Three Roads to the Alamo
Page 51
By October 31 he was ready. His nephew William Patton decided to join him, and that pleased the uncle who regarded him as “a fine fellow.” Two of his neighbors also made up the party, Lindsay Tinkle, and Abner Burgin. “We will go through Arkinsaw and I want to explore the Texes well before I return,” he told Elizabeth's brother.75 Though he did not live with Elizabeth any longer, there seems to have been no animosity between them, and he went first to her family's place to say his farewells to her and their minor children. Their son Robert was just turned nineteen now, and David left him in charge of watching out for the other children and their mother.76 To the rest of the family he showed the old confident air on the morning of November 1 when he stepped outside, clad in his accustomed hunting suit for the ride, and bid them farewell. He told them that if he liked what he saw in Texas he would send for them to come and join him, but mentioned nothing at all about any interest in the uprising out there, which even as he spoke sputtered into violence.77 Then he mounted a large chestnut horse with a white star on its forehead and, joined by his friends, rode off into the woods to follow a star of his own.78
The road took them south, and on to Bolivar, where Crockett picked up the main road west to Memphis. Wherever he went people noticed his passing, and he called on numerous friends along the way. Word of Crockett's trip had spread before his departure, and several men determined to join him along the way, most apparently expecting, unlike Crockett, to involve themselves in the Texas uprising, for those who saw them pass through West Tennessee observed them to be “well armed and equipped.” By the time Crockett rode through Jackson, witnesses claimed to count thirty men with him, though most were only along for a lark, and would return home before he crossed the Mississippi, or else separated from him to travel to Texas by other routes.79 In Bolivar he stayed with Calvin Jones, from whom he leased his Gibson place, and met a warm greeting from the citizens. Many men passed through Bolivar these days, most of them armed and on their way to Texas, and Jones regarded them as little better than filibusters. But David was different. In his coming there was something out of the ordinary, as sensed by everyone. “Crocket who cannot blow his nose without a queery remark or observation, was regarded as a passing comet, not to be seen again,” he wrote a few weeks after David's visit, “and every hand extended either in courtesy or regard. This occasion proved him to be more of a Lion than I had supposed.”80 Jones chose an apt metaphor, for just as Crockett rode through West Tennessee, the night sky overhead thrilled its people with the slow passing of Halley's Comet. Well might they wonder when either of those celebrated phenomena would be seen again.
Crockett reached Memphis on November 10, to be reunited once more with old friends like Winchester. Entering the city early one morning, David and his friends walked the streets for much of the day looking for acquaintances and fun, and finding both. In time quite a following gathered at his heels, and that evening they began a real party at the Union Hotel. When the tavern there became too small for the crowd, they moved to several succeeding establishments. Inevitably, as they took one “horn” after another, some got out of hand and unruly, and Crockett himself had to stop a fight over the bill. When the revelers moved on to Neil McCool's saloon, they carried Crockett on their shoulders into the bar and stood him on the counter to make a speech. Naturally he repeated the “go to hell, I am going to Texas” refrain, then ended by saying “I am on my way now.” McCool became somewhat angered to see Crockett standing on the new oilcloth he had just placed on his counter, and another brawl almost ensued before Crockett suggested that it was time for all of them to go to their homes. Still they would up at one more saloon before the night ended, with Crockett giving yet more impromptu speeches. With an early start to make on the morrow, they were all far too late to bed, and one of them recalled that “we all got tight—I might say, yes, very tight.”81
At least some of Crockett's friends in Memphis got the idea that he intended to join the Texian forces then besieging San Antonio, though that may simply have been the natural assumption since so many other Tennesseans passed through Memphis now with that object.82 Yet that was far from Crockett's mind as, with no doubt aching head, he arose early in the morning and walked down to the ferry landing near the mouth of Wolf Creek, where it emptied into the Mississippi. Winchester and other local friends accompanied Crockett and his party to the flatboat ferry run by an old black man named Limus. Their good-byes said, Crockett stepped into the bow, Limus slipped his mooring, and they rowed off down the Wolf and out into the Mississippi.83
Once across, they set out overland on the 120-mile ride to Little Rock. On a well-traveled road, they covered the distance in two days, coming in sight of the town on the banks of the Arkansas on the evening of November 12.84 He intended to stay only the one night but reckoned without his celebrity. Not many famous people passed through Little Rock, and the town's fathers would not be denied their chance to fete the famous man. Crockett and his party took rooms at Charles Jeffries' City Hotel, but when the delegation came to invite him to a supper in his honor, they found him behind the hotel skinning a deer he had shot on the day's ride.
In the same breath, Crockett recognized the head of the delegation, then boasted about the two-hundred-yard shot he made in bagging the deer.
At first Crockett acted reluctant, but he agreed to attend the dinner, and once there entertained the crowd with the usual speech, blasting Jackson and his administration, telling the “go to hell” story, and quipping that he hoped there were no federal deputies in the house, since Jackson had declared a policy of neutrality toward the Texas revolution, and Crockett and his boys might be violating that if they got involved.85 Since his hosts were themselves largely Whigs and anti-Jackson Democrats, they delighted in what one called “the sport of hearing him abuse the Administration, in his outlandish style.”86 He dwelled more on his recent defeat at the polls than the events in Texas, though one reporter swore that Crockett boasted that he would “have Santa Anna's head, and wear it for a watch seal.”87 Whatever he said, the audience stamped and applauded in approval.88 One local thought his remarks “few, plain, moderate and unaffected—without violence or acrimony,” and that instead of forced eloquence, his talk was “simply rough, natural, and pleasant.” He intended to end his days in Texas, he told them.89 A young man in the audience never forgot the evening. Having expected Crockett to act the clown, he found the Tennessean instead to be a gentleman, his speech flashing with wit, but never vulgar or buffoonish.90
The next morning the editor of the local Times called at the City Hotel, but instead had to go to a local carpenter's shop, where he found Crockett sharpening a small ax on a grindstone, preparing to take the road once more.91 Several young men of the town became so enthused that they hoped to join his party for the ride to Texas, and perhaps a few did, as he seemed ever to pick up people along the way. Having left home with three companions, and then up to thirty, now he had six or eight remaining with him by the time he reached Little Rock. One of the young men hoping to join him was John Ray, who, as it happened, also knew the Bowies in Louisiana, but sudden ill health forced him to stay behind.92 Another who may have attached himself to the party was Martin Despallier, Bowie's onetime partner in Opelousas land fraud.93
His ax sharpened, Crockett mounted his party late that morning and departed heavily armed to the south, a considerable crowd cheering them on.94 They rode southwest, probably passing through Washington, finally reaching the Red River in the very southwest corner of the state, probably at McKinney's Landing. Crossing to the Mexican side near a place called Lost Prairie, Crockett set foot in Texas at last. He accepted the hospitality of Isaac Jones for the night, and while there confessed his financial embarrassment, and arranged to trade his engraved, buckskin-wrapped pocket watch, the same one given him by the citizens of Philadelphia in 1834, in return for Jones's timepiece, plus thirty dollars. It was a symbolic closing of a door, perhaps. The relic of a time when everyone spoke his name no long
er had meaning to him now, and in this place. Like the whole trip that it represented, the watch was only a means to a future end. “With his open frankness, his natural honesty of expression, his perfect want of concealment,” said Jones a few months later, “I could not but be very much impressed.” Finding Crockett a most congenial companion, he treasured the watch as a memento “which would often remind me of an honest man.”95
Leaving Lost Prairie, Crockett rode a few miles over the level prairies to Big Prairie.96 There he passed the night with a settler family whom Crockett told he had come to Texas to indulge “his favorite propensity for fighting,” more boast than fact since it had been fully twenty years now since Crockett heard a hostile shot. His hostess showed concern for his family back in Tennessee without him, but Crockett revealed that the watch and memories of the old political life were not all that he was breaking with. “I have set them free—set them free,” he said of Elizabeth and the children. “They must shift for themselves.”97
By early December, Crockett had passed through Clarksville, and then decided to set off across country to the west on a hunt. The land here was completely wild, not a white settlement in the region, and the Kickapoo could be unfriendly, yet Crockett had sufficient men with him now to feel safe enough. Here was his first real chance to take the bison, the Texas bear, and the measure of the landscape as well. He rode more than eighty miles west and found the land between the Bois d'Arc Creek and Choctaw Bayou, both flowing into the Red, particularly pleasing. No sooner did he see it than he decided that he might not return to Tennessee at all. He could file for a headright claim and settle right there where he found abundant fertile soil, lush forest, clear spring water, good open prairie to range cattle, and game aplenty. He also found that the stream would certainly support the inevitable gristmill. Best of all, the great herds of bison migrated north and south on their annual treks right through the area. He could enjoy a magnificent hunt twice a year. Local swarms of bees produced abundant honey, sweet for man and a good lure for bears.98 Before setting off he agreed to rendezvous with others of his party on Christmas at the falls of the Brazos, but when he did not show up for several days after the appointed time, a rumor went out that he had been attacked and killed by the Kickapoo. By New Year's, however, word reached his friends that he was quite alive and just enjoying the hunt so much that he ignored the approaching deadline. By February the stories of his death reached the eastern press, and no doubt his family, but they were used to hearing exaggerated reports of his demise and this one, like those before, they probably realized to be “a whapper of a lie.”99
By January 5 Crockett found his way down the old Trammel's Trace to Nacogdoches, and there a welcome awaited him. His old friend Ben McCulloch, who may have been with him in Arkansas but skipped the hunt, greeted him.100 Townsmen, delighted at seeing the celebrity, and taking it for granted that he had come to join their struggle for independence, gave him the inevitable dinner, and he responded with the inevitable speech. “I am told, gentlemen, that, when a stranger, like myself, arrives among you, the first inquiry is—what brought him here?” David said. “To satisfy your curiosity at once as to myself, I will tell you all about it. I was, for some years, a member of Congress. In my last canvass, I told the people of my District, that, if they saw fit to re-elect me, I would serve them as faithfully as I had done; but, if not, they might go to hell, and I would go to Texas. I was beaten, gentlemen, and here I am.” Inevitably it brought a roar of applause, but especially here, where he delivered the little set piece for the first time.101
Crockett found more than enough in Texas to persuade him that his future, at least for the time being, lay there. He enjoyed wonderful health on his trip so far, and the distraction of the adventure had erased any depression as a result of his defeat in August. He found the country itself exhilarating—“the garden spot of the world,” he called it. Any man could make his fortune there, with so much land available, and at such a small price that he could pay off the purchase price of his three-quarters of a league from its own produce. More than that, after seeing the Choctaw-Bois d'Arc country, he contracted a bit of the land fever himself, and thought he might be able to secure an appointment as land agent to settle the territory. “I would be glad to see every friend I have settle there,” he said. “It would be a fortune to them all.”
Perhaps most of all, the warm enthusiastic welcomes that met him wherever he went in Texas convinced Crockett that the men there appreciated him. There was no taint of being pro- or anti-Jackson here. American politics stopped at the Sabine, for Texians cared only about what was happening in Texas, and so far prospects looked bright. After a few minor skirmishes and a desultory siege at San Antonio, the Mexicans had been pushed south of the Rio Grande. Their supreme general, Santa Anna, was rumored to be on the way with another army, but if the Texians had beaten them once they could do it again, and every day more volunteers passed through Nacogdoches from the States. No one could tell the outcome. U.S. troops might even intervene, but whatever happened, Texas seemed destined not just to be free of Coahuila, but from Mexico itself. He could be a part of a “bran fire” new country.102
After a few days in Nacogdoches, and with the invitation to return for a grand dinner given by the ladies of the town, Crockett and about ten followers rode east a day to San Augustine where the same welcome awaited on January 8. The town fathers fired their one little cannon to celebrate his arrival, Crockett made a speech from a street corner, and again there was the bountiful dinner fete afterward. Judge Shelby Corzine hosted Crockett at his home, where no doubt they reminisced about their service in the Creek War, and civic leaders approached him to suggest that he become a candidate to represent their community in the coming constitutional convention on March 1.103 Crockett assumed from the moment of his arrival that he could take a leading role in Texian politics almost at once if he wished. He could win a seat merely by putting his name forward. Having no property or residence as yet, he had no constituency, but now San Augustine offered itself. During the fete for him that evening he responded to their offer with the obligatory protest of disinterest. He had come to Texas to fight, not to seek office, he told them disingenuously, for getting involved in the rebellion formed no part of his original intention. Nevertheless, just so that San Augustine would not be offended by his apparent demur, he went on to add that he would “rather be a member of the Convention than of the Senate of the United States.”104 His audience understood him well enough. The next day a man in San Augustine wrote to Lt. Gov. John Robinson to tell him that Crockett “is to Represent them in the Convention.”105
“I have but little doubt of being elected a member to form the Constitution of this province,” David wrote soon after the offer. Yet the lure of an adventure tugged at him as well. In giving his very equivocal denial of the town's offer, he had committed himself for the first time publicly to going into the volunteer forces, though he must have made the decision some days earlier, perhaps in part because of the assumption that there would be generous land bounties for volunteers once the hostilities ceased. Two decades had passed since his last campaign of the military sort. He was forty-nine now, perhaps graying a bit, the firm frame starting to show a little flesh after the soft years in Congress. He would enjoy the excitement of a fight or two, and more the camaraderie of the camp and field. It would be his last chance to be a boy again. Moreover, Crockett always knew enough to go where the votes were, and in the current crisis, with or without property, every volunteer serving in the Texian forces got a vote. He had but to volunteer, which would automatically put him among hundreds of voters. He could serve Texas a little while, electioneer at the same time, and win the volunteers' convention seat or the one from San Augustine perhaps. Either might start him back on the road of political fortune, its terminus not yet imagined in the unknown territory of Texas's future. Echoing what he told the men of San Augustine, he wrote his daughter that “I had rather be in my present position than to be el
ected to a seat in Congress for Life.” He would make his fortune here in Texas. “I am rejoiced at my fate.”106 Crockett and friends returned to Nacogdoches in a day or two, and there David went before Judge John Forbes on January 12 to take his oath of allegiance to the provisional government of Texas. In talking with Forbes, Crockett and those with him gave their promise to sustain Robinson and the General Council that took power in November 1835 in their resistance to the speculators like Bowie and Mason, who backed Henry Smith. Crockett balked, however, when he noted that the oath included the words “or future other government that may be thereafter declared.” The unsaid clause, of course, was that there might be an independent national government in time, but David objected to such a blanket promise of fealty. He insisted that the word “republican” be inserted before “government” before he would sign. Forbes, already greatly flattered at giving the oath to such a celebrity, gladly agreed, and so Crockett became a volunteer with a six months' commitment.107 More than that, he committed his future to Texas. Thereafter he told those he met that he intended never to return to Tennessee again.108 In keeping with the militant spirit of the times, and his new status as a mounted volunteer, Crockett trotted out all the old clichés that the people wanted to hear. When Nacogdoches' ladies regaled him with another dinner, he boasted that Texian men would “lick up the Mexicans like fine salt.” Better than that, he promised personally “to grin all the Mexicans out of Texas.”109
In the days following his enlistment, Crockett saw a loose band of other volunteers form under his assumed leadership, though he held no rank. Tinkle and Burgin appear to have left him before now, but his nephew William Patton was still at his side, and with him McCulloch, Peter Harper, Jesse Benton, Daniel Cloud, and B. Archer Thomas of Kentucky, Crockett's cousin John Harris, Micajah Autry, and a dozen others.110 They were all delighted with the addition of the distinguished Tennessean, and partially in his honor began to call themselves the Tennessee Mounted Volunteers. Perhaps too, in recognition of the kind of service David performed in the Creek War, they regarded themselves as “spies,” meaning scouts.111 As evidence of the common assent that “Colonel” Crockett should lead them, they left much of the official detail of their outfitting to him, and he spent a busy January 15 getting ready to leave for the seat of expected action. Always in need of cash, he sold two extra rifles to the provisional government for $60.00, though he only got $2.50 on the spot, the balance to be paid later. He also allowed his tall chestnut horse and its equipment, plus the rifle he kept for himself, to be absorbed into the government service, for another voucher for $240.00 to be collected thereafter.112