David Crockett (3 page)

Portrait of Crockett on stone by Samuel Stillman Osgood, circa 1834. (Photograph by Dorothy Sloan, Dorothy Sloan Rare Books)

Congressional credentials issued to David Crockett. (National Archives and Records Administration)

Page 576 of a 1774 edition of Ovid’s
Metamorphoses
with Crockett’s 1832 signature. (Special Collections Library, University of Tennessee, Knoxville)

Engraving by artist Asher B. Durand based on an 1834 watercolor portrait of Crockett on paper, painted by Anthony Lewis De Rose. (Print Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundation)

Lithograph depicting President Jackson seated on a collapsing chair, with the “Altar of Reform” toppling next to him, 1831. The scurrying rats are (left to right): Secretary of War John H. Eaton, Secretary of the Navy John Branch, Secretary of State Martin Van Buren, and Secretary of the Treasury Samuel D. Ingham. (Lithograph by Edward W. Clay)

U.S. President James Knox Polk, a fellow Tennesseean and political adversary of Crockett. Daguerrotype by Mathew B. Brady, February 14, 1849. (Mathew B. Brady, photographer)

Map of the Mexican state of Texas, 1835, compiled by Stephen F. Austin. (James P. Bryant Collection, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin)

William Barret Travis, the ambitious and quick-tempered Alamo commander. (Courtesy of Texas State Library and Archives Commission)

The site of David Crockett’s death on March 6, 1836. (Michael Wallis Collection)

The only known oil-painting portrait of the notorious James Bowie, painted from life, circa 1820. Frontiersman, land speculator, and slave trader, Bowie died at the Alamo on March 6, 1836. (Alleged portrait of Bowie attributed to various artists, including William Edward West [1788–1857])

Mexican military map of San Antonio de Bexar and the Alamo fortifications, compiled by Colonel Ygnacio de Labastida, March 1836. (Map Collection, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin)