Three Roads to the Alamo

by William C. Davis

  As acknowledged leader of the House delegation, Polk patiently dealt with Crockett as he pressed for action and support on his bill. The bill approved by the Tennessee legislature that Crockett proposed provided that the United States would relinquish all its remaining unoccupied public domain in Tennessee to the state, with the proviso that such land was to be sold to raise money for education, a common policy followed in Alabama, Mississippi, and several other new states formed out of former territories. Increasingly David came to doubt that the state would handle the land fairly. He became convinced that it would try to keep the price on the land too high for the existing occupants to purchase their squats, or for the poor to move into the area and buy property. Polk certainly understood Crockett's point of view, regardless of his own sympathies, and inquired on his own into the actual sales potential of the land. He sought an opinion from Crockett's recent opponent Alexander, who responded that at least half of the vacant land would not bring more than twelve and one-half cents to the acre. Moreover, even if all of it sold for that price, the proceeds still would not make up the existing deficit in the state's common-school fund. In short, they could not realize enough to meet existing commitments, let alone fund colleges and universities.52

  Interestingly enough, Polk could no doubt have heard this same conclusion from Crockett, but he preferred to get it from someone whose judgement he trusted more, which shows just how little confidence Crockett may have enjoyed among his peers from the very first, despite his touching belief that he was “getting along very well” with them. The Tennessee delegation met frequently in planning its approach when the bill should finally come up for debate, and Polk allowed Crockett to take center stage in the discussion. When Blair proposed that they amend the bill to stipulate that proceeds from land sales should endow a university in Nashville, Crockett led the way in defeating the idea. Instead the delegation agreed to amend the bill to provide that proceeds should go only to the common-school fund.53

  On April 24 Polk finally took the floor to speak in behalf of the bill when the House took it up. He argued that Tennessee had been short-changed. It was supposed to have gotten 444,000 acres of lands for its public schools' benefit in the 1806 cession from North Carolina, but the North Carolina warrants then claimed all but 22,000 acres of that, and it was only right that the deficiency be made up from federal land remaining in the western half of the state, and even then the North Carolina warrant holders had already claimed all of the best land there too. What remained would not pay Congress the expenses of establishing its land offices or running the surveys to sell it publicly. Crockett stood to second him, averring that much of it would bring scarcely one cent an acre, let alone Alexander's figure. As he could testify from his own explorations, much of the country lay underwater anyhow. He went on to urge that this bill would enable the poor people of the district to own their own property, and at the same time the money they paid would help to educate their children, not in the colleges that scarcely one in a thousand would ever see but in the common schools that could prepare them for life. He knew the advantage of educational opportunities, he said, “from having experienced the want of them,” and he wanted what he had missed in life to be afforded to those who came after him.54

  In the face of some opposition, and an anticipated amendment from Ohio, the House voted 131 to 64 to table the bill on May 1, much to Crockett's chagrin. It would not come up again in the remaining three weeks of the session, and the disappointment only added to Crockett's misery. Three times after taking his seat in the House he suffered relapses, no doubt indications that he had never really recovered from the previous fall's malaria bout and had pushed himself too hard. He came down with what he thought to be pleurisy, but may have been pneumonia allied to his general debility, and a physician taking prodigious quantities of blood from him in “treatment” only made the condition worse. He lost weight, lost the color in his cheeks, and nearly lost hope of recovery.55 No wonder he had little heart for regular attendance.

  Yet while the Tennessean's health declined, his standing in Washington seemed to climb, though it had little to do with real influence. With every passing day his character—both by nature and his own conscious assembly—came closer and closer to coincidence with a national mood and hunger. By March reports had him uttering his rural campaign boasts in Washington itself, to the delight of its nabobs.56 No doubt Crockett played to that intentionally, meeting and leaving prominent men with an exaggeratedly vigorous handshake and a quaint invitation to “come out to Tennessee for a riproarious bar-hunt.”57 The eastern press began to report his movements and sayings, and just as often to engraft rustic stereotypes onto him regardless of fact. Jackson sheets presented him as Poor Richard, a comparison not lost on Crockett, who soon bought, if he did not already have, a copy of Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography. The administration press, meanwhile, pictured him as a bumpkin and lout.58 In fact there were some already tiring of the exaggerated stereotyping of the western character, the overwhelming Jacksonian image of the rapacious conqueror measuring his success in land acquired or animals shot, the exploitive man on the make. Such men were a reality, embodied in James Bowie for one.59 Yet defenders of the West argued that the old Jeffersonian yeoman farmer still most truly represented the region: sober, industrious, and responsible, if rustic.60 Crockett himself would have agreed, for however much he began to appreciate the advantages of being regarded as some sort of original “character,” he retained as well the aspiration to be a gentleman. He wore the best clothes he could afford, observed the formal niceties so far as possible, and tried to speak in the House as befitted a dignified statesman, even if he did feel the need to apologize for his accent and unfamiliarity with grammar.61 Ironically, like so many poor whites, he desperately aspired to be that which he affected to despise the most, a middle-class gentleman. Now, as he experienced the kind of attention—and possible influence—that the rather embarrassing role of bumpkin gained him, versus the realization that as a gentleman he lacked either the lure or the skill to win such notoriety, he faced perhaps for the first time the struggle between the real man he felt himself to be and the “gentleman from the cane” that the public wanted. They expected—indeed hungered for—an original American type belonging to them and to no other, a character who thought, talked, and acted big, “the genius of the New World.”62 Such a heavy expectation exacted heavy demands. Torn between Jefferson and Jackson, Crockett may have sensed even before becoming a certified icon that the view from the pedestal would be distorted, and that from such a perch, whichever way he looked, there was a long way to fall.

  Even though Congress adjourned on May 26, Crockett's health kept him in Washington well into the summer before he felt well enough to return home, and by then there was little time to accomplish much. Money was always tight, though he managed enough from his salary as a representative to repay Winchester the $250 he had borrowed. But that almost exhausted his funds, forcing him to go heavily into debt now when he acquired 225 acres in new Weakley County, north of Gibson, and spent the balance of the summer and fall building a new gristmill. When he needed a young slave boy to help with the work, he was even willing to trade a horse and colt and $150 in the bargain before finding he could not raise even that much money.63 Meanwhile the debts continued to accumulate.64 And there was mounting trouble with Elizabeth, who by now felt thoroughly tired of Crockett's unwillingness or inability to settle on something to support the family and stick to it. A religious woman, she remonstrated with him for his complete lack of interest in church, and may have added venom to her barbs when she nagged him for his drinking. Though never known to be intemperate, Crockett certainly grew up with the example of a father who took too many horns from time to time, and it appears that by the fall of 1828 David himself may have taken to drowning his worldly misfortunes in occasional overindulgence, a habit he could just as easily have picked up at Mrs. Ball's boarding-house in Washington.65 Perhaps the only good news this fall was Jac
kson's easy victory over Adams. Crockett certainly gave him his vote, and predicted that Old Hickory would “shine conspicuous when his enemies will stand before the world unnoticed by every Honist American Citizen.”66

  With all of his woes at home, Crockett probably welcomed the day when he left to go via Nashville to Washington for the second session of his term. The House convened on December 1, 1828, and Crockett quickly found that the apparent antagonism of the opposition press remained strong. During the first session of Congress, Crockett received an invitation to dine at the Executive Mansion with President Adams and four others. It may have been innocent enough, a courtesy extended to new representatives, or the National Republicans may have been continuing what seems to have been a desultory but as yet uncoordinated effort to stay close to Crockett. Gulian Verplank and James Clark, close adherents of Clay's—Clark currently held the seat from Clay's own Kentucky district—went with Crockett, adding to the possibility that the dinner may have been as much courting as courtesy. No sooner did Crockett return to Washington for this new session, however, than he read a Nashville newspaper account published while he was on his way east, saying that he had behaved with unforgivable boorishness at the meal, demanding more food when his plate was removed, even licking his fingers, and drinking out of all six cups attached to the punchbowl. The report incensed Crockett when he finally saw it just after New Year's, and he got Clark and Verplank to publish open letters attesting to his “perfectly becoming and proper” conduct in refutation of the obvious fabrication.67 Viewed in the light of immediately subsequent events, it was a revealing incident. Since there were at least six people at that dinner—there being six punch cups—any one of the other five attendees, including the president, could have put the lie to the story. In short, too many people knew the truth of the matter for one of those in attendance to get away with fabricating the tale. Moreover, since neither Adams nor the other two guests ever gainsaid Clark's and Verplank's denials, the story must have been groundless, and Crockett certainly felt comfortable in asking two members of the opposition for their supporting statements. The story had to be a lie made up by someone who knew the dinner took place and who gave it to the Clay-Adams press, yet who must surely have known that at least half the guests present who could refute the tale were themselves National Republicans. In other words, a fantasy concocted to embarrass Crockett must inevitably be embarrassing to the National Republicans as well, when the truth came out and men like Clark and Verplank were forced to refute what appeared in their own party organs. Moreover, as the opposition, headed by Clay, kept a covetous eye on Crockett, it could hardly hope to encourage his defection by making a fool of him in its press. The Clay-Adams men simply stood nothing to gain by printing such a lie—yet if they did not, then who did?

  Jackson—or someone very close to him. There is no evidence that Crockett and Old Hickory had ever met up to this time, or even that Jackson knew of David as anything other than the Democrat who had voted against him for the Senate a few years before. Yet for Jackson, who interpreted any opposition to his aims as betrayal, that would have been enough to mark Crockett, and all the representative's many public avowals of support would thereafter mean nothing. Moreover, as Jackson and his managers met during the campaign that summer and fall, Polk exerted a strong influence on the nominee, and enjoyed his trust as much as any man. No doubt some state issues, including the vacant land bill, entered their conversations, and it would have been very strange if at least once or twice their conversation did not turn to Crockett, the Democrat who already appeared to be too friendly with the Republicans, the Democrat who refused to follow the party machine, the man spoken of as becoming “invincible.”

  On top of it all, Polk and the rest of the Tennessee delegation probably knew weeks before the meeting of the new session that Crockett intended to make a dramatic change in the land bill that the rest of them opposed. He was quite simply too independent, too unmanageable, and in danger of becoming an embarrassment to Jackson and the party right in Old Hickory's home base, Tennessee. He needed to be disciplined, reined in, taken down a peg. Thus, in all probability, it was a Democrat, though surely not Jackson and probably not Polk, who gave the false story to the press. Significantly, he waited until after Jackson's election victory, so that the embarrassment of one Democrat could not hurt a much greater one. Even more significant, the newspaper that broke the story was not in some National Republican stronghold like Kentucky or Massachusetts, but the National Banner, right in Old Hickory's capital, Nashville.68

  Certainly the David Crockett who took his seat in the second session was a man in transition. For one thing he had sworn off liquor, and resolved never again to taste anything stronger than cider. For another, he seemed to be struggling with the acquisition of some faith. “I have never made a pretention to Religion in my life,” he confessed. “I have Run a long Rail tho I trust that I was called in good time.” News of the tragic death of a niece whose head was crushed in an accident at his mill may have helped turn his thoughts to mortality and salvation. “I have been Reproved many times for my wickedness by my Dear wife,” he recalled, then thought with his usual wry wit that she would be “no little astonished when she gets infermation of my determination.”69

  More important still was the sea change that Polk and the rest of the delegation noticed, and probably knew of even before the session commenced. Crockett was going out on his own on the land bill in direct opposition to their otherwise unanimous wishes and the instructions of their legislature, instructions he had himself approved when he sat in the assembly. Sometime prior to the convening of the House, Crockett showed Polk an amendment that would eliminate the provision for the state to sell the land to raise money for the common schools, and that instead would make outright donations of 160 acres to every existing squatter who could show that he actually occupied the land and had made improvements. Polk and the others told him not to do it, but Crockett refused to listen, saying he would rather kill the bill as it now stood if he could not carry his amendment. Even when the delegation agreed to alter the bill to provide for current occupants to have first option at their plots, still Crockett remained adamant, even publishing his intention in the press in his district. Knowing his colleagues to be unanimous against him, he said he preferred to “obey my constituents, who have placed me in office and whose servant I am.”70

  Polk suspected that David may have been obeying someone else. By his own observation he saw prior to the session that Crockett was “estranged from his colleagues, and associated much with our political enemies.” The whole delegation had treated Crockett with kindness, he thought, “and was more disposed to conceal than to expose his folly.” In that veiled evidence of condescension may be found at least some of the origin of Crockett's break with them. Besides being parts of the machine and subject to its will, which alone would have impelled David to stand aside from them, he may also have sensed that they did not fully accept him, that their courtesy to him was patronizing and insincere, and certainly that came to apply to Polk, who by February 1829 declared that “I have no other feelings towards Col. Crockett, than those of pity for his folly and regret that he had not consulted better advisers.”71 Just when Polk found out that Crockett intended to go his own course, and came to the belief that David listened to “advisers” from the opposition, is unclear, though it could have come as early as the previous September when Crockett was in Nashville and could have met with Polk during his visit. However, his admission that he preferred to “conceal than to expose” Crockett's folly is tacit testimony that he felt Crockett could be exposed, and perhaps even deserved it. Whoever gave the Adams dinner story to the National Banner obviously was of like mind.

  Set on his course, on January 5 when debate on the bill commenced, Crockett arose and made his position clear. He distrusted the legislature's promise to spend the land proceeds on common schools, and feared the money would go to universities instead. “The children of my people never saw
the inside of a college in their lives,” he argued, “and never are likely to do so.” Their parents could hardly afford even twelve and one-half cents an acre, let alone the fifty cents per acre fee for surveying federal public land. They deserved their land free in payment for their hardships and dangers in settling the raw frontier. Already many had been pushed off previous squats by the imposition of the North Carolina warrants, and it was all too much, and too unfair. “If their little all is to be wrested from them, for the purpose of State speculation; if a swindling machine is to be set up to strip them of what little the surveyors, and the colleges, and the warrant holders, have left them, it shall never be said that I sat by in silence.”72

  It was typical Crockett, with all the virtue of simple honesty, and lacking utterly in practical sense and finesse; a bulldog approach loaded equally with earnestness and his longtime resentment of the wealthy, the educated, and the professional; seasoned with the suspicion of a class that often saw itself as victimized. It was the sort of approach that made him his own most effective foe, and so it proved now, for the opposition forces smelled the fresh blood of a small wound in the Jackson flanks and set about opening it further. Polk and his colleagues felt humiliated at the things Crockett said about the Tennessee legislature. Then, to add to their embarrassment, in successive debates prominent Clay and Adams men backed Crockett's amendment. Polk saw all too clearly what Crockett could not, however. David believed he was seeing evidence of bipartisan support, honest men favoring an honest measure, but the more subtle Polk recognized that they were taking the “opportunity to use Crockett, and to operate upon him through this measure, for their own political purposes.”