by Buddy Levy
Jackson’s cleverly worded position on the issue had couched the “removal” in a positive, hopeful way, one bent not on destroying these remaining, generally peaceful tribes of Choctaw, Creek, and Cherokee, but rather designed to save them and their culture from complete assimilation. He noted the fate that had befallen the Eastern tribes, including the Mohegans, the Delawares, the Narragansetts, and warned that extinction awaited the Southern tribes if they were not voluntarily removed to
an ample area west of the Mississippi, outside the limits of any state or territory now formed, to be guaranteed to the Indian tribes, each tribe having distinct control over the portion of land assigned to it. There they can be Indians, not cultural white men; there they can enjoy their own governments subject to no interference from the United States except when necessary to preserve peace on the frontier and between the several existing tribes; there they can learn the ‘arts of civilization’ so that the race will be perpetuated and serve as a reminder of the ‘humanity and justice of this Government.’28
Crockett and many others could see through the wording to the reality for the tribes in question. And Crockett himself had been shepherded from place to place long enough to understand what such forced migration felt like. It was true that his grandparents had been slain by the Creeks, and it was true that he had fought against the Indians in the Creek War, sent on special missions to “kill up Indians,” but David Crockett possessed a basic, central morality that told him this bill was unfair and unethical. He empathized with the Indians because in many ways he was exactly like them. At his core, all he really wanted was a modest piece of ground he could call his own, some likely and productive cane where he could hunt when he wanted, and the freedom to move about unencumbered by undue governmental regulation and jurisdiction. Additionally, Indians had saved his life more than once, picking him up and carrying him to the safety of an Alabama farmhouse as he lay dying from malarial fever, and aiding him and his starving men as they staggered through Florida. No, Crockett believed that this was an unjust measure—bad politics and bad for the country—and it would not stand. The Indian Removal Bill would be Crockett’s public break with Jackson.
When the bill finally came to a vote in late May, it passed by the excruciatingly slight margin of 102 to 97, falling along strict party lines and creating plenty of tension vis-à-vis alliances and coalitions, especially with the specter of election ramifications looming in the next cycle. Crockett antagonist Pryor Lea referred to the debate and vote on the bill as “one of the severest struggles that I have ever witnessed in Congress.”29 Crockett himself, as he would to the very end of his days, stuck to his principles:
I opposed it from the purest motives in the world. Several of my colleagues got around me, and told me how well they loved me, and that I was ruining my self. They said it was a favorite measure of the president, and I ought to go for it. I told them I believed it was a wicked, unjust measure, and that I should go against it, let the cost to myself be what it might. That I was willing to go with General Jackson in everything that I believed was right; but, further than this, I wouldn’t go for him, or any man in the whole creation; I would sooner be honestly and politically d-nd, than hypocritically immortalized.30
It was a bold and noble act. With the verbal stroke of a “nay,” Crockett had conspicuously cast the only Tennessee vote against the Indian Removal Bill, effectively hanging himself politically. After the contentious passage, Jackson wasted no time, signing the monumental bill on May 28, 1830. It was a deeply dividing event in the history of the United States, one that made legal the efficient and expeditious expulsion of entire Southern Indian peoples from their ancestral homelands.31 The victory for Jackson propelled into motion a series of events that would culminate in the tragic Trail of Tears.
Crockett would later reflect on the proceedings, steadfast in his belief that he had done right: “I voted against the Indian bill, and my conscience yet tells me that I gave a good and honest vote, and one that I believe will not make me ashamed in the day of judgment.”32
Perhaps not, but before long he would have plenty of people, including his confused and angered constituents, to answer to. He had publicly snubbed the will of the executive leader Andrew Jackson, and the decision would go neither unnoticed nor unpunished.
Within the next month Crockett would attempt to assuage the fallout from his singular dissention within his state, penning a speech in which he attempted to simultaneously clarify his position and placate the voters. He acknowledged openly that it was an unpopular position to take, and that it would be difficult for him to find a person within 500 miles who agreed with his decision, yet he stuck by his vote to the end. In the speech, published in the Jackson Gazette on June 19, less than a month after the vote, he implored his electors to understand that “If he should be the only member of that House who voted against the bill, and the only man in the United States who disapproved it, he would still vote against it; and it would be a matter of rejoicing to him till the day he died, that he had given the vote.”33 He eloquently added that he could not bear to see “the poor remnants of a once powerful people” driven from their land and homes against their desires. He honestly told the people that “If he did not represent the constituents as they wished, the error would be in his head and not his heart.”34 The editors of the Gazette, while willing to publish Crockett’s speech, vehemently disagreed with him, and printed a note saying they “regretted” his stance. The headstrong Crockett never regretted his stance, unpopular as it was.
Ironically, while Crockett drifted into turbulent political waters, his general popularity blossomed. His name, his peculiar sayings and idiom, and stories about his character, even about meetings with him, were circulating from Washington City outward across the growing nation. While his brash and unwavering independence ostracized him from the powerful Jackson forces, it was becoming his notable trademark, establishing him as an “eccentric” and “original character.”35 He was becoming more than a curiosity—he was on the verge of achieving celebrity at home and even abroad. Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French civil servant and aristocrat visiting America in 1831, wrote about Crockett in his work Journey to America. Tocqueville learned of Crockett from others, and became fascinated by his unlikely ascension from the canebrakes to one of the greatest political bodies in the world. He marveled that a common man could rise to the distinguished halls of power in America. But more important, his assessment of Crockett’s character contributed to Crockett’s growing celebrity.36 Crockett was the living, breathing embodiment of a type, a Western character writ large, one that audiences and individuals yearned to glimpse more of.37 He relished the interest, even if later, feigning modesty, he claimed that he could not understand it.
Strained relations with Elizabeth made recesses awkward, and Crockett spent as little time as he could at home, instead focusing on nurturing what positive associations he still had in Washington and around his region—such as his Adams-Clay connections, and others on the routes to and from the capitol and his home. By late summer, Crockett’s break with the Jacksonians was widely known. The Jacksonians themselves noticed his movements and the fact that he spent more and more time with known anti-Jackson types, including “Henry McClung, a friend of Houston’s and himself an outspoken Adams-Clay man.”38 Crockett also fostered camaraderie with Matthew St. Claire Clark, whom he’d met during his first term and who was rumored to be an Adams-Clay crony. Crockett’s defection would have consequences, as he would come to understand in a few short months.
This portrait highlights Crockett’s high cheekbones, which he described as “Red Rosy Cheeks that I have carried so many years.” (David Crockett. Watercolor drawing by James Hamilton Shegogue, 1831. Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC. Gift of Algernon Sidney Holderness.)
Crockett finally returned to Washington in December a week late for the Twenty-First Congress, immediately scrambling to salvage something of the land bill if he could,
understanding intuitively that failure to push it through would seriously threaten his chances at reelection. On three occasions he tried to get the bill reconsidered, failing each time, though the vote was painfully close. Frustrated, Crockett was suspicious of the apparatus that was keeping the land bill tabled, and he now took it personally. He openly argued with other members of his delegation and made thinly veiled references to Jackson’s dictatorial tendencies. On January 31, he created a brouhaha over the formation of a committee to review a petition of three Cherokee Indians claiming 640 acres of land apiece. Crockett believed the petition should be dealt with by the Committee of Claims rather than by Polk’s Committee on Public Lands. Crockett argued reasonably and compassionately that though the Indians had brought suit to reclaim land confiscated from them, they were too indigent to obtain proper legal assistance in the matter, and effective counsel from the state of Tennessee had been denied them.39 His points were well taken, and after vigorous discussion the petition did find its way to the Committee of Claims, a token victory for Crockett but one that would have been noticed by Jackson and his forces, who had earlier repealed part of the 1789 Judiciary Act keeping the court from ruling on the issue.40 Crockett was once again at direct and defiant odds with Jackson on questions involving Indians, and he felt that Jackson’s interference outstripped the bounds of his office’s duties and power.
Crockett fumed for the remainder of the session, losing a fight to gain appropriation for improved navigation on the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, another internal improvement issue, and now his choleric temper took hold of him. He could no longer contain his feelings about Jackson the man, whom he increasingly believed to be a hypocrite, an autocrat, and a powermonger. He lashed out at Jackson personally, accusing him of betraying the very principles he had espoused in getting elected. “When he quitted those principles, I quit him. I am yet a Jackson man in principles,” Crockett railed, “but not in name. I shall insist upon it that I am still a Jackson man, but General Jackson is not; he has become a Van Buren man.”41 Crockett’s venomous barbs were aimed at Martin Van Buren as well, whom he believed had manipulated Jackson. Crockett referred to Van Buren as the Fox, alluding to what he considered a sneaky, oily character (another nickname for him was the Magician) who would do anything for personal advancement. “The fox is about,” he had warned in a letter published in the Gazette, “let the roost be guarded.”42 Though Crockett’s attacks were public and personal, he at least couched them with an eye toward the upcoming congressional elections, hoping his complaints would show him in a positive light, making the case that it was Jackson, not he, who had changed:
He has altered his opinion—I have never changed mine. I have not left the principles which led me to support General Jackson: he has left them and me; and I will not surrender my independence to follow his new opinions, taught by interested and selfish advisers, and which may again be remolded under the influence of passion and cunning.43
Those were fighting words, and Jackson interpreted them as such. Meantime, Jackson had bigger problems than one disgruntled congressman. Jackson’s administration continued to grapple with fallout over the so-called “Eaton Affair,” which had begun at the outset of Jackson’s first term the moment he selected his cabinet and appointed his reliable and dutiful understudy John Eaton as secretary of war. Eaton’s wife had died, but he had entered into a relationship with a woman named Margaret O’Neale Timberlake, herself recently widowed by her young, tall, and handsome Navy purser rumored to have taken his own life as a result of her infidelity.44 As gossip swirled around the social functions of Washington, Jackson forcefully suggested that Eaton marry Margaret Timberlake as the honorable course of action. Eaton consented, but by now other wives within the administration had snubbed her, and many viewed this wedding as conspicuously hasty. The whole affair created internal administrative tension that Jackson hardly needed. Additionally, there were rumblings within his own cabinet on another matter, as it was becoming evident that Vice President John C. Calhoun was now actively eyeing the presidency for 1832, Jackson having intimated that he sought a single term, and no more.45
Perhaps knowing that Jackson and his core people had public relations problems to contend with, in late February Crockett generated a circular explaining his recent break with the president, as well has his failure to hammer the land bill legislation through. Ghostwriter friend Thomas Chilton certainly had a hand in the prose, which employs a clever combination of indignation and self-exoneration:
Why I have not entered into some arrangement with my colleagues to secure the land to them [his constituents]? I can only reply that I thought that I had done so. After it was ascertained that my first proposition would fail, I prepared a substitute for it, which I understood as being satisfactory—and which I again repeat I believe would have passed without difficulty, if they had not prevented me from getting the subject before the house. Heaven knows that I have done all that a mortal could do, to save the people, and the failure was not my fault, but the fault of others.46
By this time he appeared to be reaching, however, and the squatters were primarily interested in results, not excuses. Despite Crockett’s emotional appeals, he was losing his stronghold, even in his own district, and he was clearly on the defensive.
Crockett closed his circular with patriotic language aimed at the heart, hoping for loyalty:
You know that I am a poor man; and that I am a plain man. I have served you long enough in peace, to enable you to judge whether I am honest or not—I never deceived you—I never will deceive you. I have fought with you and for you in war, and you know whether I love my country, and ought to be trusted . . . I hope that you will not forsake me to gratify those who are my enemies and yours.47
There was no question that the circular was a campaign speech, and sincere as it may have been, many saw through the rhetoric. He was blaming others for his shortcomings, and even if his constituents believed him to be honest and trustworthy, they could also see that he was ineffectual. The Jacksonians rallied, putting forth William Fitzgerald from Crockett’s own Weakley County as their man to oppose him. They would do what they could to unseat the incumbent, and in April, Jackson himself entered the fray, taking time from his own extremely busy schedule to write his friend Samuel Hays: “I trust, for the honor of the state, your Congressional District will not disgrace themselves longer by sending that profligate man Crockett back to Congress.48 Jackson, who typically did his best to ignore Crockett and, as a matter of course, used envoys or henchmen to do his bidding, apparently found Crockett a nettling inconvenience and wanted him out of office. That he would personally confront the matter suggests he took Crockett seriously and reckoned that he must be dealt with. It set up an ugly and bitter campaign.
Crockett was on his heels from the start, broke, in debt yet again, and behind in his electioneering, having lingered for weeks in Washington to pose for a portrait he may have been intending to use as a campaign prop. He borrowed money from William Seaton, a Whig supporter, and having finally attended to some remaining personal matters, he took the completed portrait and started home, heading overland by coach through Virginia via Maryland, eventually boarding a steamship for the final leg down the Ohio River.49 Paradoxically, while he might have had cause for depression during the journey, knowing full well that he was in for an up-hill battle for reelection, something beyond Crockett’s power was taking hold of the American consciousness. Earlier in the previous session, people began to speak of him in metaphoric terms; a man hearing him speak at the House referred to him as “the Lion of Washington,” and added that he was practically hypnotized by his charisma and magnetism. “I was fascinated with him,” he said.50 Visitors to the city, knowing that he lodged at Mrs. Ball’s Boarding House, would try to get a peek at this object of “universal notoriety” if they could. A newspaper article in 1831 exclaimed that he was one of the “Lions of the West,”51 alluding to a fierce, fearless, and independent nature that led Crockett to
roar his principles across the aisles. But he would need all the press he could get if he hoped to retain his seat.
Along his journey Crockett lost his new portrait, a bad omen. He arrived home fraught with fiscal worry, having been sued in April, for outstanding debts, by John Shaw, and in late May he was forced to sell twenty-five acres at his Weakley County residence to his brother-in-law George Patton. He made only $100 in the transaction, so he included Adeline, a slave girl, for another $300.52 It wasn’t much, but canvassing required ready cash. Then, as if to bolster his own waning confidence in himself, he wrote down for the first time the maxim that would come to define his brand of “can-do” attitude, scribbling across the bills of sale for the property and the slave, “Be allways sure you are right then Go, ahead.”53 It was as if he was convincing himself that continuing the campaign against such odds was the right thing to do.