“I am now here in Congress, this 28th day of January, in the year of our Lord 1834; and, what is more agreeable to my feelings, as a free man. I am at liberty to vote as my conscience and judgment dictate to be right, without the yoke of any party on me or the driver at my heels with the whip in hand commanding me to ‘gee-wo-haw!’ just at his pleasure. Look at my arms: you will find no party handcuffs on them! Look at my neck: you will not find there any collar with the engraving, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . MY DOG.—ANDREW JACKSON. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . But you will find me standing up to my rack as the people’s faithful representative, and the public’s most obedient, very humble servant, “DAVID CROCKETT.” What would not senators and representatives of to-day give for the same independence? What health and manliness it would impart to public life, if every legislator were thus free of handcuffs and collars! In the spring of 1834, Crockett made his famous “starring tour” through the East. From Philadelphia to Portland, and back to Washington, it was a continuous ovation. Crockett and the populace were mutually astonished; he at his receptions, and they at the actions, appearance, and utterances of the man who had been represented to them by his political opponents as a buffoon and semi-savage. He was more than all impressed with the developments of wealth and enterprise in the North; he frankly confessed the prejudices he had formed against the Yankees, and praised their thrift and principles. He spoke well and appropriately on each occasion, though—strange change in him!—with evident confusion at the lionizing. He wrote of the ovation he received on landing in Philadelphia: “It struck me strangely to hear a strange people huzzaing for me; it took me so uncommon unexpected, as I had no idea of attracting attention. The folks came crowding around me, saying, ‘Give me the hand of an honest man.’ I thought I had rather be in the wilderness with my gun and dogs, than to be attracting all that fuss.” In a happy little speech here, from the hotel balcony, he said: “I am almost induced to believe this flattery—perhaps a burlesque. This is new to me, yet I see nothing but friendship in your faces.” At a grand banquet in New York City, Crockett having been toasted as “The undeviating supporter of the constitution and the laws,” made this neat and characteristic hit, as he reports it: