Crockett of Tennessee Read online

  “That may be,” David replied. “Like I said, I can make no sense of it. But I’ll tell you this, Campbell: I don’t believe Persius Tarr killed that young woman. He’s a hard man, but for the life of me I don’t believe he would kill a woman.”

  “Well then, I accept that. A man must trust his instincts on such things. But there is surely a mystery here no matter how you look at it.”

  Ibbotson puffed at his pipe, but it had gone out. He put it on the arm of his chair and studied it, his eyes fixed on the ash-filled bowl, his thoughts on the matter under discussion. After several silent moments he shifted his position so abruptly it startled David, who had fallen into a similar brood. “Well,” Ibbotson said, “it’s an interesting question, but likely one of no importance. This Persius Tarr has never shown his face to you since that night he fled the army camp, and if he does have anything to hide, he’ll probably show his face not at all. And that’s a good thing, from the sound of him. A politician needs no fugitive criminals associating with him, and no rumors about foundling babies and dead young women.”

  “Amen to that. I’ve already had enemies try to accuse me of adultery and such—bloody liars!”

  As always with David and Ibbotson, the conversation had drifted around to politics. “How do you feel about your situation in the coming election?”

  David looked squarely at Ibbotson. “Poorly. I’ll be shot if I don’t believe I could be defeated this time around.”

  “Because of your Indian removal stand?”

  “Partly. That and the public road question, the blasted impossibility of getting the western lands issue settled … and the Jackson business as a whole. Folks who are loyal to Old Hickory-face are, well, damned loyal. And I’ve got a passel of Jacksonite lawyers working against me in Tennessee. This past summer they’d set up ‘meetings’ where I was supposed to come explain myself on the Indian bill and defend turning away from Jackson—only trouble was, they never bothered to tell me about these meetings. So when I wouldn’t show up, they’d say, ‘See? Old Crockett’s afraid to show himself to his voters, and can’t defend his actions.’ It’s done me damage, no dispute. Old Hickory said he’d crush me, and danged if he ain’t making a good try at it.”

  “Has the opposition selected a candidate to oppose you?”

  “Yes. I learned of it only yesterday. He’s William Fitzgerald, a lawyer from Dresden. Jackson himself is working hard against me on Fitzgerald’s behalf. He wants me gone fearsome bad.”

  Ibbotson went to the hearth and knocked out his cold pipe. As he refilled it, he smiled almost coldly. “Well, we’ll have to do all we can to see that he is disappointed, eh?”

  “Yes sir,” David replied. “We surely will.”

  David Crockett’s campaign began in February of 1831 with the release of a lengthy “circular letter” to his constituents. These were the best such letters that had ever gone out bearing David’s name, but not because of David. Ibbotson was the mind behind them, honing them until they sparkled.

  The letter was sixteen pages long and virulently anti-Jackson, accusing him of being wasteful of government money, cruel toward Indians, and a crony of Martin Van Buren, politically despised by David. He attacked Jackson for his plans to run for reelection despite his own earlier statements that no man should serve as president more than four years. He accused him of ill will in his opposition to “internal improvements,” such as road projects, that David supported:

  I thought with him, as he thought before he was President: he has altered his opinion—I have not changed mine. I have not left the principles which led me to support General Jackson: he has left them and me; and I will hot surrender my independence to follow his new opinions, taught by interested and selfish advisers, and which may again be remoulded under the influence of passion and cunning.

  The letter was historic in David’s political career, for in it he brought his well-established opposition to Jackson into the open. In the meantime, another kind of campaigning had begun: the Southern Whigs were building David Crockett into a living legend.

  It was a process that Crockett’s personality and wit had already gotten started. Word of his unique campaign style and sense of humor had preceded him to Washington, and both friend and enemy had helped spread tales of his colorful personality. For example, almost everyone knew the story of how David had been standing one day on Pennsylvania Avenue, watching a farmer herd mules up the dirt thoroughfare. A representative from Massachusetts happened along and sidled up to Crockett. “I see some of your Tennessee constituents have come to town,” he said, pointing at the mules. David turned to him and said, “That’s right—they’re on their way to Massachusetts to become schoolmasters.”

  In April an event occurred that alone did more than all the Whig efforts to advance the legend of Colonel Crockett. The famed actor James Hackett had sometime back set up a contest for playwrights, seeking a play that would be the quintessential American production, providing some character to embody the very soul of the nation. The winning play, by one James Kirk Paulding, was called The Lion of the West, and featured as its central character a frontier wildman hero named Nimrod Wildfire. As soon as the play opened in New York City, almost all who saw it immediately linked the colorful Wildfire with the growing legend of David Crockett. Nimrod virtually became Crockett in the public eye, and David and his political cronies were sharp enough to play the association for their benefit. Colonel Crockett of Tennessee, whose major political successes were admittedly hard to find, became perceived as a man who could grin a raccoon out of a tree and eat an alligator for breakfast.

  But even as the Crockett legend grew wilder and the tall tales taller, the real man faced serious political problems. And oddly, the famous sense of humor seemed to be fading. Crockett had always been one to take jabs at himself as he poked fun at his foes, but the campaign of 1831 showed a different man—sour, sometimes outright bitter, vying against his Jacksonian enemies with little sign of grace and goodwill.

  It came to a head in Paris, Tennessee, during a campaign appearance with his competitor, Fitzgerald, who had begun making some slanderous personal attacks against Crockett’s character. In times past, David would have found some way to turn the charges humorously in his own favor. This time he could not, or would not, and had sent out word that if Fitzgerald dared to repeat them, he would face a thrashing.

  The crowd at Paris was large; many of David’s supporters came out to see if the war of words would become a real brawl. Fitzgerald had first crack at the podium, and did something odd: he laid a kerchief-wrapped object on the table before him. There it remained as he spoke. Fitzgerald had a calm manner, and repeated the controversial comments unhesitantly.

  All eyes turned to David, who rose from his seat and advanced toward the podium, eyes flashing fire. He was almost within reach of Fitzgerald when the latter reached down and picked up the wrapped object. The handkerchief fell away, revealing a pistol, leveled at David’s chest.

  “Return to your seat, sir,” Fitzgerald said.

  David, clearly stunned by what had happened, looked uncertain … then turned and slunk back to his seat.

  There were many who believed the race was lost for him at that point. In any case, it was lost for him on election day—a narrow defeat by Fitzgerald, close enough that David contested it, but in the end a defeat.

  The fears David had expressed to Ibbotson had come true. He was disappointed, but not surprised; in a letter written shortly before the election results were in, he declared to his correspondent that he would “rather be beaten and be a man than to be elected and be a little puppy dog.”

  It was a brave front, but the truth was that David Crockett was devastated. He had longed for prestige and power as a young man; in his prime adult years he had found them … and now they were gone.

  Matters had fallen out just as Jackson had threatened. Crockett of Tennessee had refused to get in line, and like a beetle, he had been crushed.

  Chapter
44

  Now came days of introspection for David Crockett, days of change, dreams and journeying in mind and body. And of anger and regret as well, long days of brooding over his defeat and his place in the world.

  Elizabeth worried about her husband, who would sit for hours at a time alone in his house, staring out the window, his chin in his hand. She hadn’t seen him like this before; indeed he had never been like this before. Had his political life meant so much to him? She had known it was important to him, but had not realized he had invested so much of his private self into the public one.

  That was how she had come to view her husband; as a man of multiple incarnations. There was the David Crockett she had come to love after her first husband’s death, the one who could make her laugh with a wry look or smile with a gentle joke, the one whose hand she loved to hold, the one she sometimes called by his childhood nickname of Davy. Then there was the other David Crockett—Colonel Crockett, congressman, foe of Jackson, friend of the squatter and the Indian, representative of the common man. This was the public Crockett, the one who roamed the halls of Congress and politicked from the stumps and store porches of West Tennessee. She did not know this second David Crockett nearly so well as the first, nor did she like him as well. To her, this public Crockett had always been something contrived, a role her husband played in public but put aside in private. Now she saw he had never really put it aside at all. The public man who seemed false to her had been overtaking the private one she loved, and she had been blind to the process.

  And there was a third Crockett too, she had begun to realize. This was the Crockett of the growing public legend, Colonel Crockett as Nimrod Wildfire, Crockett as bear hunter, ring-tailed roarer, gouge-fighter, panther screamer, star catcher. This Crockett meant nothing to her; he was a fiction and wild-eyed exaggeration that fed the hunger of citified easterners for a romantic, superhuman vision of the American frontiersman. Let them have their mythical David Crockett, if they wanted, and even their political David Crockett; Elizabeth wanted the real man as she had known him before. When she thought about it selfishly, she had to admit she hardly cared that he had been defeated. Maybe she was even a little glad.

  But she wasn’t glad about what defeat had done to his spirits. She stood quietly in the doorway one morning a few days after his return from Congress, watching him brood, and worrying about it. She did not realize he was even aware of her presence until he turned his head suddenly to look at her and said, “I’ve got to go.”

  “Go? Where?”

  “Anywhere. Maybe to the places I’ve been. The old places, where I grew up. Or anywhere. It don’t matter. Places where I can think different thoughts, and forget all the strains, and the defeats.”

  “Oh.”

  “You don’t wish me to do it, I can see.”

  “I didn’t say that … will you go alone?”

  “Yes.”

  It stung to hear that. Her eyes burned. No, no, I won’t let tears come for him to see. “I … I should be happy to go with you.”

  “It’s something I must do alone. I need time to think, to be away from everyone. I feel very pressed; it’ll make a mash of me if I don’t get out from under it, and away from everyone who is crushing me so.”

  He spoke in a gentle, weary tone, and did not seem to see the jolt his words gave Elizabeth. So I am one of the ones who is “crushing” him. Could he be so blind, so naive, not to realize how he was hurting her with such words?

  “I see,” she said. “Do what you must, then.”

  He rose and came to her. Wrapping his arms around her, he said, “I’ll always love you, dear Polly.”

  She did not allow herself to react until he was out of the room. This was the hardest blow of all. He had called her Polly, and not even noticed it! The man she loved, the man who had fathered four of her children, was talking of roaming the haunts of his former life, and called her by the name of his former wife. He could not have stabbed her more deeply had he cut her very heart with a knife.

  She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering like it was the dead of winter, biting her lip until it hurt. Then she collapsed in grief, full of weakness and despair, wishing that David Crockett had never even given a thought to public life and Congress. Kneeling on the floor, she leaned across the chair in which he had been sitting, crying like a new widow, while her husband strode across the yard outside, hands behind his back and his mind far away from this place. He had no notion at all of what he had just done to his wife, and she knew he had no notion. That made it hurt all the more.

  He had no specific destination in mind when he left his home. All he wanted to do was travel, to be alone, to think. Now that he had been ousted from Congress, he felt like a ship adrift, having no plan or purpose.

  He first headed east, into Carroll County, traveling that way until he hit a stage road that angled up out of the corner of Madison County and northeasterly into Huntingdon. He followed the road to the Tennessee River, and ferried over it. He had the pleasure of traveling a long distance with no one at all recognizing him. He went out of Humphreys County into Dickson, then Davidson, arriving at Nashville, where he checked into an inn and spent two days alone, mostly just sleeping, eating, and practicing his aim at the brass spittoon. When he left his room and ventured out to the local taverns, he made sure to strike up no conversations and to leave as soon as he suspected someone was beginning to recognize him.

  Leaving Nashville, he traveled into Rutherford County to Murfreesboro, then to McMinnville in Warren County and up to Sparta in White. There he followed a network of dirt roads in a generally southeasterly direction until he came to the Cumberland Mountains, and beyond them, Walden’s Ridge, which he crossed to reach again the Tennessee River where it sliced southwest toward the Alabama line, just missing the northwest tip of Georgia. He rode upstream as far as Knox County, and by now he was a new man. He was weary, to be sure, but weary from physical travel rather than mental stress. He grew eager to return to his family—he was missing his Betsy very much, and becoming aware as his mind cleared that maybe he had left her in a state of unhappiness. He had been so self-preoccupied at that time that he hadn’t really noticed, merely tucked the awareness away in some unused corner of his skull to be noticed only now.

  In Knoxville he wrote her a long and loving letter, and posted it west. He would not be gone much longer, he wrote; he had only one more place he felt compelled to go before the journey home, and one person he really wanted to see.

  The oddest thing about him was how little the years had changed him. “Dumb Jimmy” Crockett was quite an old man now, living on land owned by the rugged Middle Tennessee frontiersman “Coonrod” Pile, who along with the Clemens family owned a big piece of this county. Jimmy Crockett was well-liked by his neighbors but, naturally enough, cut off from them somewhat by his handicaps. David wondered if the old man would recognize him. He did. David came upon him stringing a fish line across a wide creek, and as soon as their eyes met, there was no question that Jimmy Crockett knew him. He approached slowly, being too old and stiff to move any other way, and put his arms around David. His thin shoulders quaked and tears streamed down his face.

  “My boy,” he mouthed out in tones lower than a whisper. “My good nephew boy Davy.”

  David looked into his face and talked slowly to make it easy for him to read his lips. “How are you, Uncle Jimmy? Good?”

  Wiping at his tears, the old man nodded. “Good. Good.” He tugged at David’s sleeve, nodding toward his little house.

  Inside, he winked at David and went to a little locked cupboard. He fumbled in his pockets and brought out a key, which he inserted in the lock. As he swung the door open he grinned and winked again. The cupboard was filled with bottles of some dark liquor, apparently homemade. Selecting one, he worked the cork out and handed the bottle to David, who sniffed at it.

  “Blackberry wine!” he said. “And it smells fine, Uncle Jimmy. Very fine!”

  It tasted fine too
, though it was much drier than David had anticipated. He sipped his slowly, watching Jimmy dig through a pile of old newspapers, letters, and general papers. He had been at it for two or three minutes, which puzzled David. Finally the old man found what he was seeking, greeting his success with several guttural grunts.

  He turned and laid a paper on the table before David. It was a Whig cartoon that David had seen before, showing a scepter-bearing Andrew Jackson in a king’s robes, a haughty look on his face as he trampled a copy of the United States Constitution beneath his feet. Jimmy wagged a long finger at the illustrated Jackson face and made motions and sounds as of spitting.

  David grinned, recognizing that his uncle was doing this to show that, like his famed nephew—most likely because of his nephew—he too disliked Andrew Jackson. As had been true of so many aspects and gestures of Jimmy Crockett, David found the show of family solidarity quite touching. Jimmy was a simple, unspoiled man; cut off in many ways from the world, he had not been sullied by it, and his actions came from the heart.

  “I reckon you’ve been reading about me in the papers,” he said, then caught himself wondering if Jimmy could read at all. He couldn’t remember. However it had happened, Jimmy obviously had picked up knowledge of the rift between President Andrew Jackson and Congressman Crockett of Tennessee.

  “Hickory … bah!” David could barely make out the mouthed words.

  David laughed. “That’s right, Uncle Jimmy. Bah on old Jackson. But right now he’s whipped me. I was voted out of office, Jimmy.”

  The old man grinned and bobbed his head up and down; David knew he had not understood. It didn’t matter.

  “This is good wine,” David said, lifting his nearly empty glass.

  Jimmy did understand that, and poured his glass full again. When that was gone, he repeated the process several more times, until finally David’s head was spinning. Jimmy Crockett made a strong wine.