David Crockett : $b scout, small boy, pilgrim, mountaineer, soldier, bear-hunter, and Congressman, defender of the AlamoAllen, Charles Fletcher
History
David Crockett : $b scout, small boy, pilgrim, mountaineer, soldier, bear-hunter, and Congressman, defender of the Alamo
Allen, Charles Fletcher
Crockett, Davy, 1786-1836
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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