In the evening I attended at the court-house and met the largest concourse of people that ever has been assem bled in Louisville since it has been settled. This I was told by a gentleman who had resided there for upwards of twenty years. The people all appeared to be excited with curiosity or something else. I had no idea of attracting so much attention but there I was in the thick of them. I discovered there were a great many ladies amongst the audience and among them the celebrated Mrs. Drake. A stand had been erected for me in the court-house yard on which I stood and addressed the crowd.
I then returned to the hotel and in a short time a committee of the young men waited on me and invited me to a dinner on Thursday as a testimony in favor of my political course. I gave a conditional acceptance, and no boat arriving, I attended and partook of them with a splendid dinner. I was toasted, and made a speech, complimenting the young men for their zeal in the cause of their country. If I had the powers of General Lafayette, I would have written out all my speeches; but I have not, and therefore omit this one. All passed off pleasantly and next day I took the steamboat Scotland, commanded by Captain Buckner, a gentleman, every inch of him. After a fine run, we arrived at Mills’ Point on the twenty-second day of July. Here I once more touched the soil of Tennessee and found my son William waiting to carry me home, which was distant thirty-five miles.
When I landed and took out my fine gun, the folks gathered round me to see the great curiosity. A large fellow stepped up and asked me why all the members did not get such guns given them? I told him I got that gun for being honest, in supporting my country instead of bowing down and worshiping an idol. He looked at me and said that was very strong. “No stronger than true, my friend,” said I.
In a short time I set out for my own home: yes, my own home, my own soil, my own humble dwelling, my own family, my own hearts, my ocean of love and affec tion which neither circumstances nor time can dry up. Here, like the wearied bird, let me settle down for awhile and shut out the world.
In the course of a few days, I determined to try my new gun upon the living subject. I started for a hunt and shortly came across a fine buck. He fell at the distance of one hundred and thirty steps. Not a bad shot, you will say. I say, not a bad gun either. After a little practice with her, she came up to the eye prime and I determined to try her at the first shooting-match for beef.
As this is a novelty to most of my readers, I will endeavor to give a description of this western amuse ment.
In the latter part of summer our cattle get very fat, as the range is remarkably fine, and some one, desirous of raising money on one of his cattle, advertises that on a particular day, and at a given place, a first-rate beef will be shot for.
When the day comes, every marksman in the neighbor hood will meet at the appointed place with his gun. After the company has assembled, a subscription paper is handed round, with the following heading:
“A. B. offers a beef worth twenty dollars to be shot for at twenty-five cents a shot.” Then the names are put down by each person, thus:
D. C. puts in four shots,…
$1 00
E. F. “eight”..
2 00
G. H. “two” ….
0 50
And thus it goes round, until the price is made up.
Two persons are then selected, who have not entered for shots, to act as judges of the match. Every shooter gets a board and makes a cross in the centre of his target. The shot that drives the centre, or comes nearest to it, gets the hide and tallow, which is considered the first choice. The next nearest gets his choice of the hind quarters; the third gets the other hind quarter; the fourth takes choice of the fore quarters; the fifth the remaining quarter; and the sixth gets the lead in the tree against which we shoot.
The judges stand near the tree, and when a man fires they cry out, “Who shot?” and the shooter gives in his name and so on, till all have shot. The judges then take all the boards and go off by themselves, and decide what quarter each man has won. Sometimes one will get nearly all.
This is one of our homely amusements enjoyed as much by us, and perhaps more, than most of your refined entertainments. Here each man takes a part, if he pleases, and no one is excluded unless his improper conduct renders him unfit as an associate.
I BEGIN this chapter on the 8th day of July, 1835, at Home, Weakley county, Tennessee. I have just returned from a two weeks’ electioneering canvass and I have spoken every day to large concourses of people with my competitor. I have him badly plagued, for he does not know as much about “the Government,” the deposites, and the Little Flying Dutchman, whose life I wrote, as I can tell the people, and at times he is as much bothered as a fly in a tar pot to get out of the mess. A candidate is often stumped in making stump speeches. His name is Adam Huntsman; he lost a leg in an Indian fight, they say, during the last war, and the Government run him on the score of his military services. I tell him in my speech that I have great hopes of writing one more book, and that shall be the second fall of Adam, for he is on the Eve of an almighty thrashing. He relishes the joke about as much as a doctor does his own physic. I handle the administration without gloves, and I do believe I will double my competitor, if I have a fair shake, and he does not work like a mole in the dark. Jacksonism is dying here faster than it ever sprung up and I predict that “the Government” will be the most unpopular man, in one year more, that ever had any pretensions to the high place he now fills. Four weeks from tomorrow will end the dis pute in our elections, and if old Adam is not beaten out of his hunting shirt, my name isn’t Crockett.
While on the subject of election matters, I will just relate a little anecdote about myself which will show the people to the east how we manage these things on the frontiers. It was when I first run for Congress; I was then in favor of the Hero, for he had chalked out his course so sleek in his letter to the Tennessee legisla ture that, like Sam Patch, says I, “there can be no mis take in him,” and so I went ahead. No one dreamt about the monster and the deposites at that time and so, as I afterward found, many, like myself, were taken in by these fair promises, which were worth about as much as a flash in the pan when you have a fair shot at a fat bear.
But I am losing sight of my story. Well, I started off to the Cross Roads dressed in my hunting shirt and my rifle on my shoulder. Many of our constituents had assembled there to get a taste of the quality of the candi dates at orating. Job Snelling, a gander-shanked Yankee, who had been caught somewhere about Plymouth Bay and been shipped to the west with a cargo of codfish and rum, erected a large shantee and set up shop for the occasion. A large posse of the voters had assembled before I arrived and my opponent had already made considerable headway with his speechifying and his treating when they spied me about a rifle shot from the camp, sauntering along as if I was not a party in business. “There comes Crockett,” cried one. “Let us hear the colonel,” cried another and so I mounted the stump that had been cut down for the occasion and began to bushwhack in the most approved style.
I had not been up long before there was such an uproar in the crowd that I could not hear my own voice and some of my constituents let me know that they could not listen to me on such a dry subject as the welfare of the nation until they had something to drink and that I must treat them. Accordingly I jumped down from the rostrum and led the way to the shantee, followed by my constituents shouting, “Huzza for Crockett” and “Crockett for ever!” When we entered the shantee, Job was busy dealing out his rum in a style that showed he was making a good day’s work of it, and I called for a quart of the best, but the crooked critur returned no other answer than by pointing to a board over the bar, on which he had chalked in large letters, “Pay to-day and trust tomorrow.” Now that idea brought me up all standing; it was a sort of cornering in which there was no back out, for ready money in the west, in those times, was the shyest thing in all nature, and it was most particularly shy with me on that occasion.
The voters, seeing my predicament, fell off
to the other side and I was left deserted and alone, as the Government will be, when he no longer has any offices to bestow. I saw, as plain as day, that the tide of popular opinion was against me and that unless I got some rum speedily, I should lose my election as sure as there are snakes in Virginny, and it must be done soon or even burnt brandy wouldn’t save me. So I walked away from the shantee, but in another guess sort from the way I entered it, for on this occasion I had no train after me and not a voice shouted, “Huzza for Crockett.” Popularity some times depends on a very small matter indeed; in this par ticular, it was worth a quart of New England rum and no more.
Well, knowing that a crisis was at hand, I struck into the woods with my rifle on my shoulder, my best friend in time of need, and as good fortune would have it, I had not been out more than a quarter of an hour before I treed a fat coon, and in the pulling of a trigger, he lay dead at the root of the tree. I soon whipped his hairy jacket off his back and again bent my steps towards the shantee and walked up to the bar, but not alone, for this time I had half a dozen of my constituents at my heels. I threw down the coon skin upon the counter and called for a quart and Job, though busy in dealing out rum, forgot to point at his chalked rules and regulations, for he knew that a coon was as good a legal tender for a quart in the west as a New York shilling any day in the year.
My constituents now flocked about me and cried, “Huzza for Crockett,” “Crockett for ever,” and finding the tide had taken a turn, I told them several yarns to get them in a good humor, and having soon dispatched the value of the coon, I went out and mounted the stump without opposition and a clear majority of the voters followed me to hear what I had to offer for the good of the nation. Before I was half through, one of my constituents moved that they would hear the balance of my speech, after they had washed down the first part with some more of Job Snelling’s extract of cornstalk and molassess and the question being put was carried unanimously. It wasn’t considered necessary to tell the yeas and nays, so we adjourned to the shantee and on the way I began to reckon that the fate of the nation pretty much depended upon my shooting another coon.
While standing at the bar, feeling sort of bashful while Job’s rules and regulations stared me in the face, I cast down my eyes and discovered one end of the coon skin sticking between the logs that supported the bar. Job had slung it there in the hurry of business. I gave it a sort of quick jerk and it followed my hand as natural as if I had been the rightful owner. I slapped it on the counter and Job, little dreaming that he was barking up the wrong tree, shoved along another bottle, which my constituents quickly disposed of with great good humor, for some of them saw the trick, and then we with drew to the rostrum to discuss the affairs of the nation.
I don’t know how it was, but the voters soon became dry again and nothing would do, but we must adjourn to the shantee, and as luck would have it, the coon skin was still sticking between the logs, as if Job had flung it there on purpose to tempt me. I was not slow in raising it to the counter, the rum followed of course, and I wish I may be shot, if I didn’t, before the day was over, get ten quarts for the same identical skin and from a fellow, too, who in those parts was considered as sharp as a steel trap and as bright as a pewter button.
This joke secured me my election, for it soon circu lated like smoke among my constituents and they allowed, with one accord, that the man who could get the whip hand of Job Snelling in fair trade could outwit Old Nick himself and was the real grit for them in Con gress. Job was by no means popular; he boasted of always being wide awake and that any one who could take him in was free to do so, for he came from a stock that sleeping or waking had always one eye open and the other not more than half closed. The whole family were geniuses. His father was the inventor of wooden nutmegs, by which Job said he might have made a fortune if he had only taken out a patent and kept the business in his own hands; his mother, Patience, manufactured the first white oak pumpkin seeds of the mammoth kind and turned a pretty penny the first season and his aunt, Prudence, was the first to discover that corn husks, steeped into tobacco water, would make as handsome Spanish wrappers as ever came from Havana and that oak leaves would answer all the purpose of filling, for no one could discover the difference except the man who smoked them, and then it would be too late to make a stir about it. Job himself bragged of having made some useful discoveries; the most profitable of which was the art of converting mahogany sawdust into cayenne pepper, which he said was a profitable and safe business, for the people have been so long accustomed to having dust thrown in their eyes, that there wasn’t much danger of being found out.
The way I got to the blind side of the Yankee merchant was pretty generally known before election day and the result was that my opponent might as well have whistled jigs to a milestone as an attempt to beat up for votes in that district. I beat him out and out, quite back into the old year, and there was scarce enough left of him after the canvass was over to make a small grease spot. He dis appeared without even leaving a mark behind and such will be the fate of Adam Huntsman, if there is a fair fight and no gouging.
After the election was over, I sent Snelling the price of the rum but took good care to keep the fact from the knowledge of my constituents. Job refused the money and sent me word that it did him good to be taken in occasionally, as it served to brighten his ideas, but I afterwards learnt when he found out the trick that had been played upon him. He put all the rum I had ordered in his bill against my opponent who, being elated with the speeches he had made on the affairs of the nation, could not descend to examine into the particulars of a bill of a vender of rum in the small way.
CHAPTER 7
I Have My Say / Texas
August 11, 1835. I am now at home in Weakley county. My canvass is over and the result is known. Contrary to all expectation, I am beaten two hundred and thirty votes, from the best information I can get and, in this instance, I may say, bad is the best. My mantle has fallen upon the shoulders of Adam and I hope he may wear it with becoming dignity and never lose sight of the welfare of the nation for the purpose of elevating a few designing politicians to the head of the heap. The rotten policy pursued by “the Government” cannot last long; it will either work its own downfall or the downfall of the republic soon unless the people tear the seal from their eyes and behold their danger time enough to avert the ruin.
I wish to inform the people of these United States what I had to contend against, trusting that the expose I shall make will be a caution to the people not to repose too much power in the hands of a single man, though he should be “the greatest and the best.” I had, as I have already said, Mr. Adam Huntsman for my competitor, aided by the popularity of both Andrew Jackson and Governor Carroll, and the whole strength of the Union Bank of Jackson. I have been told by good men that some of the managers of the bank on the days of the election were heard saying that they would give twenty-five dollars a vote for votes enough to elect Mr. Huntsman. This is a pretty good price for a vote and in ordinary times a round dozen might be got for the money.
I have always believed, since Jackson removed the deposites, that his whole object was to place the treasury where he could use it to influence elections and I do believe he is determined to sacrifice every dollar of the treasury to make the Little Flying Dutchman his suc cessor. If this is not my creed, I wish I may be shot. For fourteen years since I have been a candidate I never saw such means used to defeat any candidate, as were put in practice against me on this occasion. There was a disciplined band of judges and officers to hold the elec tions at almost every poll. Of late years they begin to find out that there’s an advantage in this, even in the west. Some officers held the election, and at the same time had nearly all they were worth bet on the election. Such judges, I should take it, are like the handle of a jug all on one side. I am told it doesn’t require much schooling to make the tally list correspond to a notch with the ballot box, provided they who make up the returns have enough loose tickets in their breeches po
ckets. I have no doubt that I was completely rascalled out of my elec tion and I do regret that duty to myself and to my country compels me to expose such villainy.
Well might Governor Poindexter exclaim: “Ah! my country, what degradation thou hast fallen into!” Andrew Jackson was, during my election canvass, franking the extra Globe with a prospectus in it to every postoffice in this district and upon one occasion he had my mileage and pay as a member drawn up and sent to this district, to one of his minions, to have it published just a few days before the election. This is what I call small potatoes and a few of a hill. He stated that I had charged mileage for one thousand miles and that it was but seven hundred and fifty miles and held out the idea that I had taken pay for the same mileage that Mr. Fitzgerald had taken when it was well known that he charged thirteen hundred miles from here to Washington and he and myself both live in the same county. It is somewhat remarkable how this fact should have escaped the keen eye of “the Government.”
An Autobiography of Davy Crockett Page 18