“Hero—that is a name that ought to be first in war and last in peace,” says he. Commenting on the faithlessness of the government, he flames out: “I had considered a treaty as the sovereign law of the land, and now I hear it considered as a matter of expedience.” This was in reference to the treatment accorded the southern Indians by the United States government. “This thing of man-worship I am a stranger to,” says he, with personal allusion, of course, to Jackson. In all these sayings he is, it may naturally be supposed, heartily applauded by the Northerners, who rejoice in this notable accession to their own ranks. Davy Crockett, bear hunter and congressman, has now had his chance. He takes himself seriously, even when he jokes about his being the next president of the United States. Crockett represents now the success of perfect digestion, of the perfectly normal nervous system. Nothing irritates him. The world to him runs smoothly, as it does to any hardy animal. He cares not for the past and has no concern for the physical future. His big brain, so long fallow, so long unstirred, begins now to fill up with thoughts and ideas and comparisons and conclusions. His reason is clear and bright. He presents to the world the startling spectacle of a middle-aged man educating himself to the point of an intelligent statesmanship, and that within the space of a few brief months or years. He displays a clarity of vision nothing short of marvelous. His memory of names, of dates and data is something startling. The world of books remains closed to him, so that he learns by ear, like a child, but he surprises friends and foes alike. The husk of the chrysalis has been broken. The Westerner has been born into the American! Davy Crockett had thus far never met any danger of a nature to inspire fear, any difficulty he could not overcome, any hardship he could not lightly endure. He now encountered one enemy greater than any to be met with in the wilderness—that great and menacing foe, the political machine. He found to his sorrow that honor and manhood will not always serve, and at the summit of his success he met his first and irremediable defeat. Crockett, once the politician, now grown into Crockett the eager student, the earnest statesman, had stirred up animosities too great for him to overcome. The relentless hand of Jackson smote hard upon Crockett’s district. There was talk of money, and of votes influenced by its use. Poor Davy, who went into this last campaign of Congress as blithely and as sure of success as ever in his life, learned that he had been defeated by a total of two hundred and thirty votes! Then there arose from the honest and generous soul of this strange child of the wilderness a great and bitter cry. He was among the first to exclaim against the creed of politics pursued as politics, of statesmanship that is not statesmanship—the creed of party and not of manhood.