David Crockett: The Lion of the West

by Michael Wallis

  The political campaign evoked in Crockett a folksiness and frontier flair that displayed his expansive personality in full force. One of the first events he attended was a big squirrel hunt down on the Duck River in Hickman County. He soon found that politicking in the canebrakes mostly was a good excuse for a no-holds-barred party. “They were to hunt two days; then to meet and count the scalps, and have a big barbecue, and what might be called a tip-top country frolic,” explained Crockett. “The dinner, and a general treat, was all to be paid for by the party having taken the fewest [squirrel] scalps. I joined one side, taking the place of one of the hunters, and got a gun ready for the hunt. I killed a great many squirrels, and when we counted scalps, my party was victorious.”11

  Before the dancing got under way, the various political candidates were called on to make a speech. Instead of using his talent as a storyteller, Crockett became self-conscious, figuring he had to make some sort of formal address. He approached the event organizers and tried to get out of speaking, since, as he put it, making a speech as a candidate “was a business I was as ignorant of as an outlandish negro,” his language reflecting a racist sentiment typical of the day.12 Crockett’s opponent was confident and not at all concerned about running against someone he considered to be “an ignorant back-woods bear hunter.” Seeing he had no choice, Crockett tried to speak to the crowd but “choaked [sic] up as bad as if my mouth had been jam’d and cram’d chock full of dry mush.” Then, as the crowd stood staring at the befuddled Crockett, he had a brainstorm—tell one of the humorous stories he knew so well.

  The instantaneous decision would change the course of regional Tennessee political history of the early nineteenth century.

  At last I told them I was like a fellow I had heard of not long before. He was beating on the head of an empty barrel near the road-side, when a traveler, who was passing along, asked him what he was a 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 a speech in me a while ago, but I believed I couldn’t get it out. They all roared out in a mighty laugh, and I told them other anecdotes, equally amusing to them, and believing I had them in a first-rate way, I quit and got down, thanking the people for their attention. But I took care to remark that I was as dry as a powder horn, and that I thought it was time for us all to wet our whistles a little; and so I put off to the liquor stand, and was followed by the greater part of the crowd.13

  Crockett’s confidence as a stump speaker increased at every event he attended. Whenever he was in doubt, he just “relied on natural born sense,” an endless repertoire of anecdotes and jokes, and those “treats of liquor” for the potential voters with a thirst. The people who came to the barbecues, shooting matches, frolics, and rallies did not seem to care if Crockett avoided speaking about political issues but instead told them outrageously funny yarns that most of the time featured himself as the brunt of the joke. Crockett never put on airs. He was trying to represent the common men and women, just like himself, and not the landed gentry, creating an ethic for this western portion of Tennessee that challenged the hierarchical structure of the plantation culture. Crockett’s constituents had heavily calloused hands, sunburnt necks, and contrary dispositions if anybody—including the government—pushed them too hard.

  During the busy campaign, on the second day of August, Elizabeth gave birth to her last child—a baby girl whom she and David named Matilda.14 That brought the number of children living under the cabin roof to eight. Two weeks after Matilda’s birth, her father turned thirty-five, the halfway mark to the biblical “threescore years and ten.” Later that month, a stream of voters rode or walked to the polls from first light until it got dark. When all the ballots were counted, Crockett was declared the winner. He had beaten his opponent by a two-to-one margin, or, as he more precisely put it: “I was elected, doubling my competitor, and nine votes over.”15

  Not long after the election, Crockett visited with James Knox Polk, future president of the United States, at a political gathering in the town of Pulaski. Polk, just twenty-six, was an ardent admirer and lifelong supporter of Andrew Jackson, and served as the clerk of the State senate during Crockett’s first term in the legislature. Polk offered Crockett his congratulations—he was already well acquainted with him from appearances as a lawyer in Lawrence County—and then conjectured, “Well, colonel, I suppose we shall have a radical change of the judiciary at the next session of the Legislature.”16 According to Crockett, this rhetorical question from Polk caught him totally off guard. “Very likely, sir,” replied Crockett, who then quickly took his leave. “For I was afraid some one would ask me what the judiciary was; and if I knowed I wish I may be shot. I don’t indeed believe I had ever before heard that there was any such thing in all nature; but still I was not willing that the people there should know how ignorant I was about it.” It seems likely that this was yet another instance when Crockett exaggerated his supposed ignorance, the ploy that so pleased his supporters, who, of course, he hoped would read his autobiography.

  Crockett was present and accounted for at the state capital in Murfressborough (as Murfreesboro was spelled at that time) when the first session of the Fourteenth General Assembly convened, on September 17, 1821.17 His first term as a state lawmaker—representing Hickman and Lawrence Counties—was relatively quiet. Crockett was appointed to only one committee, the rather inconsequential Standing Committee of Propositions and Grievances.

  The opening days of the session were uneventful except for an incident on the floor of the chamber that proved to be a valuable lesson for Crockett and the other legislators. During debate, a nervous Crockett, still trying to get his bearings and unfamiliar with legislative procedure and protocol, rose with some nervousness to speak on behalf of a measure under consideration. When he finished and took his seat, James C. Mitchell, a leading criminal lawyer of the day and the representative for three Tennessee counties, rose to speak in opposition. In the course of rebutting Crockett’s remarks, Mitchell referred to Crockett as “the gentleman from the cane,” a term that many believed denoted a common person from the backwoods.18 Some of the other members chuckled at Mitchell’s remark. Crockett took immediate offense. He leapt to his feet and demanded an apology. None was forthcoming, and, later, during the recess outside the chambers, Crockett accosted Mitchell and restated his demands and promised a good country whipping for Mitchell if he refused. The impeccable Mitchell, dressed in the fine suit of clothes worn by gentlemen of distinction, tried to reason with Crockett and assured him that he meant no insult but had used the expression merely to describe the canebrake country where Crockett resided. The explanation did not satisfy Crockett or soothe his wounded pride.19

  As luck would have it, that evening Crockett came upon a cambric ruffle lying on the dirt road just like the one worn at the neck by Mitchell. The following morning, Crockett pinned the fancy ruffle to his own coarse shirt and strode into the chamber. Waiting until the eloquent Mitchell finished speaking once again, Crockett arose to offer his comments on the matter under discussion. As a pontificating Crockett walked back and forth, the frilly ruffle caught the eye of other members of the body and soon titters and giggles turned into uproarious and prolonged laughter at the stark contrast between the foppish neck scarf and Crockett’s country garb. A humiliated Mitchell, who later served with Crockett in the U.S. Congress, quickly fled the chamber, as if he had been effeminized by the swashbuckling frontiersman. Crockett took his bows as the others cheered. Crockett won his spurs that day and he did so without shedding blood in a duel. From that moment on, the title “gentleman from the cane” was no longer considered derogatory. It was a badge of honor for Crockett and for the people he represented.

  TWENTY-THREE

  LAND OF THE SHAKES

  ALTHOUGH CROCKETT WAS ENSCONCED as a lawmaker in Murfreesboro, it became quickly ev
ident that he was not able to detach himself from the hardships of the frontier. Only twelve days into his first session as a state lawmaker, “the gentleman from the cane” was dealt a devastating blow. On September 29, 1821, an urgent message from Elizabeth reached Crockett in Murfreesboro with the news that a torrential summer storm had caused the Tennessee River and all its tributaries, including Shoal Creek, to flood. The Crockett family’s gristmill and gunpowder factory on the swollen creek were completely demolished and washed away by the flash flood. All that remained of the complex was a portion of the dam, the millrace, and the distillery. Floodwater filled the log house where the Crocketts lived, but, thankfully, none of the family was lost or injured.

  News of the catastrophe stunned Crockett. An accidental explosion of the gunpowder mill was of utmost concern to him; the usually calm waters of Shoal Creek seemed far less menacing. Obviously thankful that his loved ones were not injured, Crockett nonetheless realized that, in one swift blow, a promising business venture had vanished. Crockett later wrote, “the misfortune just made a complete mash of me.”1

  He immediately requested and was granted a leave of absence to go home and survey the damage. Before he departed, the dutiful rookie legislator took time to cast his vote for General William Carroll for governor of Tennessee. In those years, governors and U.S. senators were elected by the state legislature, and Crockett wanted to perform this important duty and support Carroll, a Pennsylvania native and well-known and admired liberal who had fought as one of Andrew Jackson’s colonels in the Creek War.2 After voting for Carroll—who was victorious in the election and would serve as governor for all but two years between 1821 and 1835—Crockett rode back to Lawrence County as fast as his horse would go. When he arrived, he discovered the disaster was every bit as bad as Elizabeth had described in her message. As someone later observed, Crockett came home expecting the worst, and that was exactly what he found.3 Only splinters remained of the buildings. Without a gristmill to grind corn, the badly damaged distillery was useless. David, Elizabeth, and their children had to seek shelter in the homes of other Crockett and Patton family members living in the area.

  For David, the sight of his own mill in ruins surely triggered a flashback to his childhood in east Tennessee when his father, John Crockett, was driven to ruin by a horrendous flood that swept away his gristmill. Determined to avoid the debt that overwhelmed his father, David wisely listened to Elizabeth’s counsel. She knew more about the operation of the mill and the family finances than Crockett, who was usually away either hunting or politicking. In the 1880s, William Simonton, from a respected family of Lawrenceburgians that stretched back to early settlement times, recalled that as a boy he often saw Elizabeth running the mill in her husband’s absence. Simonton spoke of Elizabeth’s great strength and said that she always was grinding or lugging sacks of grain with ease.4 Of course, she did all of that work while nursing an infant, overseeing a couple of toddlers, and trying to keep her older children out of trouble.

  Elizabeth advised her husband not to pack up and run away from the dilemma but to face the adversity head-on, just as they always had done in times of trouble. She told David to practice what he preached—to be always sure he was right and then go ahead. “She didn’t advise me, as is too fashionable, to smuggle up this, and that, and t’other, to go on at home; but she told me, says she, ‘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.”5

  Much of the milling operation had been financed by Elizabeth’s funds, but there also were several loans that had to be satisfied. “I determined not to break full handed, but thought it better to keep a good conscience with an empty purse, than to get a bad opinion of myself, with a full one. I therefore gave up all I had, and took a bran-fire new start.”6 The best course of action for the Crocketts was to clear up as many of their debts as possible and then start over.

  “I had some likely negroes, and a good stock of almost every thing about me, best of all I had an honest wife,”7 a reflective Crockett wrote almost twelve years later. This was his first mention of slaves in his autobiography. Slavery was a part of everyday life in Tennessee, particularly in the middle and western sections of the state, where tobacco and cotton were the favored crops. Back in Crockett’s homeland of eastern Tennessee, small farmers who had no need for a large slave workforce largely dominated the hilly land. Also, even early in the state’s history, eastern Tennessee harbored a great deal of antislavery sentiment. Since Crockett never farmed on the scale of the larger farms and plantations, he would have had no need for many slaves or hired hands to help with the work. Although it is not known if those “negroes,” as Crockett calls them, were his slaves or on loan from a family member or friend, the 1820 Lawrence County census records listed one slave, gender not given, living in the Crockett household.

  Three months later, on October 9, 1821, Crockett returned to Murfreesboro and his work as a state legislator. Despite the troubles he faced, he also seemed steadfast and genuinely concerned about the welfare of his two-county legislative district and other matters of state importance. He not only introduced bills to help Hickman and Lawrence counties, where small farms produced such staple crops as cotton, corn, wheat, and oats but also supported the call for a revised state constitution that would adjust property taxes and place more of the burden on the wealthy class, providing some long overdue relief to citizens of modest means. Bearing in mind his fondness for all sorts of wagering, it was odd that Crockett voted to prohibit gambling. He may have taken such a stance on behalf of his constituents, the small landholders and squatters who had to work hard just to subsist. Yet given his own experiences as a bound-out boy, it was no surprise when he voted against a measure that would have allowed the state to hire out debtors as laborers. For many of the more seasoned politicians of the time, Crockett was a novelty of sorts, but still someone who had to be taken seriously.

  “He was one of the earliest specimens to emerge of that nineteenth-century type, the Backwoodsman, a type that was often more given to noise and a kind of shrewdness than to solidity,”8 wrote a scholar in 1956, near the peak of the revival of interest in Crockett. Others agreed but narrowed their assessment of the man as a political force and pinpointed his primary objective—helping people just like himself, who had been unable to acquire property of their own. In Crockett, backwoods citizens witnessed a new sort of politician emerge, one quite different from the patrician Jackson, who, despite his attempts to come off as a man of the people, in fact was a large landowner and shrewd businessman who did quite well in the marketing of cotton, tobacco, and slaves.

  The differences between the two men became clear when one examined Crockett’s record not only as a state lawmaker but as a congressman. Virtually every vote that Crockett spoke up for and cast, in some way or another, was of a populist nature, generally directed against the established landholding gentry and meant to help the large number of settlers moving into the recently opened western lands.

  The potential those lands promised also greatly appealed to Crockett. As soon as the first session of the Fourteenth General Assembly concluded its business and adjourned on November 17, he packed his trunk and bags and headed home to prepare for an expedition to the western frontier of Tennessee. Although he enjoyed seeing his wife and children, he saw no good purpose spending the winter in a crowded cabin as the guests of kindly relatives. Crockett knew there was land to be scouted in Carroll County, named for Governor Carroll, and newly established on November 7, only ten days before the legislative session ended.9 The vast expanse stretched all the way from the Tennessee River to the Mississippi.

  Crockett had never been to the area before, but he was well aware of its existence; on July 10, 1788, his father-in-law, Robert Patton, had received from the state of North Carolina a 1,000-acre land grant for his service in the Revolutionary War.10 In October 1821, when Patton learned of the tremendous property loss suffered by the
Crocketts due to the flood, he deeded 800 of the acres to Elizabeth and David. The deed was executed in Buncombe County, North Carolina, where Patton resided after Crockett agreed to pay $1,600 for the acreage.11 Elizabeth’s brothers-in-law, Abner Burgin and James Edmonson, witnessed the transfer of the deed, and at least one of them brought the document to Tennessee for Crockett’s signature.

  Crockett was eager to have a look at the newly purchased tract and pick a new site to which his family could move after his debts were cleared up in Lawrence County. He recruited his eldest son, John Wesley, an already physically impressive fourteen-year-old, and another young man, Abram Henry, and they cut out for the Obion River, 150 miles to the northwest.12

  For the first time in his life, Crockett rode into what had become known as “the land of the shakes,” ever since the thundering series of earthquakes of 1811–1812 that were felt hundreds of miles away. It had been more than a decade since the earthquakes shook the region, but from time to time tremors could still be felt. The ground was scarred by deep fissures and cracks, some extending for miles through the canebrakes and woods already thick again with stands of hickory, oak, and gum. A focal point of the region was Reelfoot Lake, a large body of water created by the earthquakes and studded with cypress trees, some hundreds of years old.

  In 1891—some seventy years after Crockett arrived there—a New York Times correspondent, who toured the land of the shakes and visited Reelfoot Lake, described the place as a “peculiarly weird and uncanny” place.13 The Times article, entitled “A Sportsmen’s Paradise,” published with no byline, went on to report: “No where perhaps in the United States, at least east of the Rocky Mountains, is to be found another such perfect sporting ground for gunners and fishermen. Bears, deer, wolves, panthers, wildcats, wild turkeys, and all sorts of lesser game abound in the forest on the borders of the lake…. Far out in the lake, beyond the sight of shore, one gets the impression of being in a vast ruined temple. On every side rise endless spires of decaying cypresses, branchless, leafless, shorn of their beauty, gleaming in the still air like gaunt, mysterious monuments of destruction and death.”14