Richard Penn Smith & John Seelye Read online

  5 And this is fame! “Such is fame” was the epitaph on Sam Patch’s wooden grave marker. The reference here, however, is to the dubious medium by which the landlord “handed his name to posterity,” the “lasting columns” of a local newspaper, suggesting that fame is a sometime thing. As I have already suggested, Crockett’s “fame,” like that of Sam Patch, was the kind of notoriety associated with temporal celebrity. Smith, a former editor himself, is suggesting that newspapers serve the moment only and are of the essence of ephemerality. The same holds for the almanacs that helped create “Davy” Crockett.

  6 heir presumptive. Martin Van Buren. In a democratic society there is no “heir presumptive,” so this is another jibe at “King Andrew.”

  7 “the times that tried men’s souls.” Echoes the famous words that open Thomas Paine’s The American Crisis, the first number of which was published in December 1776, when the fortunes of the new nation were bleak. Paine’s pamphlet was intended to arouse enthusiasm for the Revolution and so impressed George Washington that he had it read to his troops. But here Paine’s stirring words are so much generated by self-serving politicians, an expression of Crockett’s bitterness regarding Jacksonian democracy.

  8 nem.con. Abbreviation for nemine contradicente, Latin for “no one contradicting,” a parliamentary usage meaning “passed unanimously.”

  9 half horse half alligator breed. A humorous epithet of obscure origins used to describe the wilder elements of the western population; usually found along rivers, specifically the Mississippi, these roughnecks were in essence amphibious, hence the implication. The expression was made popular by Samuel Woodworth’s poem (as set to music), “The Hunters of Kentucky” (1818), celebrating the victory by frontiersmen over the British at New Orleans, and appears as well in Paulding’s play inspired by Crockett, The Lion of the West.

  CHAPTER V.

  1 all bountiful Providence. This sermonette by the “parson” contains pious sentiments seldom if ever expressed by the “real” David Crockett, and like the character of the “old gentleman” are intended to increase the sentimental burden of the narrative, one more indication of the increasing imposition of Smith’s sensibility on the story.

  2 Temperance society. The enthusiasm for total abstinence from “spirituous” drink was widespread in the 1830s, thanks to the missionary activities of the American Temperance Society. Crockett was inclined otherwise, as evidenced by his willingness to distribute liquor to voters and his fondness for taking a “horn” or two on social occasions. The parson’s joining him in taking a drink is evidence that he is no narrow-minded killjoy, that despite his piousness he is a regular fellow.

  3 cutest clerk. Not a reference to the person’s physical attractiveness but a common abbreviation for “acute,” meaning sharply intelligent, even cunning.

  4 following conversation. What follows is a demonstration of the stereotyped Yankee’s garrulous curiosity, which inspires the westerner’s stereotyped taciturnity.

  5 slapsus slinkum. Malapropism for lapsus linguae, meaning a slip of the tongue. The mistake indicates the pretentiousness of the ignorant Yankee (cf. “detentive” above where “retentive” is meant).

  CHAPTER VI.

  1 blackleg. A swindler.

  2 thimblerig. A game in which three downturned small cups (thimbles) are used, under one of which a pea is placed. The gambler swiftly switches the cups about on a table or board, then asks the player to choose the one containing the pea. If the player chooses the right one, the gambler palms the pea as he lifts the cup. Also called a “shell game,” it is here used to discount the reputation of Martin Van Buren, accused of swindling the American people.

  3 “whole hog.” To go the whole way. The thimblerigger later becomes drunk, and his claim of being a temperance man is intended to convince Crockett that he is highly moral and honest.

  4 Lynched. The world is capitalized here because it was derived from the name of Charles Lynch (1736-1796), a justice of the peace in Virginia who permitted the suspension of due process by mobs seeking to punish accused Tories during the Revolution. The practice spread to the frontier, where formal legal systems were weak and slow to act, and juries often returned judgments deemed insufficiently severe by the populace. Thimblerig later (pp. 55-57) renders an account of one such episode in Natchez. During Reconstruction, lynching was used in the South as an instrument to repress the civil rights of African Americans, while at the same time it was being practiced in the cattle country of the far West as a response to lawlessness, especially rustling.

  In the 1830s and 1840s, abolitionists who expressed anti-slavery opinions in the deep South could expect rough treatment by mobs, explaining Crockett’s equivocation in that regard. One solution to the slavery problem was put forward by the American Colonization Society, which recommended that freed slaves be sent to Africa, where they could serve as missionaries. This resulted in the creation of the country of Liberia. But ultra-abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison were adamantly opposed to this rival movement, which they saw as a very imperfect solution to the problem. And in the deep South, as Crockett’s demurrer suggests, slavery was not regarded as a problem but a solution. The historic David Crockett owned a few slaves but while siding with the Cherokees against Jackson’s removal bill, which he regarded as unjust, seems to have had no opinions on the slavery issue.

  5 Judge White. Hugh Lawson White (1773-1841), a jurist, banker, and Democratic senator from Tennessee (1825-1840). He backed Jackson’s Indian removal policy, but eventually broke with the president and became the Whig candidate in the presidential campaign of 1836 against Van Buren with John Tyler as his running mate.

  6 Old Tippecanoe. Refers to William Henry Harrison, yet another veteran-hero of frontier battles in the War of 1812 (though the one for which he was named occurred in 1811, against the confederated tribes led by Tecumseh). Nominated by the Anti-Masonic party for president in 1835, he made such a surprising showing in 1836 that he was chosen by the Whigs (over Henry Clay) as their candidate in 1840. Armed with a log cabin as a symbol and the slogan “Tippecanoe and [ John] Tyler too,” and dispensing large quantities of hard cider, the Whigs handily defeated Van Buren, characterized as a tool of eastern elites.

  7 blunt. Slang for money, presumably in reference to coins, which have a round edge, hence blunt.

  8 He talked loud. We hear more about this loud-mouthed Democrat later (pp. 61-66).

  9 Mr. Clinton. DeWitt Clinton (1769-1828), famous for his support of the Erie Canal while governor of New York (1817-1823 and 1825-1828), had a very complex political record, typical of the tangled loyalties during a period when the Jefferson Republicans were in power and the Federalist party was in decline. Nominally a Republican, Clinton (then mayor of New York City) allowed himself to be considered for nomination by the Federalists as their presidential candidate for the election of 1812, on the basis of his opposition to the war with Great Britain, even though he had already been nominated by the Republicans of the state legislature in Albany. Clinton ran against James Madison and lost, and by changing parties he lost his credibility and was removed in 1815 as New York’s mayor.

  Van Buren, a Republican who by 1812 had already gained a well-warranted reputation for political shiftiness, backed Clinton. He further demonstrated his hostility to President Madison’s policies in 1813 when, as a member of the New York state legislature, he voted for Rufus King (1755-1827) for the U.S. Senate. King was a Federalist who was also opposed to the war with Great Britain—as were many New Yorkers—because of its negative impact on international trade. In 1836, these actions were hauled up by the Whigs (many of whom were former Federalists who had opposed the War of 1812) as evidence that Van Buren was a sunshine patriot opposed to the nation’s best interests, which Smith’s Crockett identifies with the war against Great Britain. But as this same speech reveals, his hostility to Van Buren was chiefly based on the New York senator’s opposition to measures favored by western residents.

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bsp; 10 wrote his life. The foregoing attack on Van Buren sums up the materials and tone of the biography of the vice president written over Crockett’s name in 1835. (See Introduction.)

  CHAPTER VII.

  1 frog in the fable. Aesop’s fable about a frog, who, hearing an admiring description of a large bull, attempts to swell up to comparable size and explodes.

  2 Johnson’s wife. See note to p. 21, above. “Figuring” suggests “making a figure,” that is, to become prominent in Washington society.

  3 “pump upon me.” That is, to be held under a pump and doused with water. See p. 66 below for a dramatic example of this punishment.

  4 Natchez under the hill. Located on low ground and providing a landing place on the Mississippi, this was a community notorious in its day for gambling dens, saloons, and bawdy houses, catering to the crews of river craft.

  5 leg bail. Leaving town so as to avoid being arrested.

  6 “yellow boys … Benton’s mintage.” “Yellow boys” is slang for gold coins, hence the reference to Benton, but here it is mulatto children that are meant. (See Introduction and p. 62 below.)

  7 “Lynchers.” See note to page 45, above.

  CHAPTER VIII.

  1 The evening preceding … put in circulation. This anecdote is intended to be humorous, but is akin to Mark Twain’s remark about the woman who was relieved when her child was born white, being both misogynistic and miscegenational. As we have already learned, the gentleman duped into passing the woman off as his wife, presumably in hopes of sexual favors, is a Jacksonian Democrat.

  2 a tall figure. We are introduced here to Edward, the Bee hunter, who will accompany Crockett and Thimblerig to the Alamo. Unlike the rascally but humorous gambler, he is a stalwart frontiersman, and with his love of song, a romantic creation, as opposed to the picaresque Thimblerig. Expressing the poetic sensibility of Smith, he was undoubtedly borrowed from Cooper’s Paul Hover in The Prairie (see Introduction). A courageous, forthright representative of the common man, he faces down the blustering, bullying Jacksonian, and in effect is a cosmeticized Crockett.

  3 cucumber blooded. Cf. “cool as a cucumber.”

  4 honey trees are abundant in Texas. In his last surviving letter home, Crockett describes the Red River region as the place where he hopes to settle, having fertile soil, good hunting, “and bees and honey plenty” (Shackford, 214-15).

  CHAPTER IX.

  1 heard the Woods sing. I have not been able to identify this reference. There was a well-known minstrel company organized by Henry Wood in the 1840s, advertised as “Woods Minstrels,” but such groups did not exist in 1836.

  2 Jim Crow. Refers to the entertainer, Thomas Rice (1808-1860), credited with fathering the American minstrel show. In Louisville, Kentucky, in 1828, Rice introduced a song of this title to which he added a grotesque dance keyed by the words “Ebery time I wheel about I jump Jim Crow.” By 1836, Rice and his song had become universally acclaimed, and he had performed in New York, Boston, Washington, and Philadelphia, most often between the acts of comic dramas. As with “Crockett’s” allusions to Sam Patch, Smith’s tribute to Rice is an example of the extent to which he was aware of the popular culture of his day.

  3 “Andrew Tumlinson.” What follows is an incident typical of the Indian-hater type, yet another aspect of frontier myth, and the subject of Robert M. Bird’s sensational novel, Nick of the Woods (1837). As Richard Slotkin tells us, James Hall’s Sketches of History, Life, and Manners in the West, published in 1835, gives an account of Colonel John Moredock, a “classic sketch of the ‘Indian Hater’ … [and] a well-known and frequently reprinted piece of Frontier history and legend” (Fatal Environment, pp. 129-30). Here again, we find Smith working into his narrative folkloric aspects of western life, in effect bolstering Crockett’s mythic status.

  4 Caddo. Member of a confederated tribe of Native Americans, found throughout southern Louisiana and Texas. They were not a particularly warlike people, so that the behavior of the Caddo in question, if the anecdote is true, was not typical.

  5 “What did he do that made him leave home?” During the early days of Texas settlement, as the Bee hunter suggests, it was considered rude—even fatal—to ask this question, given the often unsavory backgrounds of people who had left the East for that region in the hope of beginning their lives anew.

  6 Vicksburg hat. The description defines the article in question. Mitford M. Mathews, in his Dictionary of Americanisms on Historical Principals (1951), quotes a similar passage (p. 133) in this book as his only source.

  7 lazo. More properly “lasso,” as on p. 92 following.

  8 “grin down.” So ferocious was Crockett’s grin in the mythic version that it had the power to destroy as well as kill. Shackford quotes an anecdote credited to Matthew St. Clair Clarke, author of the Life of Crockett, in which the redoubtable colonel, during a visit to a zoo, threatens to grin two hyenas to death and declares himself willing to take on a lion (Shackford, 259-60). In Clarke’s Life the hyenas became wildcats, and Crockett tells the story of his attempt to “grin” a raccoon out of a tree, but the object in question turns out to be a great knot in a limb that loses its bark from the intensity of his effort. This is the sort of thing that inspired the almanac version of “Davy” Crockett.

  CHAPTER X.

  1 ruling passion. An overwhelming desire for a particular activity that cannot be controlled, this was an eighteenth-century concept associated with the poetry of Alexander Pope: “The ruling passion, be it what it will, / The ruling passion conquers reason still” (Moral Essays, Epistle I). Crockett’s love of hunting may be attributed in part to the need of keeping his family in food, but certainly his autobiography is filled with stories about the many bears and deer he has killed. There is no account of a buffalo hunt on his trip through Texas in the slim factual record, but what follows on pp. 83-84 is an acceptable transliteration of Crockett’s stories of bear hunting, including his encounter with one resembling a very large black bull.

  2 dressed in a sailor’s round jacket. Another fictional invention, the pirate who joins Crockett’s party helps round out the cast of American types. In the almanacs, Crockett will be given a boon companion, Ben Hardin, an old salt who seems out of place on the Mississippi River.

  3 Lafitte. Jean Lafitte (c. 1780-c. 1826), French-born freebooter who headed a gang of pirates operating out of Barataria Bay in Louisiana and who assisted the Americans in defeating the British at the Battle of New Orleans. Lafitte subsequently moved his operation to Galveston, then still under Spanish rule.

  4 hunter belonging to a settler. This is the only mention in Smith’s narrative of slavery in Texas. In fact, in order to bypass the Mexican law against slavery, American settlers freed their human property, then immediately converted them to indentured servants.

  5 Post office accounts. See Introduction.

  6 Benton’s mint drops. Another slighting reference to the senator’s preference for hard currency, with a pun on “mint.”

  7 John Gilpin’s celebrated ride. In William Cowper’s comic poem, first published in 1785, a linen-draper takes an involuntary gallop on a borrowed horse from London to Ware and back again: “Now let us sing—Long live the king, / And Gilpin long live he; / And when he next doth ride abroad, / May I be there to see!”

  8 “race is not always …” Ecclesiastes 9:11.

  CHAPTER XI.

  1 fifty mounted Cumanches. Shackford (p. 215) tells us when Crockett was on the trail in Texas, heading toward the south-west, he was warned that the Comanches were on the warpath, and changed his route accordingly. Smith, however, adds further color to his narrative by including this Cooper-like episode.

  2 Bexar. The full name of San Antonio was San Antonio de Bexar (Spanish: “Bejar”). See p. 98, below.

  3 Bowie knife. First fashioned by the brother of Colonel James Bowie, another of the Alamo heroes, these awesome weapons were called “Arkansaw tooth-picks.”

  4 Philip Hone, Esq. Hone (1780-1
851) was a wealthy and affable Whig activist and mayor of New York City (1825), but is chiefly known for his extensive secret diary covering the years 1828 to 1851.

  5 Plucking pigeons. That is, the gambler is skilled at skinning suckers.

  6 Burnet’s Grant. Large tract of land settled by the American empresario David G. Burnet under the terms of the Mexican colonization law of 1825. It lay to the northeast of San Antonio and was bisected by the Trinity River. It is details like this that gave credibility to Smith’s narrative.

  7 fortress of Alamo. The modern-day Alamo is represented by the mission chapel built in 1756 that by 1836 had fallen into ruins, thanks in no small part to the damage caused by the American rebels the year before. At the time of the attack by the Mexican army the fort itself was of considerable size, surrounded by a thick wall (hastily repaired in anticipation of the Mexican attack) and barrack buildings, and the chapel occupied a only a small space in the southeast corner. The “independent flag” is another of Smith’s embellishments. According to Albert Nofi, “there may have been at least four flags in use at the Alamo,” none of which was the one bearing the familiar lone star (p. 110, below), another matter that “remains unresolved” (Nofi, 129).

  CHAPTER XII.

  1 revolution in 1812. Refers to the start of the long struggle for Mexican independence from Spain.