American Legend: The Real-Life Adventures of David Crockett (13 page)

Crockett spent the next few months around Bean’s Creek, recuperating, doing light work, but still pondering his options, dreaming of better ground. He believed that his own farm was “sickly,” unfit to produce crops.
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Within a year he had determined to leave it for good, and that autumn he set out “to look at the country which had been purchased of the Chickasaw tribe of Indians.” Andrew Jackson had secured in writing deals that ceded Chickasaw land in the south-central area of Tennessee, leaving it open to settlement by early 1817.
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Crockett made it as far as Shoal Creek, some eighty miles from home, when he suffered a reoccurrence of malaria, complete with “ague and fever.” Crockett figured it was merely illness from sleeping outside on the soggy ground, but he was incapacitated and remained in that area for some time, hoping to get better. While waiting, he scouted about as he could, and he soon decided that the place was quite suitable—good enough, at any rate, to settle there for a time.

When he felt he could travel comfortably, Crockett went home to inform the family that he had found a nice spot on Shoal Creek and they would be packing up quickly for a move. By now, the Crockett clan included newcomer Robert Patton Crockett, born in 1816, plus his three other children and Elizabeth’s other two, a group of eight that would grow even larger soon enough. Over the next four years Elizabeth would be a very busy and hardworking woman, giving birth to the rest of their “second crop,” as Crockett liked to call them: Elizabeth Jane in 1818, Rebeckah Elvira (nicknamed “Sissy”) in 1819, and finally Matilda in 1821.
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For the next two decades Elizabeth Patton Crockett would manage a household of nine children, maintain and manage the details of more than one farm, various other holdings, and small businesses involved with leasing land, all while supporting her husband’s dreams and schemes and hobbies, which came to include, in addition to his passion for hunting, a run at public office and then politics on a national scale. By any standard imaginable, Elizabeth Crockett was an amazing organizer, a tireless worker, and a fair, flexible, and lenient companion for David Crockett. It’s evident that he could not have gotten along without her. He was also conscious (if not a little self-conscious) of the power that her $800 dowry brought to his position, and he understood that with the right financial moves and business decisions, they could perhaps rise from farmer status to “planter” status over time. Crockett may have begun to sense the concept of class stratification, and that with the assistance of Elizabeth and her family, he might begin an upwardly mobile climb.
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The Crocketts sold and leased their Franklin County farms (David’s twenty acres, Elizabeth’s closer to 200) and headed for the picturesque Shoal Creek, sweet grassy pastureland and undulating hills banking gently at the clear, wide stream. They managed to find a perfect spot right near the creek’s headwaters, where they built the first of their eventual trio of cabins. Like all of his other homes, these cabins were rough-hewn and utilitarian affairs, the logs semi-peeled and prone to rot, both exteriors and interiors smallish and unadorned. But over the next six years these would suffice. The land looked fertile, the river promising—it could run a gristmill, and they would eventually own and operate a distillery for whiskey making, an iron-ore mine, and a gunpowder factory.
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It was the closest thing to a real start that David Crockett had seen in his life. And as it would again and again for Crockett, the hope hinged on the land itself, and perhaps even more important, on the idea of the land and what it represented—freedom, the very essence of the American dream.

Their land on Shoal Creek was just a few miles from a small outpost settlement called Lawrenceburg, and an informal community was burgeoning there. Soon after the Crocketts had settled in along the creek side, in October 1817, Lawrence County was officially formed. Crockett would later describe the situation as born of necessity, saying they lived “without any law at all; and so many bad characters began to flock in upon us, that we found it necessary to set up a sort of temporary government of our own.” That “government” of sorts would have already been in the works before Crockett’s arrival, but things did move quickly once he got there. Crockett’s name was added to a list of possible candidates for the position of justice of the peace, and on November 25, the legislature appointed Crockett legal magistrate.
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Almost by accident, and certainly without trying very hard, David Crockett had run for office and been elected, marking the fledgling stage of what would become a star-crossed career in public life.

That Crockett got selected as magistrate testifies to the solid nature of his character, since he was uneducated in the law, but rather operated from a platform of common sense and decency. Locals in the community would have known about Crockett’s recent experiences in the Creek War, noting a rough and unpolished honesty about him, an infectious straightforwardness. Crockett remembered that, while he was magistrate,

My judgments were never appealed from, and if they had been they would have stuck like wax, as I gave my decisions on the principles of common justice and honesty between man and man, and relied on natural born sense, and not on law, learning to guide me; for I had never read a page in a law book in all my life.
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That “natural born sense” to which he refers proved to be one of Crockett’s most important character traits—he was a remarkable student of human nature, possessing savvy, moxie, and street smarts, none of which can be acquired from books or classrooms.

Crockett presided over everything from domestic squabbles to debt collection, and he quickly developed a reputation for firm conviction and fair, common sense. In a very short time he was approached by a Captain Matthews, a well-heeled local businessman and early settler whom Crockett noted sarcastically “made rather more corn than the rest of us.” As it happened, Matthews informed Crockett that he was running for the office of colonel, and wondered whether Crockett would run under him for first major in the same regiment. The fact that Matthews wanted Crockett on his ticket suggests that Crockett was already esteemed in the region.
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Crockett at first politely declined, saying that he was finished with military matters. But Matthews was quite convincing, and Crockett reluctantly agreed, at the same time naturally figuring on Matthews’s backing in the election. Matthews then organized a great frolic and corn husking that would be part of the electioneering process, inviting the entire county along. The Crockett family arrived to find that David had been duped; Matthews’s own son was running for the office of major, the same position that Crockett had been convinced to seek. He had been set up as a patsy candidate.

Crockett took the challenge in good spirits, then turned around and took it to another level in the kind of bold and defiant move that would become his trademark. When Matthews apologetically (and perhaps insincerely) explained that his son feared running against Crockett more than any man in the county, Crockett smiled his devilish grin and told them not to fear. “I told him his son need give himself no uneasiness about that; that I shouldn’t run against him for major, but against his daddy for colonel.” Matthews, apparently a sporting man with a sense of gamesmanship, took the challenge, shaking Crockett’s hand in front of the crowd gathered to hear speeches. Crockett let Matthews finish (a tactic he would often use to his advantage, going last) then “mounted up for a speech, too. I told the people the cause of my opposing him, remarking that as I had the whole family to run against anyway, I was determined to levy on the head of the mess.” The voters obviously took to Crockett’s straight-shooting style; he came across as a common man, essentially one of them. When the tally came in, Crockett took some pride in noting that Matthews and his son “were both badly beaten.” It was a seminal moment in the political career of David Crockett, underscoring a tendency that would surface as one of his mottos: “Never seek, nor decline, office.” He was now officially a lieutenant colonel commandant in the 57th Regiment of Militia. He was Colonel David Crockett, a title he would wear proudly for the rest of his life.

That first election also defined Crockett’s “electioneering” style, one he would use again and again, partly because it worked but mostly because it genuinely reflected who he was. Reluctantly he would enter the fray, using his humor, wit, and homespun colloquialisms and charm to win the hearts of voters. He affected naïveté, and pointed out that he rarely went looking for public office but rather it periodically came calling on him, and it was his duty as a good citizen to answer the calling.
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In most cases he was elected for positions for which he had no prior experience, and for which his résumé was spotty at best. But one of his many skills proved to be his great capacity for on-the-job training, and during his one-year tenure as justice of the peace Crockett presided over many cases, from ruling on rightful ownership of butchered hogs to child custody. He issued various licenses, including those of matrimony, “certified bounties for wolves,”
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and as he remembered, “In this way I got on pretty well, till by care and attention I improved my handwriting in such manner as to be able to prepare my warrants, and keep my record book, without much difficulty.” Crockett thrived and learned as much as he thought he needed to in his capacity as magistrate, until he decided to resign on November 1, 1819, ostensibly to focus more on his growing industries.

For the next two years David Crockett remained essentially in one place, unusual for him given his nomadic yearnings. But there was plenty of work to be done, and he spent countless hours working on his concerns such as the gristmill, the distillery, and the gunpowder factory. Elizabeth had generously kicked in her share, but even this fell short of the amount needed to get things up, running, and producing income, forcing the Crocketts to borrow to complete the buildings. David Crockett’s growing reputation as a fair and honest man certainly didn’t hurt his ability to obtain loans, and by late October 1820 he would write one of his creditors, a John C. McLemore, explaining that he’d be able to pay him back by the following spring. He was already falling behind on his payments on two plots of ground, one just sixty acres, the other a more impressive—and more expensive—320-acre parcel.

. . . I have been detained longer than expected my powder factory have not been pushed as it ought and I will not be able to meet my contract with you but if you send me a three-hundred acre warrant by the male I will pay you interest for the money until paid. I do not wish to disappoint you—I don’t expect I can pay you the hole amount until next spring.
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His hope was that by spring his factories would be fully operational and showing profits. Things apparently worked well enough, for by early 1821 he had decided that it was time for him to take a crack at higher office, this time running for the state House of Representatives. In February he left his working industrial entities and set out on a cattle drive that took him down into the lower reaches of North Carolina, then returned to go electioneering, which, as Crockett admitted, was a “bran-fire new business” to him. He looked at it this way: “It now became necessary that I should tell the people something about the government, and an eternal sight of other things that I knowed nothing more about than I did about Latin, and law, and such things as that.” Crockett was about to take his woodsy brand of politicking to the people of Hickman and Lawrence counties, using his storytelling and sharp wit to win the people over. He would later muse about this period of his life, “I just now began to take a rise.” Things were finally settled and operating at home, with Elizabeth pretty much running the place. It was time to hit the campaign trail to see what he might roust up.

AROUND ABOUT THIS TIME there was arranged what Crockett called “a great squirrel hunt” along the Duck River, where Crockett’s kind of people—hunters, farmers, folks making a living off the land—would gather. The squirrel hunt included competition, fun, and politics, as the contest was between Crockett and his backers and those in favor of his opponent. Crockett described the setup:

They were to hunt for two days: then to meet and count scalps, and have a big barbecue, and what might be called a tip-top country frolic. The dinner, and a general treat, was all to be paid for by the party taken the fewest scalps . . . I killed a great many squirrels, and when we counted scalps, my party was victorious.

At the frolic in Centreville, the candidates were expected to speak on the subject of moving the county seat of Hickman nearer to the center, and a great many townsfolk and folk from all around the county had come for the festivities, as well as to hear what the candidates had to say on the matter. Crockett was asked to go first, and he did a fair bit of legitimate hemming and hawing, partly because in fact he had no real position on the subject, partly to play the role of the reluctant candidate, but mostly because he knew that his opponent was eloquent and “could speak prime,” and Crockett used a gambling metaphor to describe his opponent’s verbal superiority: “And I know’d, too, that I wa’n’t able to shuffle and cut with him.” But the opponent’s arrogance and overconfidence also piqued Crockett’s interest, and he was offended that the man wasn’t taking him seriously enough. Here Crockett’s insecurity and pride rose high in his cheeks. He remembered the man’s attitude: “The truth is, he thought my being a candidate was a mere matter of sport; and didn’t think, for a moment, that he was in any danger from an ignorant back-woods bear hunter.” That kind of underestimation was always a risky one to take when facing the competitive David Crockett.