Three Roads to the Alamo

by William C. Davis

  He had not actually seen the rifle himself, though descriptions of the finished weapon went throughout the nation's press in June. “A superb tool,” one sheet called the gun. A silver plate in the stock depicted a rampant alligator, jaws agape, a possum and a deer, seemingly all the metaphors associated with Crockett, though one journalist decried the absence in the engraving of “the slight touch of an earthquake.” The smith inlaid a gilded arrow into the barrel near the muzzle, with the motto Go Ahead near the front sight. To accompany the rifle, the young Whigs gave him a shot pouch, a tomahawk, a knife, and a liquor canteen in the form of a bound and gilded book. The volume represented, significantly enough, was The Spirit of the Times, the New York journal that more than any other publication collected and disseminated tall tales of Crockett and the West.16 On July 1 they gave him the rifle in a small ceremony, during which he promised ever to use it in defense of his country, and then the next day he and the gunsmith took it to New Jersey for a test. Its firing mechanism used the relatively new cap-and-ball system, far faster and more reliable than the old flintlock, and Crockett felt well pleased with the result. His old well-worn hunting rifle he called “Betsey,” an especially favored name with him for rifles, apparently, for now he dubbed this new work of art “Pretty Betsey.”17

  The chief political purpose of the trip was the Fourth of July speeches, and Crockett made several, all of them in the company of the true big Whigs, Daniel Webster heading the list. “I love my country,” he told them. “If I don't I wish I may be shot!”18 He trotted out once again all of the old arguments, the by-now tired aphorisms about King Andrew and one-man rule and the removal of the deposits. Despite the enthusiasm, he was tired, and not a few of his auditors wearied of hearing the same old litany. After resting a day, he boarded a train and set off across Pennsylvania for Pittsburgh, and a steamboat down the Ohio. Along the way he made one or two stops to let people “see a bar,” though some instead found themselves looking at a stoutly built man approaching six feet who had hands and feet that seemed too small for his body, and long curly hair that needed to make the acquaintance of a comb. He accepted a few toasts and made some of his own, and unfurled all the old quips they expected to hear. His appearance sometimes disappointed, for they assumed he would be in buckskins, whereas he appeared in anything from a broadcloth suit to the incongruous combination of fashionable pantaloons and calico hunting shirt with ruffles at the collar and cuffs, an ensemble that one observer said “set off his person as the rough and untutored woodsman, to peculiar advantage.” Still he gave satisfaction. “God bless you,” he told them in Columbia, Pennsylvania, “for I can't.”19

  Home in Weakley Country at last by mid-July, he heard the first sound of criticism of his tour. Some of the Democratic press attacked him for leaving his seat for those three weeks, and again for the few days at the end of the session. They accused him of “playing the buffoon” in order to delight the Whigs, and of conduct unseemly for a member of Congress. With the next summer's congressional race in mind, they suggested that he should be “kept at home” hereafter. “He may be an honest man,” said one editor, “but he is a very foolish one.”20 Crockett's claim that his trip had been solely for his health fooled no one, for the Whig management behind it was impossible to overlook. To his protest that he only missed one appropriations vote, his critics could answer that a congressman was paid $8.00 a day. What had Crockett done to earn the $100.00 or more the government paid him while he was making himself the darling of the Northeast?21

  His critics would have jumped him even more if they knew how he intended to capitalize on his tour. His money problems did not disappear with the sales of the Narrative, though certainly his debts diminished. His few months at home seem to have been spent chiefly in trying to clear the affairs of his father, John Crockett, who died in late summer, and forestalling yet more suits for debt, one of them more than six years old. Shortly before he left for the second session of the House, he had to borrow $312.49, and even then, when he reached Washington, he was still unable to make good on a debt to the bank now nearly two years overdue. He wrote urgently to Carey and Hart a week after the opening gavel, asking for a full accounting on sales. “I am anxious to know how we stand I expect to be hard pressed,” he explained. “I can never need money worse than at present.”22

  There seemed only one way out of the money crunch. During the late fall Crockett discussed with his old boardinghouse mate William Clark collaborating on a book about the triumphal Northeastern trip, and David broached the subject with his publishers. Nothing more came of the idea until he reached Washington, but in December he and Clark quickly came to an arrangement.23 Crockett would gather documents, chiefly newspaper accounts of his travels and speeches, add some notes and probably bits of narrative, and then turn it all over to Clark to arrange, edit, and flesh out into a book. There would be less of Crockett's own prose in the effort, chiefly because he was in a dreadful hurry. When Carey and Hart agreed to publish it, Crockett then made arrangements with them to send portions as completed, to get the typesetting started, and speed the publication date. Three weeks after the opening of the session he handed the first thirty-one pages to Clark for editing revision, with another twelve ready to turn over. Clark himself seemed pleased with Crockett's work, and told him that he could turn the raw material into “the most interesting Book you ever had.” Crockett actually believed he could finish his part of the work by New Year's, but feared Clark might not keep up with him. Clark himself would do the preface this time, while Crockett concentrated on the material for the main text. All through December, Crockett pushed his collaborator, making no secret of the reason for the hurry. He needed $300.00 to settle a debt due on January 1, and asked Carey and Hart for an advance. It would not be the last time.24

  For the next few weeks Crockett wrote to friends and asked them to send him newspaper accounts of his travels and speeches, and as before kept the publishers apprised almost daily of his progress.25 In his anxiety to complete the job he even worked on Christmas Day and New Year's. By January 1 he had finished much of the work, and it all lay in Clark's hands, while he sent to Carey and Hart a proposed title page for what would become An Account of Col. Crockett's Tour to the North and Down East in the Year of Our Lord One Thousand Eight Hundred and Thirty Four. At the same time he reiterated his request for money, this time reducing it to $150.00—$200.00 “so that I can get myself out of this tite place.”26 A week later he had the money, and with it some temporary relief, but Clark's sudden preoccupation with the continuing investigation of the deficit in the Post Office Department kept him from keeping pace on his part of the work.27 His sense of truth troubling him a bit, Crockett suggested that instead of his being credited as the book's actual author, it would be more accurate for the title page to state that it was “written from notes furnished by my self,” so long as the publishers did not think that would hurt sales. He realized that some critics might challenge him on the correctness of the account when they knew he had not in fact written all of it, but that troubled him only a little. Besides, from the very first he saw the book as far more burlesque than his Narrative, intending it to be “as amusing as posable.”28

  By January 21 Crockett announced the completion of his part of the job, but the sixty-one-year-old Clark fell so ill that he could scarcely sit up in bed, which delayed the sending of the final manuscript to Carey and Hart. Meanwhile Crockett continued gathering other materials to append to the book, including newspaper articles, statements of manufactures from textile mills to bolster his arguments against Jackson's tariff policy, and public letters and short essays he intended to write.29 It would take until April for him to secure the copyright, but by then Clark had finished his task, and in late March the book was already on the shelves.30 It was a work in every way inferior to the Narrative, chiefly because it lacked Crockett's spark of authenticity in its style, and because of its obvious nature as a loosely strung together compilation. The Whigs touted th
e book, but the public seemed little impressed, and Carey and Hart would find themselves with copies left on their hands, and Crockett with not enough money to make a serious dent in his debts.

  Yet he continued to see in writing a two-edged sword to advance his political fortunes on the forward thrust, and cut down his poverty on the backstroke. Even while compiling accounts for the Clark book in January, he already had another in mind. To Carey and Hart he proposed that the next dragon he slay with his pen should be none other than the man he might well face in an election little more than a year later—Martin Van Buren.31 The publishers felt wary, for they knew Crockett's temper toward the “fox,” and frankly feared that he might produce something libelous. “I am not going to give him a chance at me for a libel,” Crockett reassured them. “What I write will be true.” And then for the moment he dropped the subject.32

  Crockett virtually repeated his behavior of the first session in the second. Instead of attending wholeheartedly to the business of the House, he spent a great deal of his time working on his book, and the rest of it carping about the administration. When he did take the floor, predictably it was to raise one more variation on the land bill, and then his own deportment prejudiced his chances. He tried four times to get it on the floor without success, and in the votes on his motions he saw many of his former Whig supporters reverse themselves. They were no longer willing to bolster the promotion of David Crockett by risking denying the sale of public lands to boost the U.S. Treasury.33

  Meanwhile Crockett never let up in his ranting about Jackson, only now he increased the heat on Van Buren as well.34 He accused Jackson of trampling the constitution underfoot and telling the “Judicial powar to go to hell.”35 The presumption by Jackson that he could simply anoint his own successor made Crockett apoplectic. “The time has come that men is expected to be transferable and as negotiable as a promissory note of hand,” he declared on Christmas. “Little Van sits in his chair and looks as sly as a red fox,” he went on, and worst of all, recent elections in some of the northern states appeared to sustain the administration. “There is more slaves in New York and Pennsylvania than there is in Virginia and South Carolina,” and the shame of it was that they were “Volunteer slaves.” He felt so agitated that he began to tell friends in December that “I have almost given up the ship as lost.” Faced with the grim prospect of more years of corrupt rule, he declared openly: “If Mr martin vanburen is elected that I will leave the united states for I never will live under his kingdom.” Before he would submit to Little Van's rule, said Crockett, “I will go to the wildes of Texes.” The Mexican rule there would be “a Paradice to what this will be.”36

  Crockett never quailed at hyperbole. He accused Jackson of fomenting a debt crisis with France in order to divert attention from the corruption of his regime, for if the nation learned what Old Hickory and his minions were about “it would Blow them all to the devil.”37 He may well have seen just such a phenomenon in operation when Richard Lawrence, a deranged house painter, attempted to assassinate Jackson in the Capitol on January 30, and Crockett could not refrain from comment, probably to express sorrow that the insane assailant's two pistols misfired.38 As for Van Buren, Crockett vowed never to speak to him, and within a few months would be telling a story that may have been true or that may have been his own invention to illustrate his disdain. Attending the Washington Theater one night, Crockett found himself sitting directly in front of the Little Fox and overheard Van Buren whisper to a friend, “Now is a favourable opportunity to introduce me.” The friend tapped Crockett's shoulder and said, “Colonel Crockett, allow me to take the liberty of introducing to you the future president of the United States.” Crockett turned around, his eyes flashing, and replied, “Really, my friend, anything in reason, but by heaven I cannot permit anyone to take such a liberty with me.”39

  Inevitably the coming presidential contest colored everything. By the end of 1834, despite the success of his tour and his Narrative, Crockett sensed the waning Whig support for his candidacy. Prominent party leaders like Biddle and Poindexter had to be concerned about his repeated appeals to them to help with his debts, not a good sign for a potential chief executive, and gradually they distanced themselves.40 His constant attacks on Jackson and Van Buren became tiresome and repetitive, while his increasing stridency took an embarrassing turn. Some of the Whigs who had voted with him in the House abandoned him in the last session; and moreover, in looking at his record as a congressman, there was not a single achievement on which they could run him. In almost three complete terms he had failed to achieve a single piece of legislation that he promoted, and the Jackson press adeptly highlighted his shortcomings as a statesman.

  The same Mississippi convention that had approached him about the presidency toward the end of 1833 contacted Missourian Thomas Hart Benton late in 1834 about the vice-presidency, but he turned them down, suggesting instead that the country would be best served by Van Buren in the White House. Crockett took the occasion in January 1835 to ghost-write—or more likely coauthor—several satirical letters calling for the publication of Benton's own answer to the Mississippi convention, which response never saw light of day in 1833.41 In the sham response now published he said that he declined to seek the office in 1836, thinking it proper that a northern man should be elected. That was Crockett's parody of Benton's refusal. But then he—or his coauthor—went on to say that of course if a Yankee got the White House in 1836, then in 1840 it should go to a man from the Southwest, “and that president shall be myself.”42

  Though he may have been writing satirically, it is apparent that Crockett had all but given up his presidential hopes for 1836 by the time of the Benton letter. On December 27, 1834, he told a constituent that he saw no hope at all for anyone beating Van Buren in the coming election.43 Thus he may have been more serious than not in the parody letter when he said that he expected 1840 would be his turn, for certainly in the preparation of the book about his tour, and in the projected Van Buren biography, Crockett still saw potential for advancing his possible candidacy. But if Van Buren was, as he believed by late December, unbeatable, then far better that David not be the Whig nominee in 1836. Consequently on December 29 he joined with all the rest of the Tennessee delegation except Polk, Grundy, and Cave Johnson in signing a letter to Sen. Hugh Lawson White asking him to seek the Democratic nomination against Little Van. White already enjoyed widespread Whig support, and as a Tennessean his candidacy would hurt Van Buren and humiliate Jackson. Strangely, having been at odds on so many other issues, Crockett and most of the delegation united this time because they all disliked the Fox, objecting to Jackson's regal assumption that he could name his own successor. On December 30 White accepted the proposal, and a few days later Crockett called on him personally, and thereafter wrote an open letter to his home district saying—disingenuously, considering his declaration of a few days before—that he thought White “the only man in the nation able to contend against little Van.”44

  In short Crockett knew more than enough not to challenge Van Buren for the Democratic nomination, and knew as well that no Whig nominee was likely to beat him in the general election. Standing that beside the evidences of softening Whig support for himself, the path of wisdom called for him to step out of the path to the presidency for the time being. However, if there was even a little of the calculating about him, Crockett might also have reasoned that his supporting White would win him some favor where he most needed it, among Democrats. Even if White lost the contest for the nomination, it would be a bloody fight that might weaken Van Buren going into the election, at which time a strong Whig candidate—himself—could attract those disaffected Democrats and perhaps deny the Fox his quarry at the polls in November. If Crockett actually viewed the situation that way, it was a clever, even shrewd strategy. Either way his own prospects seemed still very much alive.

  Among other things, of course, any presidential hopes now or in the future depended upon retaining his seat in the
House in the coming election. Some of his constituents wrote to him expressing their pleasure with his conduct as their representative, which much gratified Crockett. For his part he sent occasional circular addresses or open letters to the press to explain his positions and actions, and used the frank liberally to keep constituents supplied with reading material showing his efforts—such as they were—and more to send anti-Jackson materials through the post.45 By the end of 1834 he suspected that “Blackhawk,” Adam Huntsman himself, would be his opponent, though he thought he could beat him. Yet he was not entirely confident. “I cannot tell,” he confessed. “I am determined to do my duty if I should niver See another Congress.”46

  Huntsman believed that he detected signs justifying that same uncertainty felt by Crockett. On New Year's day Blackhawk told Polk that he wanted to run against “Davy of the River country.” He saw signs that the people were tiring of and even offended by the quantity of anti-Jackson literature coming into the district. “Crockett is evidently losing ground,” he thought, “or otherwise he never was as strong as I supposed him to be.” Either way Huntsman believed he could beat him unless Crockett succeeded in getting his land bill passed during the remainder of the term.47 Certainly that was impetus enough, as if he needed any, for Polk to continue to do his best to keep the land bill from reaching the floor. And no one thought the Hugh White approach a greater betrayal than did Old Hickory himself. He already regarded Crockett as a traitor, but now saw him as the agent of the treason of the others on the Tennessee delegation who turned against Van Buren. He spoke of “Crockett and Co.” as destroyers of Democratic unity—which he long since crippled himself—and accused Crockett of being the “tool” of his enemies. He was an apostate, and he and the others should be “hurled, as they ought, from the confidence of the people.” Even in loathing David, though, Jackson could not resist being in some measure affected by the growing pull of the folk hero. Now he called him “Davy Crockett.”48