rubbing himself against her.
That was finally enough for Kit Carson. He was small in stature, no more than five feet four, but large in courage. Brandishing his hunting knife, he warned Chouinard to let go of the Indian woman. “I assume the responsibility of ordering you to cease your threats,” he said, “or I will be under the necessity of killing you.”
It was a challenge Chouinard could not turn down. He released the girl and angrily walked off toward his own lodge. Minutes later, the two men faced each other on horseback, as knights had done hundreds of years earlier. The French Canadian carried a rifle; Kit Carson was armed with a single-barrel dragoon pistol. At the mark, they raced toward each other. When they were only a few feet apart, both men fired; Carson’s shot ripped into Chouinard’s right forearm, throwing off his aim so that, as Carson later recalled, “[H]is ball passed my head, cutting my hair and the powder burning my eye…. During our stay in camp we had no more trouble with the bully Frenchman.”
Kit Carson earned his reputation among mountain men when he stood up to the bully Chouinard at the 1835 rendezvous, as seen in this 1858 woodcut.
