DURING HIS BRIEF TENURE as both magistrate and commissioner in Lawrence County, David Crockett was exposed to the rudiments of law and learned all he could right on the job. He oversaw property disputes, took depositions, issued warrants and licenses, paid out bounties for wolf scalps, supervised county road improvements, and assisted with the census. On one occasion Crockett was made custodian of funds to be collected from a county resident “for the support of a bastard child.”1
As the commander of the local militia, Crockett’s main duty was to make sure the small units scattered around the county held periodic musters and that the entire regiment gather at least once a year. This regimental muster was “the grand event of the year and brought together more of all sorts of people than any meeting or ‘gathering’ that occurred.”2 Militiamen were not issued uniforms but wore their best hunting shirts and marched with their own flintlock rifles. The highlight of the big musters were the shooting matches that featured best shots from rival units in fierce competition for, if nothing else, bragging rights until the next muster. When the smoke cleared and the boasting commenced, plenty of food, drink, and fiddles appeared and a long frolic followed, lasting through the night and into the next morning. If commissioned officers took part in the shooting matches, most likely one of those taking aim was Colonel Crockett.
The assortment of civic duties and community obligations thrust upon Crockett broadened his general knowledge and gave him a sense of fulfillment but brought him little income. These activities also took a great deal of time away from the farming he found so tedious and the hunting treks he so adored. The added pressures of a concerned wife and inadequate finances led to Crockett’s resignation as justice of the peace on November 1, 1819. A short time later he resigned his commission as lieutenant colonel in the militia and was replaced by his former first major, Josephus Irvine, from the faction opposing Crockett in the Lawrenceburg site selection.3
Since moving to the area, Crockett had acquired several hundred acres of land. He also co-owned a large tract of property with his fellow town commissioner and ally, Enoch Tucker, that eventually became an iron mining operation after the Crockett family moved away.4 But it was on another parcel of land, on the middle fork of Shoal Creek at Lawrenceburg, that Crockett launched his latest strategy for making money. On that site in late 1819, Crockett established a substantial complex that included a gristmill, a gunpowder factory, and a whiskey distillery. Crockett reported in his autobiography that he paid $3,000 for construction, “more than I was worth in the world.”5 Without hesitation, Elizabeth put money into the venture in an effort to force her wandering husband to settle down in one place. For a while her strategy worked. David stayed put, devoting long hours to his diversified business interests on the creekbanks near the family home.
Yet even with Elizabeth’s financial contribution, the Crocketts fell short and had to borrow money just to complete the buildings and give them a cushion until everything was operational and producing an income. Crockett’s solid reputation for honesty and fairness helped procure the badly needed loans, but soon he was falling far behind on other loans taken out earlier to buy land, including a 60-acre plot and a sizable 320-acre parcel. In late October 1820, he sent an urgent letter to John Christmas McLemore, one of his creditors, in which he explained that he had 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…. 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 [sic] amount until next spring.”6
McLemore was a major land speculator with sharp business acumen who invested heavily in West Tennessee’s development and was one of the founders of the city of Memphis. Through his marriage to Rachel Jackson’s niece, McLemore had the ear of Andrew Jackson and other power brokers in the state.7 Lending money to a man of Crockett’s position at that time was not one of McLemore’s major deals. Besides, he liked speculating in risky ventures, and in this instance he knew that Crockett was good for the loan, which apparently was the case. Crockett sold a bit of land, paid off some outstanding debts, and by New Year’s Day 1821 reached another milestone.8 He resigned as town commissioner on that date and over the next month pondered a run for higher political office.
Crockett’s decision to run for political office marked a dramatic new period in his life. In February 1821, he announced his candidacy for state representative for Lawrence and Hickman counties in the Tennessee State Legislature. “I just now began to take a rise,”9 Crockett later mused about his decision.
Some of Crockett’s associates—mostly neighbors, hunting companions, and local merchants—were taken aback by the announcement. Running for state elective office seemed to be in direct conflict with the kind of man they knew Crockett to be. He loved being in the outdoors and alone in the wilderness, and yet he was seeking the votes of citizens to send him to the state capital in Murfreesboro, the place that stood for everything he wished to escape. On the other hand, many other friends thought his chances of victory were excellent. Like Crockett, they also knew he could use the income from being in office, and they urged him to offer his name as a candidate. These supporters had to have been as surprised as Elizabeth and the children when, shortly after making his public announcement, Crockett inexplicably left, not just the area he wanted to represent but also the entire state of Tennessee. In March 1821, he assembled a herd of horses and drove them across the state to Buncombe County, North Carolina, where his wife’s parents and other Patton kinfolk lived.10 This was the same journey during which Crockett passed through his old home country near Finley’s Gap and stopped at the John Jacobs place to give Mrs. Jacobs the dollar he owed her deceased husband.
Perhaps Crockett figured the money he made from the sale of the horses would help finance his campaign. The only problem was that he was gone more than three months and did not return to his home until early June, leaving little time to make the rounds of the two county legislative districts before the election, set for August. Crockett was barely back from his North Carolina romp when he kissed Elizabeth—due to deliver yet another baby in less than two months—and rode off on the campaign trail. Fortunately, the older Crockett children and neighbors pitched in to help Elizabeth while her husband searched for votes.
The political campaign evoked in Crockett a folksiness and frontier flair that displayed his expansive personality in full force. One of the first events he attended was a big squirrel hunt down on the Duck River in Hickman County. He soon found that politicking in the canebrakes mostly was a good excuse for a no-holds-barred party. “They were to hunt two days; then to meet and count the scalps, and have a big barbecue, and what might be called a tip-top country frolic,” explained Crockett. “The dinner, and a general treat, was all to be paid for by the party having taken the fewest [squirrel] scalps. I joined one side, taking the place of one of the hunters, and got a gun ready for the hunt. I killed a great many squirrels, and when we counted scalps, my party was victorious.”11
Before the dancing got under way, the various political candidates were called on to make a speech. Instead of using his talent as a storyteller, Crockett became self-conscious, figuring he had to make some sort of formal address. He approached the event organizers and tried to get out of speaking, since, as he put it, making a speech as a candidate “was a business I was as ignorant of as an outlandish negro,” his language reflecting a racist sentiment typical of the day.12 Crockett’s opponent was confident and not at all concerned about running against someone he considered to be “an ignorant back-woods bear hunter.” Seeing he had no choice, Crockett tried to speak to the crowd but “choaked [sic] up as bad as if my mouth had been jam’d and cram’d chock full of dry mush.” Then, as the crowd stood staring at the befuddled Crockett, he had a brainstorm—tell one of the humorous stories he knew so well.
The instantaneous decision would change the course of regional Tennessee political history of the early nineteenth century.
At last I told them I was like a fellow I had heard of not long before. He was beating on the head of an empty barrel near the road-side, when a traveler, who was passing along, asked him what he was a doing that for? The fellow replied that there was some cider in that barrel a few days before, and he was trying to see if there was any then, but if there was he couldn’t get at it. I told them that there had been a little bit of a speech in me a while ago, but I believed I couldn’t get it out. They all roared out in a mighty laugh, and I told them other anecdotes, equally amusing to them, and believing I had them in a first-rate way, I quit and got down, thanking the people for their attention. But I took care to remark that I was as dry as a powder horn, and that I thought it was time for us all to wet our whistles a little; and so I put off to the liquor stand, and was followed by the greater part of the crowd.13
Crockett’s confidence as a stump speaker increased at every event he attended. Whenever he was in doubt, he just “relied on natural born sense,” an endless repertoire of anecdotes and jokes, and those “treats of liquor” for the potential voters with a thirst. The people who came to the barbecues, shooting matches, frolics, and rallies did not seem to care if Crockett avoided speaking about political issues but instead told them outrageously funny yarns that most of the time featured himself as the brunt of the joke. Crockett never put on airs. He was trying to represent the common men and women, just like himself, and not the landed gentry, creating an ethic for this western portion of Tennessee that challenged the hierarchical structure of the plantation culture. Crockett’s constituents had heavily calloused hands, sunburnt necks, and contrary dispositions if anybody—including the government—pushed them too hard.
During the busy campaign, on the second day of August, Elizabeth gave birth to her last child—a baby girl whom she and David named Matilda.14 That brought the number of children living under the cabin roof to eight. Two weeks after Matilda’s birth, her father turned thirty-five, the halfway mark to the biblical “threescore years and ten.” Later that month, a stream of voters rode or walked to the polls from first light until it got dark. When all the ballots were counted, Crockett was declared the winner. He had beaten his opponent by a two-to-one margin, or, as he more precisely put it: “I was elected, doubling my competitor, and nine votes over.”15
Not long after the election, Crockett visited with James Knox Polk, future president of the United States, at a political gathering in the town of Pulaski. Polk, just twenty-six, was an ardent admirer and lifelong supporter of Andrew Jackson, and served as the clerk of the State senate during Crockett’s first term in the legislature. Polk offered Crockett his congratulations—he was already well acquainted with him from appearances as a lawyer in Lawrence County—and then conjectured, “Well, colonel, I suppose we shall have a radical change of the judiciary at the next session of the Legislature.”16 According to Crockett, this rhetorical question from Polk caught him totally off guard. “Very likely, sir,” replied Crockett, who then quickly took his leave. “For I was afraid some one would ask me what the judiciary was; and if I knowed I wish I may be shot. I don’t indeed believe I had ever before heard that there was any such thing in all nature; but still I was not willing that the people there should know how ignorant I was about it.” It seems likely that this was yet another instance when Crockett exaggerated his supposed ignorance, the ploy that so pleased his supporters, who, of course, he hoped would read his autobiography.
Crockett was present and accounted for at the state capital in Murfressborough (as Murfreesboro was spelled at that time) when the first session of the Fourteenth General Assembly convened, on September 17, 1821.17 His first term as a state lawmaker—representing Hickman and Lawrence Counties—was relatively quiet. Crockett was appointed to only one committee, the rather inconsequential Standing Committee of Propositions and Grievances.
The opening days of the session were uneventful except for an incident on the floor of the chamber that proved to be a valuable lesson for Crockett and the other legislators. During debate, a nervous Crockett, still trying to get his bearings and unfamiliar with legislative procedure and protocol, rose with some nervousness to speak on behalf of a measure under consideration. When he finished and took his seat, James C. Mitchell, a leading criminal lawyer of the day and the representative for three Tennessee counties, rose to speak in opposition. In the course of rebutting Crockett’s remarks, Mitchell referred to Crockett as “the gentleman from the cane,” a term that many believed denoted a common person from the backwoods.18 Some of the other members chuckled at Mitchell’s remark. Crockett took immediate offense. He leapt to his feet and demanded an apology. None was forthcoming, and, later, during the recess outside the chambers, Crockett accosted Mitchell and restated his demands and promised a good country whipping for Mitchell if he refused. The impeccable Mitchell, dressed in the fine suit of clothes worn by gentlemen of distinction, tried to reason with Crockett and assured him that he meant no insult but had used the expression merely to describe the canebrake country where Crockett resided. The explanation did not satisfy Crockett or soothe his wounded pride.19
As luck would have it, that evening Crockett came upon a cambric ruffle lying on the dirt road just like the one worn at the neck by Mitchell. The following morning, Crockett pinned the fancy ruffle to his own coarse shirt and strode into the chamber. Waiting until the eloquent Mitchell finished speaking once again, Crockett arose to offer his comments on the matter under discussion. As a pontificating Crockett walked back and forth, the frilly ruffle caught the eye of other members of the body and soon titters and giggles turned into uproarious and prolonged laughter at the stark contrast between the foppish neck scarf and Crockett’s country garb. A humiliated Mitchell, who later served with Crockett in the U.S. Congress, quickly fled the chamber, as if he had been effeminized by the swashbuckling frontiersman. Crockett took his bows as the others cheered. Crockett won his spurs that day and he did so without shedding blood in a duel. From that moment on, the title “gentleman from the cane” was no longer considered derogatory. It was a badge of honor for Crockett and for the people he represented.