David Crockett: The Lion of the West

by Michael Wallis

  The following day Crockett and Sanderson traveled just across the Delaware River to nearby Camden, New Jersey, and spent part of the day test-firing the weapon. Crockett was pleased with the gun and told those with him that it operated every bit as well as it looked. “I shot tolerable well, and was satisfied that when we became better acquainted, the fault would be mine if the varmints did not suffer,”24 he wrote.

  Back in Philadelphia for Independence Day, Crockett was in fine form, mingling with Daniel Webster and other Whig luminaries. He delivered his standard speech attacking Old Hickory and received thunderous applause. Crockett departed a couple of days later, after acquiring an elegant pitcher imported from China for his wife Elizabeth (Betsy) and meeting gunpowder manufacturer E. I. du Pont, a director on the board of the Second Bank of the United States, who gave him a dozen canisters of powder for the new “Pretty Betsey” in his life.25

  After a circuitous journey mostly by train and steamboat, and several stops in Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky, Crockett finally set foot nearly three weeks later in Tennessee on July 22 at the Mills Point boat landing, where his son William waited with a wagon to make the thirty-five-mile trip home.26 Family members, especially those who had seen the comings and goings of Crockett for so many years, provided a lukewarm reception, and no sooner had he unpacked than he was forced to face what had become the constant round of legal actions over promissory notes past due. Sales of his autobiography had yielded some relief, but Crockett’s poor fiscal judgment and lack of money management skills trumped any easing of his financial miseries.

  In this aspect of his life, Crockett had become his father, the debt-ridden John Crockett who had eventually followed his son and other family members to the land of the shakes, where he died in September of 1834.27 Just as had happened in the case of his father-in-law’s passing, David was named the administrator of his father’s estate, which not surprisingly amounted to very little. Prior to leaving that fall of 1834 to return for the next session of Congress, Crockett had to borrow even more money just to make the trip.

  Besides his financial problems, Crockett was aware that he would face strong opposition in the approaching congressional elections in August of 1835. Word on the streets of Washington City and in the hills and canebrakes of Tennessee was that one of Crockett’s main political enemies, Adam R. Huntsman, was ready to do battle for the Twelfth Congressional seat. Nicknamed “Old Black Hawk” by Crockett and a lawyer by trade, Huntsman, after having lost a leg in the Creek War in 1813, had gone on to become a powerful figure in the fledgling Democratic Party in Tennessee. He was a close friend of Andrew Jackson and James K. Polk, and was reputed to be a forceful campaigner, practical joker, and excellent speaker.28

  “Adam Huntsman is out in opposition to David Crockett for Congress, in the district represented by the Colonel,” announced a front-page blurb in the Gettysburg Adams Sentinel of November 24, 1834. “We take it the Colonel will care very little about such a ‘varment as that are.’ He will ‘chaw him up in a flash.’”29

  However, before he could concentrate on another political campaign, Crockett once more had to get his finances in order. His publishers denied him any further cash advances, so he schemed with another of his boardinghouse friends, Pennsylvania Congressman William Clark, to write yet another book—this time a work based on the event-packed Crockett tour of the eastern cities. After a good deal of cajoling, Crockett was able to convince Carey and Hart to publish such a book and Clark to write it. The agreement with Clark was for Crockett to provide him with a collection of newspaper accounts, speeches given on the tour, and any other odd notes and documents that could be organized and cobbled together to form a book.

  Yet at the expense of his congressional duties, including efforts to pass his notorious land bill, Crockett spent almost all of his time working on the book. Throughout his years spent in Congress, his top priority had been to make sure that the land of western Tennessee was made available and affordable to the settlers who had tamed it. Still unrealized, that unattainable dream seemed further jeopardized because of the financial exigencies of turning out another book.

  Laboring under the unrealistic hope that it would be published by January 1835, Crockett quickly fulfilled his part of the agreement. He was rewarded with some advance money from the publisher, but Clark, his aging and ailing co-conspirator, fell ill, and the book did not hit stores until March. It was issued with a title suggested by Crockett—An Account of Col. Crockett’s Tour to the North and Down East in the Year of Our Lord One Thousand Eight Hundred and Thirty Four. The lengthy title caused some to speculate unkindly that Crockett must have been paid by the word.

  Even before the book was released, Crockett, realizing that publishing could pay him more handsomely than politics, had come up with yet another idea for his publishers. He proposed writing a satirical biography of Martin Van Buren. Carey and Hart were skeptical. They feared that Crockett would turn out a libelous attack that would put them in court facing slander charges. Crockett persisted. His hatred for Van Buren was equal to or greater than his hatred for Jackson. In a letter to Charles Schultz, of Cincinnati, penned on Christmas Day 1834, Crockett stated, “I have almost given up the ship as lost.”30 He went on to write that if Van Buren were elected as the next president, Crockett’s only alternative would be to leave the United States, “for I never will live under his kingdom.” He then added that he would “go to the wildes [sic] of Texas,” where living under Mexican rule would be “a Paradise to what this will be.”

  After much hand wringing, Crockett’s Philadelphia publishers released the Van Buren book in June of 1835, although without listing the firm’s name on the title page. The biography was given a less than catchy title, The Life of Martin Van Buren, Hair-apparent to the “Government,” and the Appointed Successor of General Jackson. Most sources theorize that the misspelling of the word Heir as Hair was an intentional mistake to give the book a bit of backwoods flavor or was meant to ridicule Van Buren’s famously smooth and hairless pate.31 The book, as scurrilous as everyone thought it would be, was attributed to Crockett, but any contribution he actually made was minimal at best, since it was once again ghostwritten, penned this time by Augustin Smith Clayton, a jurist who represented Georgia in Congress from 1832 to 1835.32

  By the time the vitriolic biography appeared, the question of Van Buren becoming the Democratic candidate for president was purely academic. In May 1835, at the second national convention of the Democratic Party in Baltimore, Van Buren had become the unanimous choice of the delegates and was nominated.33 Crockett continued to hold out hope that he could still be defeated in the general election, but he finally admitted that he was not the man to do it. By then the Whigs agreed. They concluded that Crockett had served his purpose and outlived his usefulness. Crockett had sensed their waning support for some time, and it was not a surprise when he joined the majority of the Tennessee delegation in signing a letter asking Tennessee senator Hugh Lawson White to run as the Whig candidate in the next presidential election.34 White, the son of General James White, the founder of Knoxville, had been Jackson’s friend and succeeded him to the U.S. Senate in 1825. Since then, however, he had been twice reelected, but not without becoming disillusioned with Jackson and the charges that Old Hickory had over-stepped his authority. White also felt slighted when Jackson asked Van Buren to be his running mate and then made it obvious that he wanted the Yankee dandy from New York to become the next president.

  Crockett, in an election battle of his own, knew that unless he kept his seat in the House of Representatives there would be no chance for him ever to run again for the presidency. His book schemes, travel junkets, and congressional floor antics had taken a toll on his credibility among the voters. To add to his miseries, he had once again come home without having passed the Tennessee Vacant Land Bill.

  Huntsman proved to be a vigorous campaigner, with no lack of barbs to fling at Crockett. Many people saw Huntsman’s peg leg as
a symbol of his courage and service to the nation as an Indian fighter. On at least one occasion during the campaign, Crockett found a way to turn his opponent’s wooden limb to his own advantage. The incident in question occurred during the heat of the campaign battle, when both candidates traveled the circuit together making stump speeches along the way. Often they stayed under the same roof, as was the case on this evening when they were quartered at the home of a prosperous farmer who happened to have a comely daughter. In the wee hours, after everyone was asleep, Crockett crept out of bed, took a wooden chair, and rattled the knob of the door of the young woman’s room. She woke up screaming, and Crockett put one foot on the rung of the chair and used it like a crutch to hobble back to his own bed. The farmer mistook the sound for the tapping of Huntsman’s wooden leg and, aware of the politician’s penchant for beautiful women, burst into his quarters and demanded an explanation. Crockett acted as peacemaker and intervened. He calmed down the farmer but not before getting his vote and a promise that he would tell everyone about the lecherous one-legged Huntsman.

  If the farmer kept his word and voted for Crockett in the August election, it was not enough. It turned out to be a close race, but in the end Crockett picked up 4,400 votes compared to 4,652 cast for Huntsman.35

  Defeat did not come easily to Crockett. As was the case in past losses, he was bitter and angry. “I have no doubt that I was Completely Raskeled out of my election,” Crockett wrote to his publishers on August 11, just five days after the voting. “I will be rewarded for letting my tongue Speake what my hart thinks…. I have Suffered my Self to be politically Sacrafised to Save my Country from ruin and disgrace and if I am never again elected I will have the gratification to know that I have done my duty.”36

  Many newspapers took Crockett to task. The colorful frontiersman always made good copy, no matter if he was portrayed as a superhero or, as the Arkansas Gazette now called him, that “buffoon, Davy Crockett.” When his forty-ninth birthday came around on August 17, there was not much to celebrate. On August 31, the editors of the Charleston Courier offered their assessment:

  Col. Davy Crockett, hitherto regarded as the Nimerod [sic] of the West, has been beaten for Congress by a Mr. Huntsman. The Colonel has lately suffered himself to be made a lion, or some other wild beast, tamed, if not caged, for public shew [sic]—and it is no wonder that he should have yielded to the prowess of a Huntsman, when again let loose in his native wilds. We fear that “Go ahead” will no longer be either the Colonel’s motto or destiny.37

  The newspaper was wrong, for “Go ahead” was exactly what Crockett had in mind. Soundly defeated in Washington and in his home state, he looked now for solace elsewhere, having heard for a long time stories about the opportunities that waited in Texas. He had repeatedly declared that he would head to Texas and live under Mexican rule if Van Buren ever became president. Crockett decided he could not wait for that election.

  During this period of the 1830s and for several years to come, it was not uncommon to see the letters G.T.T. painted or carved on the doorways of cabins in Tennessee and other parts of the country, especially the South. It was a sure sign that the occupants had picked up and were, as they said, “Gone to Texas.” The slogan was first seen in print in 1825, and had become a popular expression for those people who had committed crimes or owed money or just did not want to be found.38 When bill collectors went looking for defaulters and found an empty house, they realized those they sought had absconded and had gone to Texas. It became common that when a grand jury returned indictments but the sheriff had no luck bringing in the accused, he would report back that they had gone to Texas. When a banker rifled the vaults of his institution and made a successful getaway, he, too, was gone to Texas.

  And when a man had a broken marriage, lost his job, but hoped to start fresh as a land agent on the Mexican frontier, he, too, was gone to Texas.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  TIME OF THE COMET

  BY LATE AUTUMN OF 1835, near the end of Jackson’s second term as president, Crockett had “gone to Texas.” In this land of turmoil and revolt he soon joined other historical refugees destined to become larger-than-life legends, thanks to the hyperbole of the press and biased historians. These mythmakers surgically removed any flaws and foibles, rationalized motivations, and justified deeds. In so doing, they created not only a plethora of heroic figures but also one of the most iconic symbols of gallantry and independence in America—the Alamo.

  Crockett had never heard of the Alamo and certainly had no thought of taking part in any revolt against Mexico when, on October 31, 1835, he composed a letter to George Patton, his brother-in-law in Swannanoa, North Carolina. “I am on the eve of Starting to the Texes…we will go through Arkinsaw and I want to explore the Texes well before I return.”1

  At the time of Crockett’s departure for Texas, he and Elizabeth still lived apart, but he had hoped that, if the trip panned out and he found some suitable land, she would be willing to try a fresh start. At a going-away frolic attended by family and friends, there was pit-roasted barbecue, dancing, logrolling and shooting contests, and plenty of storytelling. It was said that Crockett was in fine spirits, took several horns of whiskey, and played the fiddle.2

  Crockett set out on this scouting trip with a trio of traveling companions—nephew William Patton, brother-in-law Abner Burgin, and Lindsey Tinkle, the neighbor who had bought one of the slave girls Crockett had sold from the Patton estate. The four men packed their horses much as they would have done in preparation for a long bear hunt. They took salted meat, bedrolls, and a full compliment of weapons and ammunition. No doubt Crockett slipped some gunpowder into his saddlebag and shooting pouch. Contrary to popular belief, he did not take Pretty Betsey, the fancy weapon presented to him by the Whigs in Philadelphia, but opted for just plain Betsey, his well-used long gun.3

  On the morning of November 1, the four men mounted up, Crockett astride a large chestnut horse with a white star on its forehead. People later recalled that his spirits were high. He was in his hunting clothes, riding with men he liked, and ahead waited the promise of adventure and opportunity.

  Like many others making the same journey at the time, Crockett understood what he faced once he crossed the Red River and left the United States. He had to have been aware that, in the weeks before he departed, the animosity had increased between the government of Mexico and the American settlers, called Texians, in the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas. The white colonists were becoming increasingly tired of living under Mexican rule, and they headed for war with hopes of forming their own separate republic. Many of these Anglos were illegal immigrants and did not abide by Mexican law. All citizens were required to join the Catholic Church, accept the language and laws of the governing country, and, by the late 1820s, observe the ban on the enslavement of human beings.

  To the Anglos’ way of thinking, slaves were too important to give up, particularly for the wealthier southerners who were accustomed to the plantation system style of farming. “The discussion of slavery in the West begins in Texas, the heart of the region’s slave regime,” writes Quintard Taylor Jr., African American history scholar. “Slaveholders unapologetically proclaimed both the agricultural need for black labor and their right to own their fellow human beings.”4

  Slavery had been a volatile issue in Texas ever since the early 1820s, when Stephen Fuller Austin convinced the Mexican government, which had just won its independence from Spain, that Anglo settlers would provide a buffer on the northern frontier between the settlements to the south and the raiding Comanches. The original three hundred families that Austin led to what was promised as the land of milk and honey soon multiplied. Prospects of free land lured thousands of whites across the Sabine and Red rivers. By 1823 at least 3,000 U.S. citizens had entered Texas illegally, along with 700 legitimate settlers.5 About the same time, the Austin Colony had established an unofficial capital at San Felipe de Austin, on the west bank of the Brazos River. Two years earlie
r, Austin was already expressing concern over what he perceived would become a major problem with the Mexican government and the colonists.

  “The principal difficulty is slavery, this they will not admit—as the law is all slaves are to be free in ten years, but I am trying to have it amended so as to make them slaves for life and their children free at 21 years—but do not think I shall succeed in this point, and that the law will pass as it is now, that the slaves introduced by the settlers shall be free after 10 years,”6 Austin wrote in a dispatch from Mexico City in 1822.

  Only five years later, the Austin Colony’s political and social hub of San Felipe was “still in swaddling clothes” when Noah Smithwick arrived. The feisty nineteen-year-old had a “strong aversion to tearing up God’s earth,” so took up blacksmithing instead of farming.7 Smithwick left behind one of the most accurate memoirs of the first Anglo settlement in Texas. He described pioneer doctors who devoted most of their practice to “dressing wounds and holding inquests,” running hounds after feral hogs in the river bottoms, trying to stay clear of a certain lawyer “who had a penchant for dueling,” and a poet whose verse so disturbed some San Felipeans that they gave him a “new suit of tar and feathers” and ran him out of town.8 The offending verse from the unnamed bard that resulted in his “poetical flight” read: