Part 10
“I know that as obscure as I am, my name is making considerable of a fuss in the world. I can’t tell why it is, nor in what it is to end. Go where I will, everybody seems anxious to get a peep at me; and it would be hard to tell which would have the advantage if I and the ‘Government’ [Jackson] and ‘Black Hawk’ [Adam Huntsman, his competitor in the Congressional campaigns], and a great big eternal caravan of wild varments were all to be showed at the same time in four different parts of any of the big cities in the nation. I am not so sure that I should not get the most custom of any of the crew. There must therefore be something in me, or about me, that attracts attention, which is even mysterious to myself.”
In one instance Davy uses the words, “Just as Clay and Webster and myself are preparing to fix bank matters, on account of the scarcity of money.” He also speaks of “a few such men as Clay and Webster and myself.” His reflections at this time throw light upon the sudden turning-point in his career, a few years later.
When Davy arrived at Washington, the news of the great naval battle of Navarino had just arrived by the clipper ship _North Star_, twelve days from London. When she rounded to in Baltimore harbor, stowing her sails with trim precision almost before her anchor caught, the men of the sea were more interested in the “cracker-jack” run than in the news she brought. When Davy heard of the incidents connected with the naval battle, he is said to have remarked that “when three kinds of wild varments get to hunting together, Uncle Sam would better be looking out for his sheep.” He referred to the fact that during four hours of the afternoon of October 20, 1827, the combined squadrons of England, Russia, and France, made up of ten ships of the line, ten frigates, and nine smaller vessels, had shot to pieces or sunk under fire more than one hundred war-vessels of the Turkish navy, under Moharem Bey, four thousand Moslems being killed or drowned. The battle of Navarino failed to wake Uncle Sam to his need of a navy, and until the wolves, in the shape of the _Florida_ and the _Alabama_ and other ships quite as daring, began to thin his flock, he remained asleep. The politicians of 1827 to 1840 were men who fought each other with any weapons they could wield, and, in want of weapon, they used filth and mud. A merciful oblivion has covered with the dust of many years their words and deeds.
XVI.
IN CONGRESS
Davy’s place in politics――He is elected for a second term――His opposition to President Jackson――After two terms in Congress, he is defeated by a contemptible trick――The influence of the Murrell gang is felt――Two years in retirement――Writing his autobiography――The Middle Fork camp-meeting――The wildcat hunter from the Wolf Creek Branch――At a shooting-match――The generosity of Davy――He is elected by a large majority.
During his first term in Congress, in 1828 and 1829, Davy seems to have been lined up with the Jackson faction, which was opposed to the Adams administration, then allied with the friends of Henry Clay. In 1828 Andrew Jackson was elected President by a remarkable percentage of the electoral college, and Davy Crockett, one of his former scouts, watched him as he rode to the Capitol, dismounted, and with lifted hand swore loyalty to the nation that had chosen him for the highest place in its power to give. How many have pictured the rude simplicity of such a proceeding――the rugged soldier, the sorry steed! Their democratic souls have been much deceived. Jackson’s horse was the finest that could be found in Kentucky or Tennessee. He wore no uniform, but in his broadcloth coat and ruffles he sat his saddle like a king, more stately, more exemplary of power, than many of his successors who have been seated upon the velvet cushions of landaus.
There was a rattling of dry bones in the Departments as Old Hickory swept from power and position hundreds of the appointees of his predecessors. The now familiar cry, “To the victors belong the spoils,” became the slogan of his followers. Davy seems to have had no place in the crowd that fawned about their master’s feet. He may have seen the ill-mannered mob that thrust aside the doorkeepers of the White House at the public receptions, invaded the parlors and dining-rooms, climbed upon the satin upholsteries, and fell upon the refreshments like the locusts of Egypt, “filling the houses, and eating the residue of that which escaped”; but of his two years’ term he has written hardly a hundred words. He went back to his cabin home, conducted another campaign, and was again elected by an overwhelming majority of nearly 3,600 votes.
During Davy’s second term, in 1830 and 1831, Jackson urged the removal of the Cherokees and other Indian tribes from the lands east of the Mississippi. Davy did not see the relentless power of advancing civilization behind the unquiet of the frontier, and the impossibility of resisting the impulse towards the separation of the whites and the aborigines, and voted against the removal, in spite of strenuous urging by those who favored it. It was of this vote that he has said:
“I would rather be honestly and politically damned than to be hypocritically immortalized.”
Returning again to his district, in 1831, he found, as he says, the storm raised against him. He was accused of the unpardonable sin of turning against Jackson.
“I was hunted down like a wild varment,” he has told us, “and in this hunt every little paper in the district, and every little pin-hook lawyer, was engaged.” He was accused of receiving pay for sessions from which he was absent, and his wrath was kindled by these charges of dishonesty in doing what every other Congressman had done. His district was “gerrymandered,” and all the political weapons of his opponents were set to work. In the language of the cowboy of a later generation, “they wore their guns, and they wore ’em mighty low.” Davy was beaten by a smart and entirely unscrupulous scheme. He says that the “little four-pence-ha’penny limbs of the law” gave notice all over the district of dates upon which Crockett would appear to explain his actions in Congress and his reasons for his opposition to Jackson. When crowd after crowd gathered at the time and place announced, the absence of Crockett――entirely unaware of the trick that was being played――was laid to his fear of facing the issues raised. He was afraid, the “four-pence-ha’penny lawyers” cried, and the disappointed voters went to their homes stirred with doubt and resentment. When the votes were counted in August, Davy was in the majority in seventeen counties, but in Madison County, the home of the Murrell outlaws and their allies, his opponent had enough to overcome all that Davy had in the rest of the district.
In Mark Twain’s “Life on the Mississippi,” he has told a story of the methods of the Murrell gang, a story too sickening for repetition. The existence of such a fraternity of criminals had a great influence upon the history of Texas and its neighbors, the United States and Mexico. Under the great cottonwoods in the swamps of Madison County, men met who had plundered and burned ships and cut throats all the way from Curaçoa to the Bahama Banks and Barnegat; who had both filled and emptied the unspeakable barracoons of the slave-trade on the Guinea coast; who had been midnight assassins in Paris and Madrid, brigands from the ruins of the Appian Way, pirates from every maritime nation of the globe; and always besides, there was the more or less gentlemanly gambler of the Mississippi river-boats, ready to lead or follow where there was promise of plunder. There were secret signs, passwords, and grips, relay stations on their highways of crime, and everywhere confederates who ranked with the first citizens in unsullied reputations and sober living. The gang sold slaves trained to run away, to be sold again and then again, until led into the tangled pathways of some reeking swamp, to die the death of a dog at the hands of men who left no danger of detection overlooked. In 1835 their operations as gamblers upon the great river, and as robbers and swindlers along its shores, led to their being driven out of the jurisdiction of the courts and vigilance committees of the frontier. They went to Texas, because there was no other place to which they dared to go. Here their reckless habits infused new life into the discontent already existing among the colonists, and hastened the inevitable conflict that was so soon to occur.
During the years 1832 and 1833, Davy was a private citizen, but he was by no means an idle one. If he still hunted the bears of the “harricane” at his back door, he tells nothing in regard to such pursuits. His time was taken up in writing the story of his own life, and in planning for the next election. That he wrote his autobiography in the two years mentioned is shown by the work itself. His constant reference to the removal of the “deposites” from the United States Bank is good proof that much of the book was written after the date of the removal.
In his canvass of his district for votes, while fighting his way back to Washington, Davy found his lessons in history and national questions of great assistance. His easy familiarity with the names of famous statesmen, his crude painting of Eastern life and manners, and his new self-possession in speaking before a crowd, all served to awaken the admiration and win the support of a people who loved the spectacular in politics. His readiness to pit himself against all comers, in everything from oration to sharp-shooting, made him an attraction at every public gathering. The story of the Middle Fork camp-meeting has not yet faded from the memory of the men who lived upon its banks.
It was a splendid summer afternoon, when Davy rode into an open place in the forest, twenty miles east of his cabin, where two or three hundred men and women had come to listen to the exhortations of the “rider,” a long, ungainly preacher.
He was about to lead in a hymn when a rough and red-nosed man with a bottle of whisky in his pocket, leaped upon the rock and levelled his rifle in the faces of the astonished people.
“The first man sings has got to fight!” he yelled. “I’m the wild-cat hunter from the Wolf Creek branch of the Rutherford Fork. I’ve et up all the Injuns, bears, an’ wildcats ez fur ez the Big Sandy, an’ I’m dying hungry now fur hymn-books an’ preachers an’ folks thet sings.”
He stopped, glared at the astonished old “rider,” then took out the bottle and drank a half-dozen swallows with a gurgling sound. Some one spoke in the crowd. “Shut up!” he yelled, lifting his bottle and waving it above the shrinking women and children below. “Shut up an’ git out o’ sight before ye see the wildcat hunter eat the preacher, hide and hair!”
There was the crack of a rifle, and the bottle was shattered into fragments, dashing the raw liquor into the rowdy’s eyes and cutting his face with bits of glass. When he could see, Davy Crockett’s gun was almost touching his nose.
“Hand the preacher your gun,” said Davy, “stand where you are, and sing like all possessed. If you don’t, we’ll make you eat a wildcat for sure. All right, preacher, go ahead!”
After the singing was over, the wildcat hunter hung about, trying in vain to recover his gun, and finally departed in discreet silence as the daylight faded in the west.
Many of Davy’s admirers became acquainted with him at the barbecues and shooting-matches that were frequent during his campaigns. With so little diversion in their narrow lives, the frontiersmen flocked to such meetings from far and near, bringing their wives and children, and driving before them the cattle to be put up as prizes for the marksmen. Davy was always ready for such a competition, and was never obliged to content himself with the “hide and tallow.” The usual method in such matches was to sell several chances on each animal. The best marksmen took their choice of the several parts of the beef, the order of their choosing to be fixed by the result of the match. The one making the lowest score took the hide and tallow as a consolation.
The score of such a match was kept about as follows: each man handed the judges a burnt board, rubbed down nearly to the sound part of the wood. On this circles of one half-inch, one inch, and one and a half inches, were made with a pair of dividers or the ruder compasses of the carpenter. Each man shot the agreed number of times at his own board, at from fifty to sixty yards’ distance, “toeing the mark” made by the judges. Upon many an occasion Davy divided up his winnings with the men who had been unsuccessful.
Davy won this election after much hard work on the stump.
XVII.
DAVY’S POPULARITY
Rejoicing in the East over Davy’s reëlection――One of his attacks upon Jackson in Congress――He undertakes a journey to the Atlantic cities――Starts for Baltimore by stage――The Steamboat _Carroll of Carrollton_――Davy first sees a railway train――A grand welcome in Philadelphia――Davy addresses five thousand people in front of the Exchange――He visits Fairmount, the United States Mint, the Walnut Street Theatre, and sees Jim Crow――His reflections upon Eastern manners――He is dined by the young Whigs――Gives directions for making the celebrated rifle “Betsy,” the gift of Philadelphia admirers.
The news of Davy Crockett’s reëlection, in spite of the opposition of the Jackson party, was received in the Eastern States with joy, and even the Southern States of the Atlantic coast, hugging to their bosoms the fragments of the new idol of Nullification, heard of the backwoodsman’s victory with grim satisfaction. Clay and Webster and John Quincy Adams stood with such men as Albert Gallatin and the Quaker statesmen of Philadelphia. The voters who had made the hero of the treaty at Hickory Grove their President still had a kindly feeling for the man who had dared to offer an honest opposition to the irascible old General. The wily politicians cultivated the renown of Davy Crockett as a plant of great promise, that might even make Presidential timber.
Davy’s opposition to Andrew Jackson was outspoken and undisguised. After his tour of the Eastern cities, to be hereinafter described, he spoke in Congress upon the subject of the “Bill Making Appropriations for Fortifications.” The records show that his words were in part as follows:
“Sir, we have no Government but Andrew Jackson, without Secretaries; and, sir, he is surrounded by a set of imps of famine that are as hungry as the flies that we have read of in Æsop’s Fables, that came after the fox and sucked his blood. Sir, they are a hungry swarm, and will lick up every dollar of the public money.”
Mr. Dunlap, of Tennessee, replied to Crockett with heated language, and Crockett again took the floor to reply, saying that he wished it to be distinctly understood that he took back nothing that he had said, but that he would reassert everything and go even further. Standing in his place for almost the last time, he lifted his hand in passionate protest against the proposed use of the public funds, and took his seat with these words:
“We have no Government, no Government at all. God only knows what is to become of the country in these days of misrule. Sir, I am done.” Such attitude as this accounts for the infinite pains with which the opposition fought him two years later in his campaign for a fourth term. While he was attending to his Congressional duties, his political fences were demolished by the stay-at-homes, and in their places were set up what in these days of such unsightly nuisances might be called the bill-boards of partisan defamation.
The comparatively inactive life of a Congressman had begun to tell upon the scout and bear-hunter of the Mississippi cane. He decided to take a trip through the Eastern States for the benefit of his health. Although it was in the midst of the spring session of Congress, he left Washington on the 25th of April, 1834, and did not return until the latter part of June. He says of this proposed journey:
“During this session of Congress, I thought I would take a travel through the Northern States. I had braved the lonely forests of the West, I had shouldered the warrior’s rifle in the far South; but the North and East I had never seen. I seemed to like members of Congress who came from these parts, and wished to know what kind of constituents they had.”
Up to this time his knowledge of the East was confined to Baltimore and Washington. He had read and heard much of the wonders of the greater cities of the Atlantic seaboard, but he had never felt free to describe them to his fellow-citizens of western Tennessee. He has left no word regarding his impressions of the nation’s capital. It would be interesting to compare his views with those of Charles Dickens, who visited many of the same cities a few years later. This is what Dickens thought of Washington in 1842:
“Take the worst parts of the City Road and Pentonville, or the straggling outskirts of Paris, where the houses are smallest, preserving all their oddities, but especially the small shops and dwellings, occupied in Pentonville (but not in Washington) by furniture-brokers, keepers of poor eating-houses, and fanciers of birds. Burn the whole down; build it up again in wood and plaster; widen it a little; throw in part of St. John’s Wood; put green blinds outside all the private houses, with a red curtain and a white one in every window; plow up all the roads; plant a great deal of coarse turf in every place where it ought _not_ to be; erect three handsome buildings in stone and marble, anywhere, but the more entirely out of everybody’s way the better; call one the Post Office, one the Patent Office, and one the Treasury; make it scorching hot in the morning, and freezing cold in the afternoon, with an occasional tornado of wind and dust; leave a brick-field without the bricks, in all central places where a street may naturally be expected; and that is Washington.”
From this sort of place, perhaps even less beautiful, Davy was whirled away on the April morning before mentioned, viewing from his seat on the top of a great coach the roadside scenes between Washington and Baltimore. Upon arriving at the latter city, he put up at Barnum’s Hotel, kept by “Uncle Davy,” whom he gladly hailed as a namesake. He says that no one could find better quarters or a more hospitable city. He was asked to dine with his friend Wilkes and other Baltimore gentlemen, and spent the evening pleasantly in their company.
The next morning he was up early, in order to take the steamboat to Philadelphia. At this time only seventeen miles of railroad existed between the two cities, crossing the land in the vicinity of Wilmington and Havre de Grace. It was called the Charlestown and Augusta Railway. The departure from Baltimore seems to have given Davy a sense of lonesomeness. He felt what so many others since have felt――poor human mites among a swarm of busy ants!――that the loneliest place in all the world is a great city. He realized, and tells us so, that the tens of thousands who passed him by in the noisy streets neither knew nor cared who he might be, and that at the best he might expect to be valued at about the price of a coon-skin. This we have already seen to be no more than a York shilling, or a quart of New England rum.
“The steamboat,” says Davy, “was the _Carroll of Carrollton_, a fine craft, with the rum old Commodore Chaytor for head man. A good fellow he is――all sorts of a man――bowing and scraping to the ladies, nodding to the gentlemen, cursing the crew, and his right eye broadcast upon the ‘opposition line,’ all at the same time. ‘Let go!’ says the old one, and off we walked in prime style.”
They soon passed Fort McHenry, forever glorified by the stubborn defense that has made “The Star-Spangled Banner” our national song of victory, and North Point was pointed out to Davy as the spot where the British had once planned to land their attacking forces. The run to Charlestown was soon finished, and here Davy saw the sight of his life: a train, on the seventeen-mile railroad between Delaware City and Chesapeake Bay. As the first locomotive in the United States came from England in 1825, it may be believed that what Davy saw in 1834 would be almost as astonishing to people of to-day. A dozen vehicles that resembled old-fashioned coaches stood in line on the flat rails that formed the railroad, while an ungainly locomotive, with a smoke-stack nearly as large as the boiler, and with a flat-car behind, loaded with wood and barrels of water for use on the run, was blowing off steam and showing every sign of a desire to make a start. The locomotive looked much like the kind now used by threshing outfits.
Behold, then, Davy, seated upon the top of one of the coaches, as if on a diligence in the days of Claude Duval, intent upon every move:
“After a good deal of fuss we all got seated and moved slowly off, the engine wheezing as if she had the tizzick. By and by she began to take short breaths, and away we went with a blue streak after us.”
Soon after starting a team was sighted in the gathering darkness of the evening. When they saw the shower of sparks from the stack of the infernal machine that was coming towards them, the horses ran away with a right good will, upsetting the wagon, and scattering the freight along the way.
Let us now follow Davy’s own story of his visit. After the dinner on the boat, he went on deck, in time to see that a great display of flags was taking place on board. When he asked the reason, the captain told him that it was to be a signal that Crockett was coming, given on account of the desire of the Philadelphia people to meet him at the wharf.
“We went on till we came in sight of the city,” says Davy’s account, “and as we drew near to the wharf I saw the whole face of the earth covered with people, all anxiously looking on towards the boat. The captain and myself were standing on the bow deck. He pointed his finger at me, and people slung their hats and huzzaed for Colonel Crockett. It struck me with astonishment to hear a strange people huzzaing for me, and made me feel sort of queer. But I had to meet it, and so I stepped on to the wharf, where the folks came crowding around me, saying, ‘Give me the hand of an honest man.’ I did not know what all this meant; but some gentlemen took hold of me, and, pressing through the crowd, put me into an elegant barouche, drawn by four fine horses. They then told me to bow to the people; I did so, and with much difficulty we moved off. The streets were crowded to a great distance, and the windows full of people, looking out, I supposed, to see the wild man. I thought I would rather be in the wilderness, with my gun and my dogs, than to be attracting all that fuss. I had never seen the like before, and did not know exactly what to say or do. After some time we reached the United States Hotel, in Chestnut Street.”
The crowd having followed his carriage to the hotel, Davy at last showed himself upon the balcony front, bowing repeatedly with hat in hand, as we have seen Taft and Roosevelt do upon so many occasions, in these days of Presidential travel. At the last he was constrained to speak a few words of thanks, in which he recognized the existence of a state of high excitement in political affairs, which he wished to make no worse. He promised to speak again at one o’clock the next afternoon, and then withdrew. That night, as he lay restless in a strange place, he looked forward to the promised speech with much doubt and fear, but at last consoled himself by trusting to the good luck that had already got him “through many a scrape before.”