It is at this stage of his career that we may speak of the birth of the second or real David Crockett. These wild surroundings have now begotten in him a rugged sense of self-reliance and a personal independence that henceforth manifest themselves unmistakably. He is a politician, but an independent politician. “I would as soon be a ’coon dog as to be obliged to do what any man or set of men told me to do,” he says. “I will pledge myself to support no administration.” “I would rather be politically dead than hypocritically immortalized,” he declares; and in yet another instance he says that he “will not submit to the party gee-whoa-haw;” that he will be “no man’s man, and no party’s man.” In spite of all these personal dicta he is elected. His election costs one hundred and fifty dollars, all in borrowed money. It costs David Crockett, congressman, an additional one hundred dollars, also borrowed, to get to the national Capitol at Washington, where he arrives perhaps the most unique specimen of Congressman ever produced in this broad land of ours. His first act is to pay his debts—which not all Congressmen since then have done so promptly. It is hard for the backwoods congressman at Washington, yet he has good sense, good tact, good-nature and a magnetic temperament. His motto, “Be sure you are right, then go ahead,” wins for him sudden fame. Perhaps it is fame too sudden. Now we must bid good-by to Davy Crockett, bear hunter. He is bitten of the fatal poison of political ambition. From this time on the record of his life is for a while public, plain and well known. Crockett was a Southerner and, as has been stated, at first a friend of the Jacksonian Democracy. Naturally he should have been expected to prove loyal to the doctrines of the South, and the South at that time was held in the hollow of Old Hickory’s hand. Note now a sudden sternness of fiber in the bear hunter’s character that entitles him to a better name than that of time-serving politician. As a matter of conviction and principle he differs from the autocratic leader then sitting in the president’s chair. He opposes President Jackson’s Indian bill, and the proposition to withdraw the deposits from the United States banks. Indeed, instead of being a follower of Jackson, he comes out boldly as an opponent of his former leader.