by Buddy Levy
In the meantime, Alexander and Arnold locked horns, and in doing so, made a fatal error: they completely overlooked Crockett as a serious threat. Alexander remembered his decisive victory of two years earlier and seemed little threatened or concerned by Crockett this time around, instead focusing his attentions on Arnold, who by necessity responded in kind. Crockett put it this way: “My two competitors seemed some little afraid of the influence of each other, but not to think me in their way at all. They, therefore, were generally working against each other, while I was going ahead for myself, and mixing among the people in the best way I could.”
His mixing proved to be just right, and around the region Crockett was now entrenching himself as the peoples’ candidate. He was a self-made man, and he began to comprehend what being popular felt like. His talk was so straight and genuine that people simply couldn’t help but like him. He had developed a style, complete with a country accent, mannerisms, and scathingly funny comic timing, and most remarkable of all, it was really him. He made certain to season his short speeches with regional jargon, understanding the efficacy of homilies like “A short horse is soon curried,” knowing that the common folk would appreciate the slang. He may have been exaggerating some, but he wasn’t faking it. What Crockett gave them in the congressional race of 1827 was pure and authentic Crockett.
For years after the election Crockett liked to tell the story of how all three candidates convened once at a stump meeting in the eastern counties, and how, as usual, Arnold and Alexander had completely ignored Crockett, treating him as if he did not even exist. On this occasion Crockett went first, and spoke very briefly and simply, knowing from experience that the other two would be remembered for their long, protracted, and boring speeches, and he for his good humor and cunning wit. Crockett listened attentively as they railed away at each other, first Alexander, then Arnold:
The general took much pains to reply to Alexander, but didn’t so much as let on that there was any such candidate as myself at all. He had been speaking for a considerable time, when a large flock of guinea-fowls came very near to where he was, and set up the most unmerciful chattering that ever was heard, for they are a noisy little brute any way. They so confused the general, that he made a stop, and requested that they might be driven away. I let him finish his speech, and then walking up to him, said aloud, ‘Well, colonel, you are the first man I ever saw that understood the language of fowls.’ I told him that he had not had the politeness to name me in his speech, and that when my little friends, the guinea-fowls, had come up and began to holler ‘Crockett, Crockett, Crockett,’ he had been ungenerous enough to stop, and drive them all away. This raised a universal shout among the people for me, and the general seemed pretty bad plagued.19
David Crockett’s eccentricities were getting him noticed, and crowds of people came just to get a peek at him, and if they were lucky, to hear some of his well-wrought anecdotes. At the same time, Crockett had learned just enough in the legislature to understand that political allegiances mattered, though he never learned that lesson well enough to make it stick—when it came down to a vote, his conscience and his principles always triumphed over any political alliances. Still, despite his vote against Jackson in 1825 and his suspicion of him as privileged rather than one of his own kind, Crockett was outwardly and honestly a backer of Jackson at that time: “I can say, on my conscience, that I was, without disguise, the friend and supporter of General Jackson, upon his principles as he laid them down, and, as ‘I understood them.’ ” Of course, the provision between Crockett’s quotation marks became important later on, foreshadowing a moment when Crockett would make the case that even Jackson himself no longer ascribed to his own principles, but for the moment, Crockett supported Jackson’s upcoming run for the presidency in 1828.
By election time in the late summer of 1827, Crockett had done all he could in an attempt to unseat an incumbent, one who had beaten him the last time around. His face and voice and outlandish storytelling had been spread all around the district; Marcus Winchester’s endorsement, introductions to influential circles, and fiscal backing had ensured that. The rest was pure Crockett. When the polling numbers came in, even Crockett had to be a bit surprised. Before the election, he had admitted that he was a long shot, as unseating an incumbent like Alexander was difficult in the best of circumstances, and in Arnold he faced a very clever major general in the militia, and a lawyer as well, which Crockett viewed as nearly insurmountable: “I had war work, as well as law trick, to stand up under. Taking both together, they make a pretty considerable of a load for any one man to carry.” But the resilient Crockett managed to shoulder that load, and more, for the final count shocked everyone and sent tremors rumbling all the way past Memphis to Washington City. The turnout had been excellent, and 2,417 had voted for the barrister Arnold. Alexander received an impressive 3,647, nearly a thousand more than the number that got him elected in 1825. But it was the quirky and enigmatic David Crockett who carried the day, his remarkable 5,868 votes representing a solid whipping laid on his opponents.20 His election signaled a new era in American politics, one that gave hope to the common fellow. A man like Crockett spoke his piece and then went ahead—no posturing, no empty or blanket campaign promises, no obfuscation and misdirection by belaboring complicated and dull issues. Here was an original straight shooter, a rustic and woodsy neighbor you’d be comfortable with trading yarns at the local tavern, and one in whom a new generation of voters could see themselves.
The last portrait of Congressman Crockett, dressed as a gentleman, as he would have appeared during his days in Washington. (David Crockett. Portrait by Asher Brown Durand, engraving on paper, copy after Anthony Lewis de Rose, print circa 1835. Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC.)
The bear hunter from the cane had wrestled and yarned his way into the tricky arena of national politics, and he was heading to Washington City. David Crockett was ready for the challenge, and if it turned out that he wasn’t quite qualified for the job, he was a quick study and he would learn as he went. In truth, he really had no idea precisely what he had gotten himself into. What remained even less clear was whether Washington City was ready for Congressman David Crockett of Tennessee.
NINE
Political Reality
IT WAS TIME FOR A VICTORY LAP. Crockett, in good spirits but fatigued by the rigors of campaigning, decided to take Elizabeth on a well-earned vacation to North Carolina, where she could visit her relatives and he could revel a bit in his new station as U.S. congressman, accepting backslaps and horns of whiskey as they came his way. In the first week of October, Crockett, John Wesley—now a fit and hearty twenty-year-old—and Elizabeth set out for North Carolina. In about the third week of September they paused in Nashville, where Crockett paid a visit to Henry Clay’s son-in-law, James Erwin, hoping to receive an introduction to the young man’s influential father-in-law, the secretary of state. Crockett believed, or at the very least hoped, that the powerful Clay shared some of his own ideas on western land issues, and Crockett would have been champing at the bit to meet someone with his vision, especially to make a potential allegiance of that magnitude.1
They later stopped to visit with friend James Blackburn, and passed a pleasant time reliving old stories and swapping tales of the recent election. Just a day after departing Blackburn’s, Crockett fell violently ill, overtaken by what he later described as “billes feaver” (bilious fever), a presumed liver infection that was actually a recurrence of his old nemesis, malaria. It hit Crockett hard, and though he managed to ride the distance to Swannanoa, North Carolina, he arrived an emaciated figure. Doctors bled him, as was then believed the proper treatment, and he required nearly a month of bed rest before he was up and moving about on his own again.2
When he was finally sufficiently recovered Crockett rose to find himself embroiled in a duel between his good friend Sam Carson and a man named Dr. Robert Vance. Carson, who would later be named the first secretary of stat
e of Texas, had defeated Vance in a congressional race in 1825, and in 1827 the two squared off in a hotly contested rematch that included negative campaigning, verbal jousting, and a flurry of personal attacks and insults that each man took seriously. Vance publicly questioned Carson’s manhood, calling him a coward, and Carson (who had just won the election) responded with a challenge to a duel, to be held in Saluda, North Carolina, dueling being illegal in Tennessee.3 On November 6, 1827, Crockett followed his friend Sam Carson to the field of honor, where he watched the two men step off their paces, turn, and fire. Crockett hardly waited for the gun smoke to clear before he mounted his horse and, still weak from his bout with malarial fever, galloped off to report the news. According to an account from Carson’s daughter, “David Crockett was the first man who brought the news to Pleasant Gardens. He rode his horse almost to death, beat his hat to pieces and came dashing up yelling ‘The Victory is Ours.’ ”4 Dr. Robert Vance died the following day.
With his first session as a congressman looming on the horizon, Crockett said good-bye to Elizabeth and entrusted John Wesley to chaperone her back home to Tennessee. His own illness had taken up so much time that he would be unable to backtrack to the west and make it to Washington City by the start of the session on December 3rd. Elizabeth and John Wesley departed with three young slaves her father had given her, and Crockett, weakened once more, remained some time to allow doctors to again treat him with blood-letting. A tough man accustomed to bearing significant pain and discomfort, Crockett rode toward Washington City, accompanied by Sam Carson, Lewis Williams, and probably Nathaniel Claiborne.5
The journey should have been exciting and adventurous, Crockett happy to be traveling with a good companion in Carson and an experienced statesman in Williams, but a relapse in his condition made the trip across the mountains excruciating for the frontiersman. By the time he finally arrived in Washington Crockett was nearly dead, and along the way he feared the worst: “I have thought twice that I was never to see my family anymore,” he admitted later in a letter to Blackburn. The illustrious bear hunter had lost a good deal of body weight. He experienced “the worst health since I arrived here that I ever did in my life,” and he went on to report “I am much reduced in flesh and have lost all my Red Rosy Cheeks that I have carried so many years.”6 Still, Crockett managed to suffer through the arduous journey, and just before the opening of the session he took a room at Mrs. Ball’s boarding house on Pennsylvania Avenue, along with a handful of fellow representatives that included Nathaniel Claiborne, Thomas Chilton of Kentucky, and William Clark of Pennsylvania,7 as well as Gabriel Moore of Alabama, and Joseph Lecompte of Kentucky.8
Some of the men Crockett caroused with and shared lodgings with would go on to achieve greatness, and the upstart congressman felt humbled and perhaps even a little intimidated by the stature of those around him. Yet he was never one to cower before anyone or anything, and quite soon he managed to convince himself that he belonged. “I think I am getting along very well with the great men of the nation,” he told Blackburn in confidence, “much better than I expected.” What he likely did not expect was the difficulty of the political waters he would soon be forced to navigate. Quite soon he would be paddling upstream against a heady current.
STILL PALE AND FEEBLE, Crockett nonetheless went straight to work, enthusiastic and optimistic that he would be able to make a difference and effect change working alongside those “great men” to whom he had alluded. Just three days into his first session, Crockett began hammering away on his pet project, the Tennessee Vacant Land Bill. The freshman congressman was still wet behind the ears, and naïve enough, to make the following unrealistic claim: “I have Started the Subject of our vacant land on the third day after we went into Session I have no doubt of the passage of the Bill this Session I have given it an erly Start.”9 He had grown accustomed to seeing administrative and political processes move with relative celerity at the state level, but he would soon realize that such speed on issues and bills simply wasn’t possible at the national level, and the slow-grinding pace would eventually wear on him. He would complain to friends and constituents about the sluggish movement in Congress, betraying an impatience in his character. “Thare is no chance of hurrying business here . . .” he griped, “thare is such a desposition here to Show Eloquence that this will be a long session and do no good.”10
Crockett quickly, if unhappily, came to understand at least one political reality—change, if it came at all, would take a great deal more time than he’d bargained for. Patience and compromise were two necessities for political success at the highest levels, and Crockett would never possess either. He needed to be going somewhere, moving forward, and no doubt he daydreamed of riding the outlands at sunrise, the call of birds in the air, the sound of his baying hounds echoing through the cane, as the endless murmur of speeches droned on through the stuffy halls.
At least the nightlife was entertaining. A series of hotels and boarding houses strung along tree-lined Pennsylvania Avenue accommodated most politicians, and a vigorous social scene abounded when the gavel fell at day’s end. Once Crockett felt well enough, he ventured out, tugged into a whirlpool of taverns and bars, of backroom gaming, gossip, drinking, and dinner parties. In this milieu Crockett flourished, his gift of gab and magnetic personality and humor perfectly suited to the social scene. Certainly he would have felt a tad self-conscious at his lack of presentable clothes, his redundant outfits compared to the many suits worn by some of his more well-heeled contemporaries, but he compensated by being himself, by plying friends with whiskey and sidling up for an amusing yarn or two.11
While he was having a fine time of it, his eccentricities and rustic manners did not go unnoticed by his peers, some of whom would become his political opponents, even enemies. His uncultured grammar and general lack of refinement became fodder for the papers, and one particular account detailed how, at a gala dinner hosted by President John Quincy Adams to welcome incoming congressmen, Crockett drank from the finger bowls and accused a waiter of trying to steal his food. He was still publicly aligned with Jackson, and the accounts were published by anti-Jacksonians in hopes of casting Jackson’s supporters in an unfavorable light, characterizing them as unruly, barbarous, and generally ill-suited for the gentility of public life.12 Crockett initially ignored the slurs, since his personality was at the same time making him some friends, and he was becoming something of a curiosity, frequently invited to parties, dinners, and social functions for his affability.
The first few months in office also helped Crockett comprehend the divisive nature of partisan politics and the political climate he’d entered. John Quincy Adams had been chosen by the House of Representatives in 1824 when, after Jackson had taken the majority of the popular vote, he’d failed to be confirmed by the Electoral College. At the time, Crockett and many others figured some collusion must have been arranged against Jackson, and he carried that suspicion with him to Washington City, noting that Henry Clay was immediately made secretary of state.13 By 1828 the political camps, formerly called “Republicans,” were now split into two centralized groups, the Democratic Republicans and the National Republicans. Jacksonians, in a holdover from the notions of Jeffersonian Democracy, courted and even embraced the notion of the “common man,” while Adams and Clay came across as elitists, and even “evinced a strong distaste for, if not actual fear of, the rule of the masses, which they often equated with the mob.”14
Crockett paid attention to the camps, noting how allegiances and alignments ebbed and flowed, and was pulled for the moment to follow Jackson and his principles, the man who had won New Orleans, defeated the British, and opened the West to expansion by subduing the Indians. The presidential election of 1828 was on everyone’smind, and Crockett could see the potential benefits of remaining outwardly a Jackson supporter, especially if it might later assist him in pushing through his vacant land bill. Nearly all of Crockett’s fellow Tennessee delegates backed Jackson, and that group
included James Polk. Crockett could see that “Old Hickory is rising,”15 and he had no doubt that “Jackson will in a short time begin to receive the reward of his merit.”16
Thus Crockett spent his time between the laborious day sessions and the evening revelry attempting to make sense of where and how he might fit into the scheme of things, all the while trying to remember the desires and needs of his constituents back home in Tennessee. But after a full two months in office he had nothing tangible to offer them, and the painfully slow wheels of bureaucracy drove him to agitation. His introduced land bill still lay on the table, gathering dust, and Crockett noted with great frustration that his colleagues yammered on endlessly about nothing: “Their tongues keep working, whether they’ve got any grist to grind or not.”17 It was painful to bear, and Crockett began to leave early if speeches blathered on and on and seemed mere partisan posturing unrelated to issues. He missed roll calls here and there as well, citing his ill health, which was a fact, but the malaise he suffered from most was a general ennui at the slow proceedings.
One significant acquaintance Crockett made during his first term was with a fellow freshman representative from Kentucky, Thomas Chilton. Chilton enjoyed Crockett’s style and affability. They often voted similarly, and in fact they teamed up on an odd little bill that would provide a pension for the war widow of a man named Major General Brown. On April 2, 1828, Crockett and Chilton argued vehemently against the proposed bill, contending that providing public funds to individuals would be a “special privilege” they weren’t entitled to. Though he voted against the bill, the generous Crockett empathized with the plight of the poor woman and went so far as to offer his own money to aid her, and only Chilton rallied in support. As it turned out, their money wasn’t required; the bill passed and Mrs. Brown was awarded her much-needed pension.18Crockett and Chilton struck up a friendship, and Chilton began polishing some of Crockett’s writing, assisting with his speeches and other correspondence such as circulars and letters to his constituency. The relationship would develop over time, and Chilton became a ghostwriter for Crockett, ultimately co-authoring his autobiography. Chilton stayed at Mrs. Ball’s boarding house whenever he was in Washington City, and the two men spent a great deal of time together.19
