American Legend: The Real-Life Adventures of David Crockett

by Buddy Levy

  That first election also defined Crockett’s “electioneering” style, one he would use again and again, partly because it worked but mostly because it genuinely reflected who he was. Reluctantly he would enter the fray, using his humor, wit, and homespun colloquialisms and charm to win the hearts of voters. He affected naïveté, and pointed out that he rarely went looking for public office but rather it periodically came calling on him, and it was his duty as a good citizen to answer the calling.18 In most cases he was elected for positions for which he had no prior experience, and for which his résumé was spotty at best. But one of his many skills proved to be his great capacity for on-the-job training, and during his one-year tenure as justice of the peace Crockett presided over many cases, from ruling on rightful ownership of butchered hogs to child custody. He issued various licenses, including those of matrimony, “certified bounties for wolves,”19 and as he remembered, “In this way I got on pretty well, till by care and attention I improved my handwriting in such manner as to be able to prepare my warrants, and keep my record book, without much difficulty.” Crockett thrived and learned as much as he thought he needed to in his capacity as magistrate, until he decided to resign on November 1, 1819, ostensibly to focus more on his growing industries.

  For the next two years David Crockett remained essentially in one place, unusual for him given his nomadic yearnings. But there was plenty of work to be done, and he spent countless hours working on his concerns such as the gristmill, the distillery, and the gunpowder factory. Elizabeth had generously kicked in her share, but even this fell short of the amount needed to get things up, running, and producing income, forcing the Crocketts to borrow to complete the buildings. David Crockett’s growing reputation as a fair and honest man certainly didn’t hurt his ability to obtain loans, and by late October 1820 he would write one of his creditors, a John C. McLemore, explaining that he’d be able to pay him back by the following spring. He was already falling behind on his payments on two plots of ground, one just sixty acres, the other a more impressive—and more expensive—320-acre parcel.

  . . . I have been detained longer than expected my powder factory have not been pushed as it ought and I will not be able to meet my contract with you but if you send me a three-hundred acre warrant by the male I will pay you interest for the money until paid. I do not wish to disappoint you—I don’t expect I can pay you the hole amount until next spring.20

  His hope was that by spring his factories would be fully operational and showing profits. Things apparently worked well enough, for by early 1821 he had decided that it was time for him to take a crack at higher office, this time running for the state House of Representatives. In February he left his working industrial entities and set out on a cattle drive that took him down into the lower reaches of North Carolina, then returned to go electioneering, which, as Crockett admitted, was a “bran-fire new business” to him. He looked at it this way: “It now became necessary that I should tell the people something about the government, and an eternal sight of other things that I knowed nothing more about than I did about Latin, and law, and such things as that.” Crockett was about to take his woodsy brand of politicking to the people of Hickman and Lawrence counties, using his storytelling and sharp wit to win the people over. He would later muse about this period of his life, “I just now began to take a rise.” Things were finally settled and operating at home, with Elizabeth pretty much running the place. It was time to hit the campaign trail to see what he might roust up.

  AROUND ABOUT THIS TIME there was arranged what Crockett called “a great squirrel hunt” along the Duck River, where Crockett’s kind of people—hunters, farmers, folks making a living off the land—would gather. The squirrel hunt included competition, fun, and politics, as the contest was between Crockett and his backers and those in favor of his opponent. Crockett described the setup:

  They were to hunt for two days: then to meet and count scalps, and have a big barbecue, and what might be called a tip-top country frolic. The dinner, and a general treat, was all to be paid for by the party taken the fewest scalps . . . I killed a great many squirrels, and when we counted scalps, my party was victorious.

  At the frolic in Centreville, the candidates were expected to speak on the subject of moving the county seat of Hickman nearer to the center, and a great many townsfolk and folk from all around the county had come for the festivities, as well as to hear what the candidates had to say on the matter. Crockett was asked to go first, and he did a fair bit of legitimate hemming and hawing, partly because in fact he had no real position on the subject, partly to play the role of the reluctant candidate, but mostly because he knew that his opponent was eloquent and “could speak prime,” and Crockett used a gambling metaphor to describe his opponent’s verbal superiority: “And I know’d, too, that I wa’n’t able to shuffle and cut with him.” But the opponent’s arrogance and overconfidence also piqued Crockett’s interest, and he was offended that the man wasn’t taking him seriously enough. Here Crockett’s insecurity and pride rose high in his cheeks. He remembered the man’s attitude: “The truth is, he thought my being a candidate was a mere matter of sport; and didn’t think, for a moment, that he was in any danger from an ignorant back-woods bear hunter.” That kind of underestimation was always a risky one to take when facing the competitive David Crockett.

  Crockett’s ire was spurred, his dander up. Still, he had only made one official political speech, and his oratory skills were elementary at best. Facing the expectant crowd, he attempted to speak, but immediately became seized with stage fright: “I choaked up as bad as if my mouth had been jam’d and cram’d chock full of dry mush.” The people gawked at him as he struggled. They waited impatiently, and Crockett was at a moment of truth in his political career. He was on the verge of being laughed, then booed, right off the stump. At long last Crockett spoke, explaining his problem and seizing the instant:

  At last I told them I was like a feller I had heard of not long before. He was beating on the head of a barrel near the road-side, when a traveler, who was passing along, asked what he was doing that for? The fellow replied, that there was some cider in that barrel a few days before, and he was trying to see if there was any then, but if there was he couldn’t get at it. I told them that there had been a little bit of speech in me a while ago, but I believed I couldn’t get it out.21

  The tactic worked, for as he finished the crowd roared with laughter, and Crockett quickly took the cue to tell a few more amusing anecdotes and tales, and when he had them all in stitches he politely thanked them for their time and stepped down, careful to remark aloud that he was “dry as a powder horn” and that it was a good time for them all to wet their whistles. He led most of the group to the liquor stand, where they all had drinks and Crockett continued with tall tales while his competitor was left speaking practically to himself. Crockett’s style and charisma had lured them all over to his side. His behavior and sense of humor that day became the stuff of local legend. He had won their attention and admiration, and he knew he had their votes.

  He went on to the town of Vernon, where residents wished the county seat to remain. Crockett quickly comprehended a political reality—he could sway voters simply by agreeing with them. When they pressed him directly on the subject of his opinion, Crockett went coy: “I told them I didn’t know whether it would be right or not, so I couldn’t promise either way.” He had dodged the issue, at least for the moment. The next day a large gathering convened at Vernon, including his opponent as well as those running for Congress and governor, and here Crockett was asked to speak again. Crockett claimed he was nervous again, but his cleverness suggests that his jitters were contrived, all part of his scheme. The major candidates spoke “nearly all day,” likely boring and tiring the crowd with politics and posturing. Crockett said that he “listened mighty close to them, and was learning pretty fast about politics.” Seeing that the crowd was losing interest, Crockett used what he had learned. “When they were all d
one, I got up and told some laughable story, and quit. I found I was safe in those parts, so I went home, and didn’t go back until the election was over.”

  Crockett said of this portrait, “I am happy to acknowledge this to be the only correct likeness that has been taken of me.” (David Crockett. Engraving by Chiles and Lehman, Philadelphia, from an oil portrait by Samuel Stillman Osgood, 1834. Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville.)

  Crockett had his first major political epiphany: that it is better to be liked, to amuse the voters and tell them what they want to hear, than it is to be knowledgeable but boring. It was a stroke of country brilliance, and it worked. When the votes were tallied, Crockett had more than doubled his competitor’s count. Colonel David Crockett had just won in his first bid for the Tennessee state legislature. The rise of Crockett, the man and the legend, had begun.

  SEVEN

  “The Gentleman from the Cane”

  CROCKETT PACKED UP IN THE FALL and left his homestead on the banks of Shoal Creek for bustling Murfreesboro, which was the state capital at the time. His folksy wisdom, sharp and clever wit, and charismatic likability had gotten him elected, and now was his chance to take to the bigger stage of legislature, and also the relatively bigger stage of the Tennessee city. For all his later bravado, Crockett would have felt some intimidation at the transitions he was undergoing personally, professionally, and socially. Along the campaign trail he’d had the opportunity to hobnob with big-shot politicians, and he had participated at functions where his lack of social refinement would have been crudely evident. Though he would later find a way to use that “country bumpkin” image to his advantage politically, overstating his ignorance for his own benefit, at the time it would have bored into him like a tick, a constant reminder of his meager financial and social status.

  Crockett relates the story of passing through the town of Pulaski on his way to Murfreesboro, and how he there met and rode with James Knox Polk, who at the time was a twenty-six-year-old lawyer from a prominent family, who had recently been selected as a clerk in the state senate. Polk looked and acted the part of the politician, and he came with real credentials, including a university education and an intimidating command of legal terminology. As they rode along “in a large company,” Polk offered to Crockett that in the coming session there might be a “radical change of the judiciary.” Crockett claims that he knew no more than his horse the words “judiciary” or “radical change,” adding a phrase that would become one of his staples, “If I know’d I wish I may be shot.” He simply smiled, agreed, and then got out of there, moving quickly away from Polk for fear that someone might immediately ask him to define the word “judiciary.” Crockett seemed intuitively to know that there were times to appear ignorant and times not to.1 But it was always part of a ruse, and Crockett was a lot smarter than he let on. His feigned ignorance remained a ploy he would use under certain circumstances, and he could turn it on or off at will.

  On September 17, 1821, Crockett presided for the first time as an elected official representing Hickman and Lawrence counties at the first session of the Fourteenth General Assembly. The very next day he found himself serving on the Standing Committee of Propositions and Grievances, as it happened his only committee appointment for the session, and a rather mundane one at that.2 The committee addressed such issues as debt collection, land ownership, and rights of widows and divorced women, some issues Crockett would have been comfortable dealing with from his experience as a magistrate and justice of the peace.3 Though his first term would be a relatively uninteresting, even quiet one, Crockett did manage to leave a stamp, giving an indication of his passions and beliefs concerning land issues, a passion that would ultimately define his political career. He also surfaced as an outspoken and vehement champion of the underclass, the poor, dispossessed, and disenfranchised, groups with whom he would always align himself. This inflexible political tendency would later hurt him, but at the time he was simply voting his convictions.

  Land-reform questions, those which would ultimately become the Land Bill and his fixation, were of great importance to Crockett, and his initial votes reflected his ardent beliefs. Within the first week, on September 25, he voted “to release landowners in the Western District from paying double tax assessments for delinquent taxes during 1820.”4 His voting and speaking activity over the first term concerned the public lands and land warrants, which at the time was a rather complicated situation. Squatters in Tennessee were sitting on lands which had actually been issued, as far back as the Revolution, as rewards to veterans for services rendered in battle, back when the state was part of North Carolina. So squatters, even those who had lived on plots for years, tilling the soil and building homes, could be kicked off what they believed to be their own lands if a warrant holder showed up waving a piece of legal paper. What made it worse was that many of these people had been migrating farther and farther west, constantly pushed by claimants evicting them from “their” land, until finally this population of people began to inherit the least desirable, least arable plots—rock-filled ground or scrubby, dry hills with no planting potential. Crockett understood these peoples’ plight well, for he and his family had been among them, without warrants or money, floating from place to place after each failure.5

  Quite early in the session Crockett rose nervously and awkwardly to speak, and his discomfort with procedure, as well as his backwoods colloquialisms peppered his speech, marking him not only a fledgling legislator, but an untutored one. James C. Mitchell of East Tennessee stood and referred to Crockett as “the gentleman from the cane,” a moniker carrying the same connotation as “hick” or “hillbilly.” Some of the assembled chuckled uncomfortably, and Crockett immediately took Mitchell to task, demanding an apology but receiving none. Later, outside the chambers, Crockett strode up to Mitchell and lambasted him, demanding satisfaction in the form of an apology or a fistfight. Mitchell declined, assuring the raging Crockett that he’d meant no insult, but that he’d merely been describing where Crockett was from (the “cane” being what today would be referred to as “the sticks” or “the boonies”).

  Crockett’s own dress at that time reflected his rural origins and his financial constraints. He wore handmade trousers and a rough shirt, a tanned-skin hunting jacket, and perhaps, for evenings out or in the legislative chambers, an unadorned wool coat. By contrast, his counterparts, having greater resources, affected the garb of the landed aristocracy: “pantaloons or knee breeches, waistcoats, cutaway coats, and shirts with fancy cuffs and cotton ruffles at their collars.”6 Crockett’s station was obvious, even without Mitchell’s public slur. But Crockett’s wit and cunning would soon come in handy. Along the roadside Crockett chanced upon a “cambric ruffle,” the frill worn at the neck by gentlemen of the day. He squirreled it away and entered the halls, where he put it on undetected. When Mitchell next spoke Crockett waited patiently for his prey to finish, then pounced. Crockett rose to speak, the foppish ruffle garishly evident, a ludicrous ornament contrasting with his functional farm clothes. The pantomime brought the assembly to uproarious tears of laughter, forcing the embarrassed Mitchell to flee the place, and winning Crockett a modicum of respect from his peers. From that time on Crockett acknowledged the nickname “the gentleman from the cane,” on his own terms, and he wore it with pride, not only for himself, but for the backwoods folk he had come to represent.7 Crockett had managed to win the day with his pluck and good humor, and salvage his pride in the process.8

  Crockett was getting his feet wet, voting against a bill to suppress gambling, offering a speech against allowing magistrates receiving fees for lawsuits, and adapting to the lifestyle of evenings out drinking and playing at the gaming tables, when he received shocking news from home. In an act of nature eerily similar to the “Noah’s fresh” which wiped out his father and forced one of his childhood moves, a flash flood had ripped through rain-swollen Shoal Creek, scouring away the streambanks and carrying away much of the Crocketts’ i
ndustrial complex, including both the powder and gristmills. The buildings had been torn from their very foundations and swept away to oblivion. Crockett would later pun on the situation, playing off the use of “mash” in whiskey-making parlance: “The first news I heard after I got to the Legislature, was that my mills were—not blown up sky high, as you would guess, by my powder establishment,—but swept away all to smash by a large fresh . . . I may say, that the misfortune just made a complete mash of me.” At the time, it was certainly no joking matter. The disaster forced Crockett to take an immediate leave of absence. On September 29 he rushed home, expecting the worst and getting exactly what he expected. To compound matters, the distillery would also be lost, rendered useless without the ground corn churned out by the gristmill. It appeared by all measures, having just gotten started and his career on the rise, that the Crocketts were ruined.

  Elizabeth Patton Crockett showed her mettle during this devastating time, shoring up her husband when he was as low as he could be. She’d been running things anyway, caring for infant Matilda and the two toddlers, Sissy and Elizabeth Jane, plus six others, getting only token help from the older boys. She had financed much of the complex and managed ably in his absence. Crockett walked the grounds in near depression, his inspection yielding news that was beyond discouraging: he estimated the losses at “upwards of three thousand dollars, more than I was worth in the world.” It was a serious moment of truth for Crockett—and his strong and honest wife advised him not to run from their troubles, but to face them head on—the way they always had. She advised that it was best to “Just pay up, as long as you have a bit’s worth in the world; and then every body will be satisfied, and we will scuffle for more.”9 Crockett later admitted that her words were salvation for him, exactly what he needed to hear, and he agreed that the only recourse was to clear their debts and start over, embarking on yet another “bran-fire new start.” He looked at it this way: “Better to keep a good conscience with an empty purse, than to get a bad opinion of myself, with a full one.” They were noble sentiments, and suitable words to live by, and Crockett would carry both—the good conscience and the empty purse—with him to the end of his days.