American Legend: The Real-Life Adventures of David Crockett (20 page)

Crockett had three recent campaign races under his belt, and he had learned from each one, so that he came to the summer of 1827 as a seasoned campaigner with a firm command of his public persona. His strategy this time around was simple: he would give the voters what they wanted to hear, and he would most importantly give them what they wanted to see—a real-life backwoodsman who was a mouthpiece for them, who shared their dreams and aspirations but also their frustrations and concerns, a thighslappingly funny storyteller who lived “out amongst ’em.”

His first challenge was to deal with the loud-mouthed and long-winded John Cooke, who launched an aggressive personal attack on David Crockett’s character traveling all about the district and publicly reviling Crockett as an adulterer and a drunk, and generally trying to undermine him as indecent.
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Crockett responded by fighting fire with fire (in much the same way politicians use mud-slinging commercials today), casting equal and worse aspersions against Cooke, most of them utter fabrications, but who cared? He was having a good time trading lies with Cooke, stooping to his level and then crawling even lower. Cooke decided to ensnare Crockett in his egregious lies by attending a political rally with his own witnesses in support, and, after one of Crockett’s lengthy tirades, coming forward and exposing him publicly as a liar. Thus caught in the act and exposed by his witnesses, Cooke reasoned, the disgraced Crockett would wither away and perhaps even withdraw from the race.

The plan backfired in Cooke’s face like a ten-pound cannon. At the event, Crockett rose to speak with unusual bluster, laying on outrageous falsehoods even thicker than usual. Now an expert at timing, Crockett let the air grow still and pretended to be finished, feigning a move to take his seat but then pausing, clearing his throat, and stepping up again. He wished to add one last comment. At length he informed the gathering that his opponent was among them, and planned to expose him as a liar; he’d even brought his own witnesses with him for the purpose of doing so. Crockett grinned his patented wildcat smile and pointed out that the witnesses were entirely unnecessary—they could all be witnesses, for he was quite happy to admit that he’d been telling lies. What choice did he have? His opponent had started the fight by slurring him with slander and outright lies, and so, to keep things fair and even, he had responded with lies. In fact, truth be told, they were both liars!
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An informer had obviously tipped Crockett off, and the result was devastating for Cooke, who never even had an opportunity to respond, so uproarious was the laughter from the crowd. Crockett was the hero of the day, and Cooke could only burn with indignation as the crowd rallied around their man, David Crockett. Cooke soon withdrew his name from the running, claiming that he was morally superior and could not in good conscience serve a constituency that would cheer an acknowledged liar. Cooke felt the embarrassment for a long time, and could see that he was outgunned, for “two years later he rejected an opportunity to face Crockett in a rematch.”
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Using his trademark humor, and embracing his role as a trickster, Crockett had single-handedly dispatched one of his opponents by simply being funny and, ultimately, truthful.

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.
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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.
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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

I
T 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.
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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.
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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 state 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.
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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.’ ”
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Dr. Robert Vance died the following day.