David Crockett (28 page)

Although Crockett’s chief opponent was once again Colonel Adam Alexander, he remained quietly confident of victory throughout the reelection campaign. He may not have been able to get his land bill through Congress, but it was not for any lack of trying. He knew that effort would be in the voters’ minds when they went to the polls, and he was correct.

In the August election Crockett was rewarded with another term in Congress. Alexander gathered 3,641 votes and two minor candidates pooled a total of 168 votes. Crockett received 6,773 votes for a plurality of 3,132 votes.
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While he basked in another clear victory over Alexander, Crockett had to wonder exactly who was most responsible for all the defamatory stories and ugly accusations that had been heaped on him both before and during the campaign. He had his suspicions that the responsible parties were not only the Whigs but also some Jacksonian Democrats. As the new decade came around, Crockett realized that he had become a man without a party.

W
ITH THE BEGINNING
of the 1830s, time was running out not only politically but physically as well for David Crockett. He had reached his midforties, then viewed by some as the beginning of old age. Taking into consideration his vigorous lifestyle, the privations he had endured, and his many near-encounters with death, Crockett remained in fairly good physical shape. There was the occasional flare-up from the malaria and some old wounds that ached, but for the most part Crockett was fit.

With a growing number of legislative critics, Crockett realized that his physical stamina and mental alertness were essential to gaining passage of the Tennessee land bill and for his own political survival. Detractors from all camps were angry that, when it came to support of the measures they sponsored, Crockett left no room for compromise.

Early in his second term, Crockett became a leading opponent against any further appropriations for the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. He firmly believed that the academy—founded in 1802—was an inherently elitist institution “managed for the benefit of the noble and wealthy of the country.” Crockett’s negative feelings about the academy no doubt resulted from some of the treatment he had received during the Creek War, including his superior officer’s failure to act on his scouting report until it was corroborated by another commissioned officer. Crockett felt so strongly about this matter that he even proposed the abolishment of the academy.
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In speaking at length on behalf of his proposed resolution, Crockett stressed: “A man could fight the battles of his country, and lead his country’s armies, without being educated at West Point.”
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He also pointed out that Andrew Jackson and several other past military heroes had not attended the academy and yet became effective leaders. “Gentlemen were not up to the task of commanding soldiers,” said Crockett. They were “too delicate, and could not rough it in the army because they were too differently raised.”
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Crockett’s proposal was quickly tabled and soon quietly died, but not before alienating him even more with other legislators from all political persuasions.

On February 24, 1830, just a day before Crockett offered his resolution concerning the abolition of West Point, another important proposal was introduced in Congress—President Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act. The passage and enactment of this legislation would be remembered as one of the darkest moments in the nation’s history.

Crockett’s Indian philosophy differed substantially from Andrew Jackson’s and from that of his diehard supporters, who pushed his controversial legislation through both houses of Congress. The legislation gave Jackson the power to negotiate treaties with the Indian tribes living east of the Mississippi. Under these treaties, the tribes were to give up all their lands in exchange for lands to the west. The Indians most affected were the southeastern tribes—Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and eventually the Seminole. They were all too familiar with Sharp Knife and his paternalistic view of Indians from long before he became president. Some of them had fought against him and others had battled alongside him as allies. All of them knew that Jackson considered them an “ill-fated race.”
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Yet Jackson’s betrayal of his former allies and his fierce advocacy of removal amounted to one of the most appalling periods in this nation’s relationship with American Indians. “If I had known that Jackson would drive us from our homes, I would have killed him at Horseshoe,”
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said Tsunu Iahunski, a Cherokee veteran of the Creek War who fought on Jackson’s side. Tsunu Iahunski was originally named Gulkalaski and had become acquainted with Andrew Jackson years before the bloody clash against the Creeks at Horseshoe Bend. He was the Cherokee known for having saved Jackson’s life during the battle by slaying a Creek warrior who had Jackson at his mercy. When the Indian Removal Act was being considered, Cherokee Chief John Ross sent Gulkalaski to Washington to appeal to Jackson and ask him to reconsider uprooting tribal people from their ancestral homeland. After he heard Gulkalaski’s plea, Jackson reportedly snapped at him, “Sir, your audience is ended, there is nothing I can do for you.” After that, Gulkalaski became known as Tsunu Iahunski, or “One who tries, but fails.”
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In an effort to maintain their tribal independence, the southeastern tribes, especially the Cherokees and Creeks, adopted many of the elements of the white world. This meant abandoning the old ways—the traditions and customs that the whites frowned on and considered pagan and offensive. Many of the prosperous mixed-bloods accepted the whites’ religion and lifestyle. They dressed like whites, ate the same type of food, started a plantation culture that included the keeping of black slaves to work the fields. Part of the rationale was tribal survival, with the hope that the whites would leave them alone if they became more like them. In the long run none of it mattered. Jackson and his troops eventually moved the tribes westward, sometimes at the point of bayonets down several “Trails of Tears” to Indian Territory, present-day Oklahoma, where they were referred to as the “Five Civilized Tribes,” a pejorative term still used by many.
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“Andrew Jackson has been saddled with a considerable portion of the blame for this monstrous deed,” Robert V. Remini, one of Jackson’s biographers, wrote of the Removal Act.

Jackson’s own words serve as the best evidence of how he felt about Indian people and their tribal lands. In a message delivered to Congress in late 1830, several months after the Removal Act became the law of the land, Jackson spoke of his hope that relocation to a distant land would help the tribes “cast off their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized and Christian community.”
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He went on to say:

Although some historians tried to present a balanced picture of Jackson’s role in Indian Removal, it is clear that Jackson had no real concern whatsoever for the Indians—“the children of the forest”—whose lives he disrupted. To this day there remain traditional Cherokee and Creek people in Oklahoma who refuse to handle or even touch twenty-dollar bills, which since 1929 have been imprinted with the image of Andrew Jackson. These Indian people find commemorating Jackson’s presidency on legal tender an insult to the memory of ancestors who died along “the trail where they cried.” Some equate having Jackson’s picture on the money to printing Adolf Hitler’s face on the bills. Through the years, there have been petitions calling for the U.S. Treasury Department to remove Jackson from the twenty-dollar bill. One of the candidates suggested as a suitable replacement is John Ross, the much-revered chief who led the Cherokee Nation during the horrors of Indian removal.
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David Crockett, however, is still remembered by many Indian people in Oklahoma as one of the few white men in government who had the courage to stand up to Jackson and vote against his Indian Removal Act.
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Crockett may not have been the most vociferous opponent of Jackson’s removal legislation, but he was the lone member of the entire Tennessee congressional delegation to vote against the bill on May 24, 1830, when it passed by the narrow margin of 102 to 97.
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Cherokee Chief John Ross wrote Crockett a letter of thanks for his courageous stance. It was a brave act and, some have said, a politically naive vote. Crockett stood his ground against all of his colleagues, his president, and, as he well knew at the time, the vast majority of the citizens he represented. It took little time for the news to reach voters in West Tennessee that the man they had put in office, primarily to help turn old tribal land into farms for squatters and settlers, had betrayed them.

In the final pages of his 1834 autobiography, Crockett wrote about casting his vote against Indian Removal, which he described as an “infamous” measure. “I opposed it from the purest motives in the world,” wrote Crockett.

Despite Crockett’s explanation, some historians have taken exception with this account. They claim that, while Crockett may have had some empathy for the Indians and their plight, his opposition to the legislation was mostly driven by his growing relationship with the eastern Whigs and his mounting hatred of Jackson.

“Some have cast doubts as to the sincerity of David’s efforts on behalf of native Americans citing his eagerness to fight in the Creek War in 1813,” points out historian Joe Swann. “But when one reads the Creek War section of the
Narrative
it is not difficult to see that David saw the insanity of war and the cruelty of men charged with its prosecution. He knew his stand was contrary to the feelings of his constituents back home but David was very bull-headed and felt he was morally right.”
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Other historians, including James Atkins Shackford, contended that Crockett never delivered a speech protesting the Indian Removal Act during debate on the floor of Congress. Whether or not Crockett actually delivered the speech, a report was published in 1830 showing that his prepared remarks about the measure were entered in the records of the House of Representatives, some five days before passage of the bill.
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This document, written in third person, stressed that Crockett “would never let party govern him in a question of this great consequence.” It goes on to explain that Crockett had “many objections to the bill—some of them of a very serious character. One was, that he did not like to put half a million of money into the hands of the Executive, to be used in a manner which nobody could foresee, and which Congress was not to control. Another objection was, he did not wish to depart from the role which had been observed towards the Indian nations from the foundation of the government. He considered the present application as the last alternative for these poor remnants of a once powerful people. Their only chance of aid was at the hands of Congress. Should its members turn a deaf ear to their cries, misery must be their fate. That was his candid opinion.”
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Crockett also said that he considered the removal measure “oppression with a vengeance,” and he found that intolerable. His speech against the Indian Removal Act also was published in the
Jackson Gazette
twice in June 1830. In February 1831, he issued a sixteen-page letter to the voters in his congressional district in which he shared his views on several key issues of the day.
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Included in the letter are several pointed complaints about the performance of President Jackson, such as “my heart bleeds when I reflect on his cruelty to the poor Indians. I never expected it of him.”

By that time Crockett had long abandoned the Jackson ranks and his own congressional delegation. His stand against the Jackson and Polk forces on Indian Removal and the Tennessee vacant land issue would prove costly. Crockett must have seen the proverbial writing on the wall even before he returned home and launched his reelection campaign in the spring of 1831. The break with the popular Old Hickory did not play well on the western frontier of Tennessee, nor did all the time Crockett was spending with Yankee Whigs.

“I found the storm had raised against me sure enough,” Crockett wrote of his 1831 homecoming between sessions of Congress, “and it was echoed from side to side, and from end to end in my district, that I had turned against Jackson. This was considered the unpardonable sin. I was hunted down like a wild varment [
sic
], and in this hunt every little newspaper in the district, and every little pin-hook lawyer was engaged. Indeed, they were ready to print any and every thing that the ingenuity of man could invent against me.”
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