Speaker 1: Well, who are you going to vote for?
Speaker 2: You know, if you're going to vote for somebody to
Speaker 2: represent you in the Tennessee Legislature, are you going to
Speaker 2: vote for some fancy, you know, well dressed person or
Speaker 2: are you going to vote for somebody that's a lot
Speaker 2: like you. It's going to be able to spin yarns
Speaker 2: and tell stories and make you laugh.
Speaker 3: On this episode, we're naveled deep into the life of
Speaker 3: America's first celebrity backwoodsman, David Crockett. To one hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty years after his death, people would call Davy. We've
Speaker 3: learned there were four Crocketts known by America, the bear hunter,
Speaker 3: the soldier, the politician, and the martyr at the Alamo.
Speaker 3: We ended the last episode with Crockett leaving the military,
Speaker 3: but today things get dicey. Crockett became America's first famous,
Speaker 3: working class populist politician. We'll see his charm and wit
Speaker 3: on the campaign stump, family tragedy, and business failures, and
Speaker 3: see the pragmatic genius of the American Frontier flow through
Speaker 3: his life. But ultimately we'll learn about Crockett's blunder. Don't
Speaker 3: think for a minute that Crockett's shoe in for the
Speaker 3: Bear Grease Hall of Fame.
Speaker 4: Do you think he'll make it after this episode?
Speaker 3: I'm certain you'll have a strong leaning, and I really
Speaker 3: doubt that you're gonna want to miss this one.
Speaker 5: Who else can you think of? Who's a famous politician
Speaker 5: who came literally from the laboring class. It's Lincoln who
Speaker 5: shares so much with David Crockett.
Speaker 3: My name is Klay Nukem, and this is the Bear
Speaker 3: Grease Podcast where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search
Speaker 3: for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the
Speaker 3: story glory of Americans who lived their lives close to
Speaker 3: the land, presented by FHF gear, American made, purpose built
Speaker 3: hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged
Speaker 3: as the place as we explore.
Speaker 2: Celebrity at its core, in many ways is the fans
Speaker 2: interpretation of that individual.
Speaker 1: And so it is.
Speaker 2: Impossible for anyone to live up to another person's interpretation
Speaker 2: of who we are, and so we will never know
Speaker 2: some of what motivated David Crockett. You know, also we
Speaker 2: change throughout our lives. You know, we can't take a
Speaker 2: human being and put them in one This person is
Speaker 2: this because we evolve, we grow, we learn, we fail,
Speaker 2: you know, And I think he was a great example
Speaker 2: of somebody who did that, who just tried to figure
Speaker 2: it out, you know.
Speaker 1: But but he was, you know, he was.
Speaker 2: Just he was just a fascinating, fine, interesting person in
Speaker 2: a time where there wasn't you know, people were just
Speaker 2: struggling to survive.
Speaker 3: It seems like he would have been hard not to
Speaker 3: like if you actually met him.
Speaker 4: Crockett biographer R.
Speaker 3: Scott Williams believes that Davy was America's first real celebrity,
Speaker 3: and despite our exploration of his life, we'll never know
Speaker 3: his full motivations.
Speaker 4: Western culture has obsessed.
Speaker 3: Over the fleeting fame of mortal men with the veracity
Speaker 3: of an october squirrel horden Acrens. But I think the
Speaker 3: pace has even increased in modern times. I'm certain since
Speaker 3: our hunter gathered days as a species, we've looked for
Speaker 3: leaders and warlords to look up to later in history, kings, chiefs, authors, artists.
Speaker 3: But the global celebrity is a relatively new thing, and
Speaker 3: it's gaining steam today with social media and television. Celebrities
Speaker 3: are a dime a dozen, from sports players, race car drivers, actors, musicians,
Speaker 3: to coondog breeders and world class trotliners.
Speaker 4: That's a joke.
Speaker 3: Celebrities are everywhere, but Crockett was surely America's first. He
Speaker 3: had widespread name recognition in America and Europe and his lifetime.
Speaker 3: People made money off his name, image, and likeness. They
Speaker 3: wrote books and even had a Broadway play about him
Speaker 3: in his lifetime. In my mind, his interaction with his
Speaker 3: own fame characterizes him as a true celebrity. But I
Speaker 3: think it's notable that the foundation of his identity and
Speaker 3: fame was that he was a bear hunter. Don't forget that.
Speaker 3: On the last episode, we talked about Crockett's childhood, first marriage,
Speaker 3: and his time in the Creek War. I'd argue this
Speaker 3: was the most formative part of his life. Crockett married
Speaker 3: Polly Finley in eighteen oh six he returned from the war,
Speaker 3: and in eighteen fourteen he wrote, after his arrival home,
Speaker 3: though I was only a rough sort of backwoodsman, they
Speaker 3: seemed mighty glad to see me. He was talking about
Speaker 3: his family, however little the quality folks might suppose it for,
Speaker 3: I do reckon. We love as hard in the backwood
Speaker 3: country as any people in the whole world.
Speaker 4: That's good. He loved Polly.
Speaker 3: But in eighteen fifteen tragedy struck, and we see our
Speaker 3: man expressing perhaps the most iconic expression of humanity, grief.
Speaker 3: So Crockett returns back to Polly in eighteen fourteen. Then
Speaker 3: tragedy strikes when she dies. Yeah, soon after he returned.
Speaker 5: And this was a truly traumatic loss. He had children,
Speaker 5: he didn't like farming. His business affairs were not in
Speaker 5: good order. He had lost his wife, beautiful, young Irish,
Speaker 5: she married in her teens, he was only twenty. And
Speaker 5: it's on the frontier.
Speaker 3: Here's Crockett's account of Polly's death in his own words
Speaker 3: from his autobiography. But in this time I met with
Speaker 3: the hardest trial whichever falls to the lot of men, death,
Speaker 3: that cruel leveler of all distinctions, to whom the prayers
Speaker 3: and tears of husbands and even the helpless infancy are addressed.
Speaker 3: In vain entered my humble cottage and tore from my
Speaker 3: children an affectionate mother and from me a tender, loving wife.
Speaker 3: It is the scene long gone by, and one which
Speaker 3: you would suppose I had almost forgotten. Yet when I
Speaker 3: turned my memory back on it, it seems as but
Speaker 3: the work of yesterday. It was the doing of the Almighty,
Speaker 3: whose ways are always right, though we sometimes think they
Speaker 3: fall heavy on us, and as painful as is even
Speaker 3: Yet at the remembrance of her sufferings and the loss
Speaker 3: sustained by my little children and myself, yet I have
Speaker 3: no wish to lift up the voice of complaint. I
Speaker 3: was left with three children. The two oldest were sons,
Speaker 3: the youngest a daughter, and at that time a mere infant.
Speaker 3: It appeared to me at that moment that my situation
Speaker 3: was the worst in the world. Death the cruel leveler
Speaker 3: of all distinctions. Polly was twenty six years old. Crockett
Speaker 3: wore his heart on his sleeve. Perhaps the most mysterious
Speaker 3: phenomenon of human life is that it ends. Death must
Speaker 3: be one of the most written about, feared, and explored
Speaker 3: occurrences in existence. The reaction of the living to death
Speaker 3: is something that interests us all. I suspect the curiosity
Speaker 3: is instinctual, and we're hoping to learn how to respond
Speaker 3: to what we know is coming, this inevitable crisis that
Speaker 3: no man's mind, money, good looks, or wit can circumnavigate death.
Speaker 3: Human death is really a wild concept, almost unbelievable. In death,
Speaker 3: we see the greatest picture of the dual nature of
Speaker 3: human life. It's both spiritual and physical. The essence of
Speaker 3: a human departs their physical body in a peculiar, untraceable moment,
Speaker 3: characterized more by what is gone than by what remains.
Speaker 3: The lifeless corpse, once occupied by the energy of life
Speaker 3: and governed by the inexplicable architecture that built the body,
Speaker 3: now begins to be disassembled back into its individual physical elements,
Speaker 3: redistributing the matter of the human body back into the
Speaker 3: chemical cycles of the earth. Death is wild. This small
Speaker 3: window into Crockett's response to death is endearing, but also
Speaker 3: shows us his pragmatism, which people on the frontier had
Speaker 3: to have. So here's what he did very quickly.
Speaker 5: So he had to do something, and he knew there
Speaker 5: was a widow not too far away, Elizabeth Patton, who
Speaker 5: also had kids. He was very young. Also, he goes
Speaker 5: to see her and they actually get married. She's a
Speaker 5: very different kind of person from him.
Speaker 1: It's a very.
Speaker 5: Practical, hard working, realistic. They say opposite to tract, and
Speaker 5: I guess they do something.
Speaker 3: It almost sounds like, kind of like a transactional thing too,
Speaker 3: And from the mouth of Crockett in his autobiography, he
Speaker 3: just basically says, my wife died soon enough, I realized
Speaker 3: I needed a new wife, my kids needed a new mother.
Speaker 3: And there was a widow down the road, and we
Speaker 3: met and she was agreeable, and we got married. I mean,
Speaker 3: it was just like, you know, I'm a man, you're
Speaker 3: a woman.
Speaker 1: Let's do this.
Speaker 3: Crockett said he was as sly about it as a
Speaker 3: fox when he is going to rob a h house
Speaker 3: when he courted Elizabeth, and it worked. David and Elizabeth
Speaker 3: were married at her home. During the ceremony, a hog
Speaker 3: named Hook pushed open the door and walked inside, and
Speaker 3: everyone laughed, and Crockett said, old Hook, from now on,
Speaker 3: I'll do the grunting around here.
Speaker 4: That's good.
Speaker 3: In some ways, romance is a novelty of the modern
Speaker 3: prosperous world. The original idea of marriage was primarily one
Speaker 3: of practicality. This could be why more than fifty percent
Speaker 3: of marriages in America end in divorce. Could it be
Speaker 3: that using the tickuli feelings of cheap emotion as our
Speaker 3: primary guide on marriage are leading us astray. I'm not
Speaker 3: suggesting that a marriage should be absent of love, just
Speaker 3: a question. In Crockett's political career, he would sponsor bills
Speaker 3: that would make it harder to get a divorce in Tennessee.
Speaker 3: We don't know the exact date of Polly's death, but
Speaker 3: she died in eighteen fifteen, and he married Elizabeth on
Speaker 3: March sixth, eighteen fifteen, so he remarried inside of three
Speaker 3: months of Polly's death. It's notable too, that Elizabeth's first
Speaker 3: husband was killed in the Creek War that Crockett also
Speaker 3: fought in. Elizabeth had two children that she brought into
Speaker 3: the marriage and David three, and then they would have
Speaker 3: three children together, bringing their total number of children to eight.
Speaker 3: That's a respectable sized Tennessee family. The pragmatism of David
Speaker 3: and Elizabeth's marriage was evidenced by their business ventures together.
Speaker 3: The new Crockett family would then move to Shoal Creek
Speaker 3: near Lawrenceburg, southeast of Nashville, Tennessee. Today there's a Crockett
Speaker 3: State Park there. Here is an event in eighteen nineteen
Speaker 3: that shaped their family's life.
Speaker 5: Another way that Crockett's life parallels Daniel Boone's is that
Speaker 5: both started many enterprises, businesses, and they never worked out.
Speaker 5: They always collapsed one way or another. And using his
Speaker 5: wife's money, he builds this huge business gristmill, powder mill,
Speaker 5: distillery and thinks, you know, well have got it made.
Speaker 5: Now this comes a flood and it's all washed away.
Speaker 5: He has to start over again.
Speaker 3: You know, it seems like poverty chased these guys around
Speaker 3: a lot and shaped a lot of their life. I mean,
Speaker 3: if Crockett had been wealthy, he wouldn't have been Crockett.
Speaker 3: If Boone had been independently wealthy, he never would have
Speaker 3: had to have taken the risks that he took. You know,
Speaker 3: I feel like these guys, even though if they if
Speaker 3: you had him choose poverty or choose wealth, they would
Speaker 3: inevitably have chosen wealth and had maybe an easier life.
Speaker 3: It was this thing that was following them that drove them,
Speaker 3: and that drive that they had is what made them
Speaker 3: who they were.
Speaker 5: They were both gamblers and they were willing to take
Speaker 5: huge chances. I think both of them had a sense
Speaker 5: that they were going to lose in practical things, but
Speaker 5: they were willing to try really risky.
Speaker 3: Things because it might have a big payoff. You might
Speaker 3: go through the Cumberland Gap and get ten thousand acres
Speaker 3: in Kentucky that yours, or you might go to West
Speaker 3: Tennessee or Texas and get land.
Speaker 5: But also I think Crockett felt sometimes that he was
Speaker 5: kind of born to failure. It became a part of
Speaker 5: the persona, the public persona, the self deprecating you know,
Speaker 5: I've done this, I've done that. You know this, you know,
Speaker 5: the loss of the mill starts a streak that ends
Speaker 5: up at the Alamo. He didn't choose failure, but he
Speaker 5: was willing to risk failure.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if the gristmill had worked out, that flood hadn't come,
Speaker 3: and that had been a major source of prosperity for
Speaker 3: his family, he probably maybe would have never gone to
Speaker 3: take Oh.
Speaker 5: Well, certainly you have never gone to Texas. He'd probably
Speaker 5: never gone to Congress is either.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, that's a really interesting thought. You think
Speaker 3: about the failures in your life or the difficulty, the
Speaker 3: stuff that was hard, and so often that looks like
Speaker 3: a like a black X, but that that black X
Speaker 3: is probably what pushed you to do other stuff that
Speaker 3: ended up being winds for you.
Speaker 5: The unconventional thing they ended up doing it thing that
Speaker 5: nobody expected.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you one thing I've learned from looking at
Speaker 3: Frontier history's owning a gristmill is risky business.
Speaker 1: Oh man.
Speaker 3: It's just like every time when I hear that they
Speaker 3: build a gristmill, I'm like, oh man, here comes financial failure.
Speaker 3: After the failure of the mill, Crockett's wanderlust for land
Speaker 3: got the best of him, and he went on an
Speaker 3: exploration into Alabama, the land formerly owned by the Creeks.
Speaker 3: He gets down there on a several month excursion and
Speaker 3: contracts what most likely was malaria.
Speaker 4: He gets so sick his.
Speaker 3: Buddies literally leave him for dead, return to Tennessee and
Speaker 3: give his horse to Elizabeth with news of his death.
Speaker 3: But as we know, reports of death aren't always true.
Speaker 5: Again, I remember Mark Twain's other reports of my death.
Speaker 3: I want to ask you about that because so, yeah,
Speaker 3: so these guys that were with Crockett go back and
Speaker 3: tell Elizabeth Crockett's dead, even though they actually didn't see
Speaker 3: him die. They just when they left him he was
Speaker 3: Basically this seems so common back during this time that
Speaker 3: the Frontier was so dangerous, the communication was so slim.
Speaker 3: We know it happened with Boone when he went into
Speaker 3: the wilderness for two years, it was just assumed that
Speaker 3: he was dead. It happened with Crockett. It just seems
Speaker 3: like today I think about you know, my wife or
Speaker 3: it would just be so bizarre to have some period
Speaker 3: of your life when you did not know if your
Speaker 3: spouse or loved one was dead or alive.
Speaker 5: Well, the most famous case is Hugh Glass. Remember that
Speaker 5: Jim Bridger as a sixteen year old left him because
Speaker 5: he was so close to being dead. He he was
Speaker 5: going to die and when you get away from the
Speaker 5: grizzly bears, yeah and the Sioux.
Speaker 1: So he just left him.
Speaker 5: Was he was dead?
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, the.
Speaker 5: Reports of my doubt that greatly exaggerated.
Speaker 3: Mark twains Man, that is a when you think about
Speaker 3: human emotions and how we're geared to deal with crisis
Speaker 3: in life. That has got to be probably one of
Speaker 3: the most dramatic things that can happen, is when you
Speaker 3: think somebody's dead that you find out they're alive. And
Speaker 3: you can even take that analogy back to the pinnacle
Speaker 3: of the Christian faith, which is Jesus died and then
Speaker 3: was resurrected three days later. He shows back up alive.
Speaker 3: It's a pretty I don't know. It just takes a
Speaker 3: human on a massive roller coaster. And it's interesting because
Speaker 3: that happened all the time back these days.
Speaker 5: Obviously they were happy to see him when he showed
Speaker 5: up and she had sent somebody to look for him.
Speaker 3: She was a pragmatic woman, wasn't she. She was like,
Speaker 3: I don't think he's dead, that old sucker. You can't
Speaker 3: kill him that easy. There's more to that near death story.
Speaker 3: That's really interesting. Will somebody on the next render please
Speaker 3: remind me to talk about his near death in Alabama. Now,
Speaker 3: that is pragmatism, you know. I'm amazed at how quickly
Speaker 3: they moved past loss. And you see that with Elizabeth Patton,
Speaker 3: Elizabeth Crockett, when the gristmill washed away, she just kind
Speaker 3: of said, well, there was a quote from her and
Speaker 3: she used the words, we'll we'll scuffle around and get
Speaker 3: some more, get something else going.
Speaker 4: You know, they're just kind of.
Speaker 5: That's the American way. I mean, you move further west,
Speaker 5: your debt, you lose everything, get in trouble with the law, whatever,
Speaker 5: you just keep going with. You try again, and then
Speaker 5: you try again. It's just you know how the country
Speaker 5: was developed. That's people who failed in Europe or they
Speaker 5: wanted to go, you know, they were in Ireland or
Speaker 5: somewhere they.
Speaker 3: You know, that makes me see a real connection to
Speaker 3: the actual land of America, that the physical land, how
Speaker 3: big it is, and kind of American identity that we
Speaker 3: had room to make mistakes and continue to move. I mean,
Speaker 3: just the idea of a literal geographic move after some
Speaker 3: type of failure or you know, if back in Europe
Speaker 3: when everything was settled from coast to coast and you
Speaker 3: fail in your little hometown, I mean, there's not a
Speaker 3: vast wilderness to the west of you to just go
Speaker 3: and try something.
Speaker 5: Might in jail in England as you've got in debt.
Speaker 4: But here there was a place to run.
Speaker 3: I've never really thought of that as such a part
Speaker 3: of American identity in the well.
Speaker 5: I think it's true in other ways, just geography that
Speaker 5: if you fail to start another career, I mean somebody
Speaker 5: else COVID comes and people lose their job and they
Speaker 5: go to the community college or you know, start another
Speaker 5: That's why you know there's so many jobs begging people
Speaker 5: have moved on to something.
Speaker 3: Any I think that's that's unique to Americans.
Speaker 5: It's not unique, but it's certainly a part of our character.
Speaker 5: That nothing is at the end of the world. I mean,
Speaker 5: you lose something, you know you can always try again.
Speaker 5: It's a part of the character that is most successful
Speaker 5: what we call pragmatism. The people who are pragmatic usually
Speaker 5: win over those who are idealistic or have some fantasy
Speaker 5: about the way things have to be. It's said that
Speaker 5: in the Civil War, the Union was much more pragmatic
Speaker 5: than the South, which had grown up on the novels
Speaker 5: of Sir Walter Scott. This you know chivalry, and you
Speaker 5: know grandness, and really a place that you know where
Speaker 5: you something, you have a little shop or a factory,
Speaker 5: that it's hard for one to ultimately compete with the other.
Speaker 5: You may have generals that are better, but it's this,
Speaker 5: it's the supplies, the material that finally on the war
Speaker 5: that makes sense. If we have any genius, it's pragmatism.
Speaker 3: If we have any genius, it's pragmatism. That's interesting to
Speaker 3: think about. Seems to me like there should be a
Speaker 3: fine balance of idealism and pragmatism in one's life. The
Speaker 3: year eighteen seventeen is when the world began to take
Speaker 3: notice of Crockett, he was thirty two years old, which
Speaker 3: for the frontier was on the right side of middle age.
Speaker 3: It was then he was appointed as a magistrate of
Speaker 3: his county, which is basically a low level judge. Crockett said,
Speaker 3: this was a hard business for me, for I could
Speaker 3: just barely write my own name, but to do this
Speaker 3: and write warrants too, was at least a huckleberry over
Speaker 3: my persimmon. That was a cute way to say that
Speaker 3: this was above his pay grade. And he went on
Speaker 3: to say, quote, I made my decisions on the principles
Speaker 3: of common justice and honesty between man and man, and
Speaker 3: relied on natural born since not on law learning to
Speaker 3: guide me, for I had never read a page in
Speaker 3: a law book my whole life.
Speaker 4: Crockett's public life grew over the.
Speaker 3: Next few years when he rose out of the wilderness
Speaker 3: of West Tennessee and declared that he was going to
Speaker 3: run for state representative. So in eighteen twenty one is
Speaker 3: when he ran for state representative, and he was aged
Speaker 3: thirty five. So we've walked through his life from being
Speaker 3: farmed out to do work for his father when he
Speaker 3: was thirteen running away from home working for John Canaday,
Speaker 3: this astute quaker who really shaped him to get him married.
Speaker 3: And from twenty to thirty five he kind of became
Speaker 3: the bear hunter and backwoodsman and built this you know,
Speaker 3: really was on the frontier. And then when he was
Speaker 3: in eighteen twenty one, age thirty five, he ran for
Speaker 3: state representative. It said that he started his campaign at
Speaker 3: a squirrel hunt. There was a big squirrel hunt down
Speaker 3: on the Duck River in Hickman County, and it was
Speaker 3: a big social gathering and they had a big frolic
Speaker 3: as they called, where they had music and bands, and
Speaker 3: it was a squirrel hunting contest where the guys went
Speaker 3: out and whoever could bring back the most squirrels would win,
Speaker 3: and so called it squirrel scalps scalps, Yeah, they called it.
Speaker 3: They brought squirrel scalps back. What I took note of
Speaker 3: this he said when he stood up before those people,
Speaker 3: and again he's not polished in public speaking at this point.
Speaker 3: He's just done it a couple of times probably, And
Speaker 3: when he stood up before him, he got choked up
Speaker 3: big time. And I can identify with that, standing up
Speaker 3: before people and being self conscious and just being his
Speaker 3: knees were shaking, yeah, just locked up, and he made
Speaker 3: a joke like he was stumbling for what to say,
Speaker 3: and he said, well, when I stood up here there
Speaker 3: it was like a there was a little bit of
Speaker 3: whiskey at the bottom of the barrel, and I thought
Speaker 3: I could get it out by turning it over and
Speaker 3: shaking it.
Speaker 4: And when I did, nothing came out.
Speaker 3: And he was a metaphor about him thinking he had
Speaker 3: something to say but didn't. And when he did that,
Speaker 3: all the people started laughing and it encouraged him, and
Speaker 3: all of a sudden he.
Speaker 1: Was able to give the.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And I could identify with that so much.
Speaker 3: But he had a very successful first speech, and then
Speaker 3: that became like the fire of his political career was
Speaker 3: standing up and talking to people.
Speaker 5: Well, I think he discovered this talent that when he's
Speaker 5: actually in front of people, however nervous he was before,
Speaker 5: when he's up there looking them in the face, that
Speaker 5: suddenly the words do come to him. That that's true
Speaker 5: for some people, and it's not. I've always been that way.
Speaker 5: I'm a very shy person. But when I get up
Speaker 5: in front of people, the words come and I think
Speaker 5: Crockett found out there. That was the important point. He's
Speaker 5: somebody had this rapport with people that he kind of
Speaker 5: knew what they wanted to hear and how he wanted
Speaker 5: to present himself because he's creating a persona Every public
Speaker 5: person is an actor, and from the time he was
Speaker 5: very young, he was sort of an actor. He's like
Speaker 5: Boone in that way. I mean, everybody is an actor
Speaker 5: in a sense. You create the role of yourself and
Speaker 5: Crockett was really good at it. That was the real
Speaker 5: beginning of his political career when he got up there
Speaker 5: and was at LBJ who said, if you're really a
Speaker 5: have the talent to be a politician, and you walk
Speaker 5: into a room, you've got to know within I don't know,
Speaker 5: forty five seconds or something, what people's.
Speaker 1: Attitude to you are.
Speaker 5: You just sense it that people or a hostile or
Speaker 5: friendly or yeah, believe you. And he had that.
Speaker 3: Crockett would win the election and it would set a
Speaker 3: new course for his life. Here's Scott Williams with some context.
Speaker 2: So you have to look at what was going on
Speaker 2: in the country at the time. So expansion is what
Speaker 2: everybody was all about. America was needing to grow there
Speaker 2: needed to be a lot more farmland, a lot of
Speaker 2: trade was going on internationally, and all of the area
Speaker 2: where I am, all around us for thousands of miles,
Speaker 2: is prime agriculture land. People up east, though, were curious.
Speaker 2: They were trying to figure out, you know, what is
Speaker 2: his land like, you know, and so there were songs
Speaker 2: and there were there was a lot of you know,
Speaker 2: the media was really writing about it, and there were
Speaker 2: a lot of people writing books about it, and so
Speaker 2: it was very romanticized. And so people like Andrew Jackson,
Speaker 2: who were the last person you would ever think would
Speaker 2: be running for office, you know, could win. And someone
Speaker 2: like a David Crockett, who, well, who are.
Speaker 1: You going to vote for?
Speaker 2: You know, if you're going to vote for somebody to
Speaker 2: represent you in the Tennessee legislature, are you going to
Speaker 2: vote for some fancy, you know, well dressed person or
Speaker 2: are you going to vote for somebody that's a lot
Speaker 2: like you. It's going to be able to spin yarns
Speaker 2: and tell stories and make you laugh.
Speaker 3: And I guess back in the back in the East,
Speaker 3: that was the typical political leader.
Speaker 1: Oh and it was the.
Speaker 4: Standard I read.
Speaker 3: I think it was in your book that a lot
Speaker 3: of the politics back East maybe weren't even that much
Speaker 3: different than Europe what these people had left. And so
Speaker 3: when Crockett was when he rose up, America was like, Yeah, that's.
Speaker 1: Who we are.
Speaker 4: We're not We're.
Speaker 1: Not those guys. This is who we are. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: exactly right.
Speaker 3: Crockett biographer Michael Wallace said the political campaign evokeding Crockett
Speaker 3: a folksiness in frontier flair that displayed his expansive personality
Speaker 3: in full force. He would continue to use this template
Speaker 3: of folksy speeches that vividly differed from the stuffy political
Speaker 3: vibe of his opponents. The founding fathers weren't exactly commoners,
Speaker 3: you know. Wallace also said Crockett never put on airs.
Speaker 3: He was trying to represent the common men and women
Speaker 3: just like himself and not the landed gentry, creating an
Speaker 3: ethic for this western portion of Tennessee that challenged the
Speaker 3: hierarchical structure of the plantation culture and the quote. He
Speaker 3: would maintain this stance his whole political career and become
Speaker 3: America's first frontier populist politician, as he would later go
Speaker 3: to Congress so eighteen twenty one he's a state representative.
Speaker 3: This is his first time to really be in the
Speaker 3: public eye, and he's in the chamber of the Legislature.
Speaker 3: One of the more pro legislators stand up and they're
Speaker 3: talking about Crockett, and he belittles Crockett when he says
Speaker 3: the gentleman from the cane. This was designed to be basically,
Speaker 3: it was just saying, this is a common man, an
Speaker 3: uneducated man, a man that doesn't need to be here.
Speaker 3: And he was trying to take the knees out from Crockett.
Speaker 3: And then what does Crockett do.
Speaker 5: He calls himself the gentleman from the cane.
Speaker 3: At the time, there were vast expanses of river cane
Speaker 3: associated with wilderness.
Speaker 4: That's what he's talking about when he says the cane.
Speaker 3: The man who belittled him wore a ruff which was
Speaker 3: a high frillly caller, you know, like those European guys wore.
Speaker 3: And the next day Crockett stood before the Congress wearing
Speaker 3: a rouf and calling himself a man from the cane.
Speaker 3: This maid is aggressor of the laughing stock of the
Speaker 3: Tennessee legislature.
Speaker 5: And that's remember how difficult it is to come from
Speaker 5: his background and to be in a chamber of people
Speaker 5: who are much better addressed, who have the confidence of
Speaker 5: people who have more money. This is really challenging somebody
Speaker 5: really from the working class, particularly when things get difficult.
Speaker 5: You may be able to act confidently when things are
Speaker 5: going smoothly, but when you're criticized, somebody's making fun of you,
Speaker 5: and you still act with confidence. Not many people can
Speaker 5: really do that.
Speaker 3: Another option would be for someone to make a fool
Speaker 3: of themselves and get mad and go on a rant.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you're just thinking about all the options,
Speaker 3: you know, option one, option two, when you're belittled by
Speaker 3: people in power. And he did the absolute best option.
Speaker 3: He used it the rest of his life. His enemies
Speaker 3: gave him as a beautiful plan for marketing and branding
Speaker 3: for his career.
Speaker 5: We could also say that he created that role in
Speaker 5: American politics that in the era of the Founding Fathers
Speaker 5: on the early nineteenth century, almost all politicians are from
Speaker 5: advantage backgrounds. In some ways that still is true. You know,
Speaker 5: you find out politicism of the Harvard or Princeton, however
Speaker 5: folksy they may act. But Crockett's the real thing of it.
Speaker 5: He didn't come from the.
Speaker 3: Cane in Wallace's book, he said quote. One of Crockett's
Speaker 3: favorite ploys, developed early on in his political career, was
Speaker 3: the campaign and a buckskin hunting shirt with two large pockets.
Speaker 3: One pocket he kept a big twist of tobacco, and
Speaker 3: then the other a bottle of liquor. Crockett said, when
Speaker 3: I met a man and offered him a dram, he
Speaker 3: would throw out his quid a tobacco and take on.
Speaker 3: And after he had taken his horn, I would out
Speaker 3: with my twist and give him another chaw. And in
Speaker 3: this way he would not be worse off than when
Speaker 3: I found him. End of quote. Now, I could do
Speaker 3: without the hard liquor in mouth tobacco, but the concept
Speaker 3: is solid. And I'll give you one guest who also
Speaker 3: wore buckskin in the legislature. I compared him to Michael
Speaker 3: Jordan on the last episode, and he's clearly the goat
Speaker 3: the American Frontier.
Speaker 4: Yep Old d B. Daniel Boone.
Speaker 3: You know I might run for political office one day,
Speaker 3: first of all, so I could represent my people, but secondly,
Speaker 3: so I could wear my first light and a pair
Speaker 3: of briarproof Bibbs into the state House to lecture those
Speaker 3: crusty yuppies on the virtue of true Arkansas living.
Speaker 4: You know what, Brent Reeves might even be my running mate.
Speaker 4: We might even run for governor and vice governor. Bill
Speaker 4: cut that out. That's ridiculous.
Speaker 3: I've got to read another excerpt from Wallace's book. Crockett
Speaker 3: certainly didn't know it at the time, but with his
Speaker 3: victory in eighteen twenty three, he was well on his
Speaker 3: way to becoming a folk hero in a nation that
Speaker 3: had heroes such as George Washington, but no genuine folk heroes.
Speaker 3: There were plenty of mythologized heroes from the past and
Speaker 3: the founding fathers, including some of who were still alive,
Speaker 3: who were admired and respected, but not other than Washington
Speaker 3: the stuff of legend. Even the admirable Daniel Boone, who
Speaker 3: died an old man just a few years before Missouri,
Speaker 3: seemed distant and removed, particularly since he had much preferred
Speaker 3: solitude to the legend that overshadowed him. Andrew Jackson and
Speaker 3: other notable political leaders were objects of hero worship in
Speaker 3: many circles, but especially the so called common man saw
Speaker 3: something else in the brash yet unpretentious David Crockett of Tennessee.
Speaker 3: The common man was on the rise, as Jackson's political
Speaker 3: success revealed, and Crockett also had the makings to become
Speaker 3: one of America's first heroes for the masses.
Speaker 4: End of quote.
Speaker 3: This helps me understand a difference in Boone Crockett's persona
Speaker 3: Boone would become an American archetype for manhood, freedom, independence,
Speaker 3: and the natural man connected to nature.
Speaker 4: Wallace calls Crockett a folk hero.
Speaker 3: A more modern word we've used would be celebrity because
Speaker 3: all this happened in his lifetime. Crockett would serve a
Speaker 3: two year term from eighteen twenty one to twenty three
Speaker 3: and win reelection in twenty three to serve as second
Speaker 3: term in state government. While in office, Crockett was very effective,
Speaker 3: and his primary focus was helping Tennessee settlers by land
Speaker 3: at a reasonable price, but he also sponsored bills promoting
Speaker 3: navigable rivers, marriage with widows, things that opposed divorce, banning dueling,
Speaker 3: and opposing prisoner labor. But he did lose his first
Speaker 3: national race in twenty four for a seat and a
Speaker 3: Senate His opponent had more money by now his family
Speaker 3: had moved to West Tennessee, living near real Foot Lake
Speaker 3: and later near present day Rutherford, Tennessee near Memphis. And
Speaker 3: after these two terms, he returned home and a literal
Speaker 3: shipwrecked business venture would lead him to his next step, Congress.
Speaker 1: But one thing that I did pick up on about
Speaker 1: David Crockett is he was.
Speaker 2: A good friend. If you were a friend of David Crockett,
Speaker 2: he kept you by his side. One of my favorite
Speaker 2: stories in in his life. This is a great little
Speaker 2: example of how things went for David Crockett. You know,
Speaker 2: back then, think about it. Barrels were the most important
Speaker 2: thing you could have, whether you're on the farm or
Speaker 2: in the city or wherever you are.
Speaker 1: A barrel is crucial because you would store things in it.
Speaker 1: It kept things dry, it kept.
Speaker 2: Major transportation of absolutely, barrels were huge. So the Obien
Speaker 2: River is near here in Obien County, so he would
Speaker 2: hit his house was his cabin was close to the
Speaker 2: Obien River.
Speaker 1: Hit.
Speaker 2: He and his wife owned that land, and so his
Speaker 2: idea was, I'm going to pay you to cut the
Speaker 2: barrel pieces, and then we're gonna we're gonna build a boat,
Speaker 2: two boats, and then we're gonna take them to New
Speaker 2: Orleans and we're gonna sell them.
Speaker 3: Go down the Obien to where it hits the Missississippi.
Speaker 1: And we're gonna go down the Mississippi and then Staves.
Speaker 4: Yeah, New Orleans, Yep, that's what they were called, Beryl Staves.
Speaker 2: Then he'll pay you, you know. So these guys had
Speaker 2: a lot of trust. So they get into the Mississippi
Speaker 2: River and suddenly he's like, wow, I really didn't realize
Speaker 2: it was this crazy out here on the Mississippi River.
Speaker 2: And the people he had hired to do this also
Speaker 2: didn't realize. So there is a place near Memphis called
Speaker 2: Patty's Hen and Chicken Island something like that. They hit it,
Speaker 2: and when they hit it, one boat fell apart. They
Speaker 2: had to everybody get on the other boat. And he's
Speaker 2: he was asleep at the time, and his crew pulled
Speaker 2: him through the window. When they did, they pulled all
Speaker 2: his clothes off.
Speaker 3: Here's Robert Morgan on the Mississippi River wreck.
Speaker 5: When you read that passage of him going down the
Speaker 5: Obien River and getting on the Mississippi, you have to
Speaker 5: remember a wonderful book by Mark Kwain, Life on the
Speaker 5: Mississippi and was brilliant passages in it, And what's brilliant
Speaker 5: writing by him and possibly an American literature are describing
Speaker 5: how you navigate on the Mississippi, that a pilot has
Speaker 5: to memorize the whole thing. He knows the current, he
Speaker 5: knows where the sandbars are, he knows where the eddies are,
Speaker 5: the sucks, and I mean it's a.
Speaker 1: You know, it takes you years.
Speaker 5: And here are these people with these two flat boats.
Speaker 5: They know absolutely nothing about the Mississippi hoping to navigate.
Speaker 3: It seems like he would have known better than that.
Speaker 5: Well, there's something in Crockett. I don't have a name
Speaker 5: for it. I'm still working on it that like Edgar
Speaker 5: Allen Poe, I don't want to call it a death wish,
Speaker 5: but it's something like that that when he does something,
Speaker 5: he has to know it's so risky it probably won't work.
Speaker 3: Crockett was wild, and that ever present thing mister Morgan
Speaker 3: can't put his finger on would eventually kill Him's Scott
Speaker 3: on the rest of the shipwreck story that ultimately leads
Speaker 3: him to a run for Congress.
Speaker 2: So he is hovering naked on this island when a
Speaker 2: boat comes down from Memphis and picks him up and
Speaker 2: takes him to Memphis and they get him something to
Speaker 2: drink and something to eat. Him and his crew. Of course,
Speaker 2: I don't know what he's thinking in his mind. This
Speaker 2: is like a disaster. Everything it's gone, you know, and
Speaker 2: these guys, I'm sure like going, uh so, where we're
Speaker 2: gonna get Are we gonna get paid? And so, you know,
Speaker 2: here he is, you know, going to Memphis, and they
Speaker 2: introduce him to Marcus Winchester, who is the mayor of
Speaker 2: Memphis and the son of Winchester who was one of
Speaker 2: the founders of all of West Tennessee.
Speaker 1: And so they just hit it off like gangbusters, you know.
Speaker 2: And Marcus Winchester is this guy who's from you know,
Speaker 2: very fancy background, great schools, well respected, but who had
Speaker 2: actually married a woman who was part Native American, possibly
Speaker 2: some African American blood, and so he was in many
Speaker 2: ways a figure with a lot of controversy swirling around
Speaker 2: him at the time. So Marcus Winchester and his wife
Speaker 2: were having to live outside the city of the city
Speaker 2: limits of the city he was the mayor of. And
Speaker 2: from then on, Marcus Winchester funded a lot of daily
Speaker 2: Crockett's campaigns.
Speaker 3: Winchester would encourage and fund Crockett to run again for
Speaker 3: a national seat in Congress, which he did in eighteen
Speaker 3: twenty seven. And this river wreck was a major crisis,
Speaker 3: with over one years of work completely lost in a
Speaker 3: near death experience on the Mississippi River that would have
Speaker 3: made a great story on a Medeator close called audio book.
Speaker 3: Him ending up half naked on the banks of the Mississippi,
Speaker 3: in his vulnerability, opened a door for a political alliance.
Speaker 3: You would think that strength would land big deals, but
Speaker 3: sometimes it's weakness. It was in these highly contested campaigns
Speaker 3: for Congress that Crockett his campaign style began to rock
Speaker 3: the free world. He was a force of nature to
Speaker 3: be reckoned with. On the campaign trail, they typically traveled
Speaker 3: with the person they were running against, and they'd go
Speaker 3: from town to town given stump speeches. Once Crockett's opponent
Speaker 3: paused his speech when a flock of guineas began to
Speaker 3: chatter loudly, and he asked some people to run off
Speaker 3: the guineas. Crockett stood up after and he said his
Speaker 3: opponent was the first person he'd ever known to understand
Speaker 3: the language of guinea fowls.
Speaker 4: Everyone laughed.
Speaker 3: Another time, Crockett asked his opponent if he could go
Speaker 3: first at the next town, and then Crockett proceeded to
Speaker 3: recite the man's campaign speech word for word. His opponent
Speaker 3: was flustered and speechless. Once Crockett was running against a
Speaker 3: man with a peg leg, a prosthetic leg, and they
Speaker 3: stayed at this farmer's house who had a beautiful young daughter.
Speaker 3: In the night, Crockett took a wooden chair and thumped
Speaker 3: it down the hall and knocked on the girl's door
Speaker 3: and quickly ran back to his room before the irate
Speaker 3: awakened father accused Crockett's opponents of some serious misconduct. Crockett
Speaker 3: was playing chess while these boys were playing checkers.
Speaker 4: Here is Robert Morgan.
Speaker 3: Introducing us to the political rival that would define Crockett's life.
Speaker 5: Andrew Jackson, somebody like David Crockett, had from his youth,
Speaker 5: had this resistance against the upper classes. Also because the
Speaker 5: upper classes had owned all the land and charged them
Speaker 5: money for renting it, and in effect tried to make
Speaker 5: them serfs, really people tied to the land doing all
Speaker 5: the work. It's very interesting to think of Crockett's relationship
Speaker 5: with Andrew Jackson because Jackson was ostensibly for the poor people.
Speaker 5: He was a populist, but Jackson had become a great
Speaker 5: landowner many slaves. As Crockett became much more familiar with
Speaker 5: politics and then with Washington, he understood that that Jackson
Speaker 5: had really become the friend of the ruling classes, the
Speaker 5: slave owning ruling class. So it's very important to understand
Speaker 5: that he'd been a Jacksonian earlier because he thought that
Speaker 5: the Jacksonians, not just Jackson himself but his whole party,
Speaker 5: were people for the poor people, and then he came
Speaker 5: to realize that was absolutely not true, that they were
Speaker 5: very much for the ruling class and had little interest
Speaker 5: in the squatters on land who needed land and needed
Speaker 5: title to the land. This resentment, this war really between
Speaker 5: the scotch Irish and the ruling classes went all the
Speaker 5: way back to Scotland and almost to the Middle Ages.
Speaker 3: And that really defined who Crockett would become in that
Speaker 3: he was constantly communicating to people that he was a
Speaker 3: common man and kind of had a chip on his
Speaker 3: shoulder against the entitled the rich. It's almost like you
Speaker 3: can trace that thing in him all the way back
Speaker 3: across the Atlantic to the history that their family brought
Speaker 3: with him, even though he was never there. He was
Speaker 3: born in Tennessee. To me, it's interesting how generational ideas
Speaker 3: and worldviews just passed down well.
Speaker 5: Crockett is one of the few leaders of the United
Speaker 5: States who actually came from the laboring working class. That
Speaker 5: if you look at the great politicians of the nineteenth century,
Speaker 5: at the founding Fathers, they're mostly from middle class anyway.
Speaker 5: But Crockett really came from the laboring classes, people had
Speaker 5: very little education. And that's very important in thinking about him,
Speaker 5: but also in thinking about the politics of the nineteenth century.
Speaker 5: Who else can you think of who's a famous politician
Speaker 5: who came literally from the laboring class. It's Lincoln, the
Speaker 5: greatest president of all, who shares so much with David Crockett,
Speaker 5: including the sense of humor, backwards humor, and who tried
Speaker 5: so much for working for the poor people and the
Speaker 5: black people, the slaves. He had that sympathy. But Lincoln
Speaker 5: is one of the few people of the nineteenth century
Speaker 5: who comes literally from the working class. So think about that.
Speaker 5: Crockett has an enormous influence on the political culture.
Speaker 3: So you think he influenced people's ideas of who could
Speaker 3: be a leader, but also directly influenced Lincoln as a politician.
Speaker 5: Absolutely. I mean, Lincoln shares so much with Crockett, including,
Speaker 5: you know, telling corny jokes all the time and also
Speaker 5: being a kind of like a poker player with his policy.
Speaker 5: Remember I think it was Chase who said earlier in
Speaker 5: Lincoln administration, mister President, you've got to tell us what
Speaker 5: your policy is, and Lincoln famously answered, my policy is
Speaker 5: to have no policy. And both Crockett and Lincoln were
Speaker 5: deeply influenced by the culture of the frontier, which was
Speaker 5: deeply influenced by Indian politics and culture. That's exactly the
Speaker 5: way a famous Indian chief would act. You didn't know
Speaker 5: what he was going to say, You didn't know what
Speaker 5: his policy was going to be till the last minute.
Speaker 5: And that's exactly the way Lincoln acted.
Speaker 3: So Crockett being this kind of first significant American frontier
Speaker 3: populist and he kind of emerged as this political.
Speaker 4: Leader and kind of forged a pattern.
Speaker 3: And he for sure was the first guy that was
Speaker 3: a no notable, notable politician that was absolutely uneducated, that
Speaker 3: was foreshore from the frontier and he like created this
Speaker 3: space that then influenced American politics from there on out.
Speaker 5: He's the model, as Boone was the model for the frontiersman.
Speaker 5: Crockett is the model of the frontiersman, the laborer who
Speaker 5: arrives in Washington and becomes a very famous, iconic figure.
Speaker 3: That's big fodder for quantifying how Crockett influenced America. He
Speaker 3: influenced Lincoln. Here's Scott with the DL on the Jackson
Speaker 3: Crockett feud.
Speaker 2: You know, I was happened to be researching and writing
Speaker 2: my book during one of the most contentious eras in
Speaker 2: recent memory, when Trump was in office, and so I
Speaker 2: couldn't help but have a lot of that resonate with me,
Speaker 2: the comparisons between Trump and Andrew Jackson, and you know
Speaker 2: how some of those.
Speaker 4: Tell me about that interesting.
Speaker 2: Well, Yet, like Trump Andrew Jackson was like, Hey, I'm
Speaker 2: going to do things my way, no matter. I don't
Speaker 2: care what you I don't care what anybody says. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm the I'm the anti government person, you know. And
Speaker 2: also at the time, political campaigns were vicious. I mean
Speaker 2: you think they were vicious, you know, during the Trump era,
Speaker 2: they were even ten times more vicious.
Speaker 1: Really during Andrew.
Speaker 2: Jackson's you know, him and his wife, Andrew Jackson's wife,
Speaker 2: you know, she may or may not have still been
Speaker 2: married when they got married, so.
Speaker 4: She was likely a little bit of a scandal.
Speaker 1: A political you know, a polygamist.
Speaker 2: And you know, if if you go strictly by the
Speaker 2: law and the stress of the media coverage and and
Speaker 2: his political enemies, you know, using that killed her. And
Speaker 2: so so imagine the anger and the fury that was
Speaker 2: directed towards.
Speaker 1: Him by Andrew Jackson.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, and this is a guy that was
Speaker 3: involved in I think like one hundred duels.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean he was.
Speaker 3: He was literally in shootouts like constantly.
Speaker 2: And I was researching David Crockett, you can't help, but
Speaker 2: also research Andrew Jackson quite a bit. And you know,
Speaker 2: here the bullets that were still in his body caused
Speaker 2: long term lead poisoning. Yeah, and so he lived for
Speaker 2: you know, a really long time, but oh my gosh, the.
Speaker 3: Last year had the bullets from the duels, at least
Speaker 3: one or two bullets, yeah, lodged in his body.
Speaker 2: They couldn't get out, and it just slowly leaked into
Speaker 2: his body.
Speaker 1: Until he just he died a horrible death.
Speaker 3: They exhumed his hair from the grave, Yeah, I guess
Speaker 3: they dug him up, Yeah, and found all that lead
Speaker 3: and did analysis on it modern analysis and found that
Speaker 3: he died of leda this is which.
Speaker 1: Is ultimately killed him.
Speaker 2: But he was just I mean, he was a hot head,
Speaker 2: and you know he he was really the antithesis ultimately
Speaker 2: of what David Crockett was about. And you would think
Speaker 2: these two guys would have more in common than they
Speaker 2: had different, but they really.
Speaker 1: Had more different.
Speaker 3: So Andrew Jackson was anti government, right, right, but now Crockett,
Speaker 3: where would Crockett have staid?
Speaker 2: Well, what Andrew Jackson and James k Holk, what they
Speaker 2: needed more than anything was for all the congressmen to
Speaker 2: fall into line. And so if Andrew Jackson and if
Speaker 2: they needed something done they wanted, they wanted David Crockett
Speaker 2: to vote yes when they wanted yes, and no when
Speaker 2: they voted no. And I tried to figure out was
Speaker 2: David Crockett in many cases that he went against them?
Speaker 2: Was he going against him because he knew they wanted
Speaker 2: him to go for them, or was he truly And
Speaker 2: I do think it's a mixture of the two.
Speaker 3: So it could be that he was actually not playing
Speaker 3: politics and just doing what he thought was right in
Speaker 3: the situation, that would be the most noble.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's somewhere in the middle that's most
Speaker 2: Usually as the case, he wasn't going to let anybody
Speaker 2: boss him around, he wasn't to let anybody push him around.
Speaker 2: So probably the most notable was the eighteen thirty Indian
Speaker 2: Removal Act, where Andrew Jackson was spinning it as Hey,
Speaker 2: you know what, We're gonna do something nice for the
Speaker 2: Native Americans. We're gonna help them preserve their way of life,
Speaker 2: and we're gonna send them, you know, to Oklahoma out west.
Speaker 1: And David Crockett knew enough to do that that was
Speaker 1: not true.
Speaker 2: And that a lot of the Native Americans had actually assimilated,
Speaker 2: but they had assimilated and their tribes still owned a
Speaker 2: huge amounts of land. And so David Crockett, there's a
Speaker 2: quote that's in the book that probably to me, his
Speaker 2: most noble moment is when he said, look, I know,
Speaker 2: Native America, my territory that I represent has more Native
Speaker 2: Americans touching it than any place else. And I can
Speaker 2: tell you this is not a good bill unless.
Speaker 1: They choose to go. If they choose, too great, But
Speaker 1: I'm gonna vote no.
Speaker 2: And so you know, that is what really at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, that was the last straw for
Speaker 2: Andrew Jackson and his cronies.
Speaker 3: Do you think that Crockett it's motivations inside of that
Speaker 3: where truly he was empathetic towards the Native Americans.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've tried to figure that out.
Speaker 2: It's impossible really to ever know, but I do think
Speaker 2: so because in that particular case, it wouldn't have hurt
Speaker 2: him in any way to vote yes unless he really
Speaker 2: truly believed that it was the wrong thing to do.
Speaker 2: And so I do think especially by that point in
Speaker 2: his life, you know, you got to think by then,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, this is a guy, and it's
Speaker 2: hard for us because for us, David Crockett is you know,
Speaker 2: daity Daty Crockett, King of the World Frontier. It's so
Speaker 2: ingrained in our culture. It's hard to think about the fact,
Speaker 2: here's this real person who is going to Washington and
Speaker 2: there are plays on stage about him, and he's going
Speaker 2: to a play that is about him, you know, And
Speaker 2: so there are books and magazine. I mean, he has
Speaker 2: reached the height of fame unlike really anybody else. I
Speaker 2: mean there were lots of Congressmen and senators, and there
Speaker 2: was lots of politicians and you know, but other famous people. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but he just by far was the most most well known,
Speaker 2: most recognized, most famous. And so by voting no on
Speaker 2: that bill, he was the only Tennessee and to vote no.
Speaker 2: And and it it was in all the papers. Everybody
Speaker 2: wrote about it and wrote about it and wrote about it.
Speaker 1: And here's the other thing that's interesting.
Speaker 2: So he had a campaign coming up to be re elected,
Speaker 2: but by voting against Jackson, they all put as much
Speaker 2: force and energy as they could behind Adam Huntsman.
Speaker 1: So they win and.
Speaker 4: Ultimately hurt him politically.
Speaker 1: It did, It really did.
Speaker 2: And the Whigs so that you know, the Whigs were
Speaker 2: funding this little book tour.
Speaker 1: And you know, these.
Speaker 2: Guys are all you know, for the most part, Easterners,
Speaker 2: you know, and they're all you know, these are the
Speaker 2: guys that have the.
Speaker 3: Guys in the East are funding Crockett. Yeah, because they
Speaker 3: think he could be I.
Speaker 2: Think maybe he could be a Whig. Maybe we'll convert
Speaker 2: him over to us. He'll run for president, and he
Speaker 2: could win, but he needed to win his next camp.
Speaker 2: So if he had won, then he could potentially have
Speaker 2: gone on.
Speaker 3: So that cost him voting against the Indian Removal Act.
Speaker 3: He a couple of bounces away could have kept him
Speaker 3: from running for president.
Speaker 2: Yep, because he really lost. He lost to Adam Huntsman
Speaker 2: by just a few hundred votes.
Speaker 1: Wow. And so if he had not lost, history would
Speaker 1: have been a lot different.
Speaker 3: Krockutt was the only Tennessee and to vote no to
Speaker 3: Jackson's Indian Removal Act. It's important for me to try
Speaker 3: to peer into the inner workings of his vote. We've
Speaker 3: got to decide if this guy is going to be
Speaker 3: in the Bear Grease Hall of Fame. I think there's
Speaker 3: a line of thought that could be Krockett. His identity
Speaker 3: was that he was a poor kind of overlooked from
Speaker 3: a marginalized group of people. I mean, that was his
Speaker 3: whole identity. It's like, these rich folks don't know what's
Speaker 3: going on? Were these poor folks from the cane right.
Speaker 3: I think that would lend itself to having a genuine
Speaker 3: empathy towards people that he saw being abused misused.
Speaker 4: By the establishment and think about this.
Speaker 2: So the other thing that could have made him win
Speaker 2: is before the land was truly surveyed and before it
Speaker 2: was truly able to be purchased legally, a lot of
Speaker 2: people came in here. A lot of people were just
Speaker 2: flooding in here, setting up a space and saying, surely
Speaker 2: the government will let me have this once it becomes available.
Speaker 2: And so they're setting up farms. Some people, the grand
Speaker 2: the father, and the grandfather set up the farm. Well
Speaker 2: by the time, you know, the young man is in
Speaker 2: his twenties and he's farming. They've been that's his whole,
Speaker 2: that's where he's from.
Speaker 1: You know. Well, they didn't even own the lands. They
Speaker 1: were squatters.
Speaker 2: And so what David Crockett was trying to do is
Speaker 2: pass legislation that would allow these people to purchase their land. Well,
Speaker 2: first he tried to allow them to have it just
Speaker 2: you know, if they had been farming in a certain
Speaker 2: amount of time, they could have it.
Speaker 1: But then there was no way that was going to go.
Speaker 2: So so it became could they get it at a
Speaker 2: reasonable amount of money, which they could never settle upon
Speaker 2: what is reasonable. There were a few times he got close. Ultimately,
Speaker 2: no legislation was ever passed, And when he would have
Speaker 2: really been in there fighting for that legislation, that the
Speaker 2: time he should have been, he was out promoting his book.
Speaker 2: So it was sort of a missed opportunity there.
Speaker 3: But so would you say that his two main things
Speaker 3: that he did as a politician was fight for essentially squatters'
Speaker 3: rights to have their own land and then the Indian
Speaker 3: Removal Act and a general opposition to anything Andrew Jackson did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah, I mean that was kind
Speaker 2: of his political career.
Speaker 1: Anti establishment.
Speaker 2: But Andrew Jackson was anti establishment, so I guess he
Speaker 2: was anti anti establishment.
Speaker 1: He was. He was astablished squared.
Speaker 3: Davy Crockett, Yeah, David Crockett anti squared. You know, we've
Speaker 3: skipped over an important part of Crockett's political career that
Speaker 3: will sum up quickly. The Whigs, which will be equivalent
Speaker 3: to modern day Republicans, saw him as a potential presidential candidate.
Speaker 3: They courted him, flattered him, and brought him to Washington,
Speaker 3: DC and funded his famous autobiography book Tour. Yes, it's
Speaker 3: the book. We've been reading stuff out of the book.
Speaker 3: Tour was during a political session, and so he didn't
Speaker 3: show up to Congress and this would end up biting
Speaker 3: him in the Buckskins. This was Crockett's blunder.
Speaker 5: This is where Crockett really gets in trouble because he
Speaker 5: starts overplaying it, encouraged by the newspapers and the audience.
Speaker 5: He's the man from McCain and he's the real thing,
Speaker 5: and he's working hard in Congress. But the Whigs begin
Speaker 5: to perceive that he's against the Jacksonians. He's fallen out
Speaker 5: with him. He's from Tennessee and it's deadly to be
Speaker 5: from Tennessee and against Jackson's the popular person in the country.
Speaker 1: So huh.
Speaker 5: The Whigs from the North. He's primarily saying, we can
Speaker 5: use this guy, and they encourage other people and even
Speaker 5: Crocket himself to exaggerate this if it comes sort of
Speaker 5: the clown the buffoon, and there's a book published about
Speaker 5: him that really hypes that image, and he may have
Speaker 5: had a hand in it. Was it ego, I mean,
Speaker 5: where they planned to his ego and he kind of
Speaker 5: fell for it, to his ego and his vanity. Yes,
Speaker 5: that he was a handsome fella and they, I mean
Speaker 5: nobody could resist this of course, that this fella from
Speaker 5: the backwoods of Tennessee, is in the finest parlors, and
Speaker 5: it's told he's great, it's a greater future, and you know,
Speaker 5: we're going to maybe wonderful president eventually convincing that he's
Speaker 5: going to run for president. And the more he's a clown,
Speaker 5: the more it's going to be, the better it's going
Speaker 5: to be. So Crockett begins to go off track in
Speaker 5: that period.
Speaker 3: I think this really gives us some solid insight into
Speaker 3: who Crockett was and what defined his political career. All
Speaker 3: this stuff is really important to me because internal character
Speaker 3: plays a big part of being in the Beargreas Hall
Speaker 3: of Fame. But does being enamored with fame count against
Speaker 3: you in the realm of internal character? In some ways,
Speaker 3: I can see the argument of my friend Cleave Stanella
Speaker 3: at Meat Eater, who thinks Crockett was a vain and
Speaker 3: self serving man. But that seems like it's kind of
Speaker 3: part of being a celebrity, which doesn't necessarily make it right.
Speaker 3: Here's Scott with a tough question.
Speaker 2: You know, in my little talk that I give, I
Speaker 2: do ask people, what do you suppose David Crockett the
Speaker 2: man would think about Davy Crockett the entertainment brand that
Speaker 2: sprung up around parts of his personality. And my answer
Speaker 2: is always, you know, I think he would love it
Speaker 2: if he could capitalize off.
Speaker 1: It some way and make money off of it.
Speaker 2: So he would be he would be one of those
Speaker 2: folks at those at those celebrity things where you're signing autographs.
Speaker 2: He'd be signing autographs. He'd have a podcast, surely, you know,
Speaker 2: he'd have a big social media presence. Crockett would have
Speaker 2: a huge social he would have a huge now he'd
Speaker 2: be tiktoking with the best of them, and so he would.
Speaker 2: But I also, having researched him, he would spend a
Speaker 2: whole lot more.
Speaker 1: Than he made on doing those things.
Speaker 3: But I keep I keep going back to this though,
Speaker 3: Does that not spoil the authenticity of Crockett for you
Speaker 3: personally to think that he would have Because I feel
Speaker 3: like as Americans, we want this guy that never wanted fame,
Speaker 3: but fame found him because of his character and how
Speaker 3: great a man he was. It's sort of what's the
Speaker 3: lore around Boone, which isn't entirely true. He did quite
Speaker 3: a bit of stuff to help raise his fame, like
Speaker 3: probably any of us would if we had the opportunity.
Speaker 3: But that's where I keep going with Crockett because I'm torn.
Speaker 1: I mean, look at look at like, you know, the
Speaker 1: Earnharts and race car driving.
Speaker 2: You know, I think they're bad people because they want
Speaker 2: to capitalize off of I mean, other people were making
Speaker 2: money off.
Speaker 1: His name, image and likeness. Why shouldn't he be compensated
Speaker 1: as well?
Speaker 3: And see, that's where I think we're totally hypocritical, me
Speaker 3: hypocritical because when I think of this, this guy that
Speaker 3: was formative in America's identity, I don't want him to
Speaker 3: be a celebrity.
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't want him to be someone that had awareness
Speaker 3: of his own fame and would have done things to
Speaker 3: manipulate that and grow it. I want him to be
Speaker 3: this guy in West Tennessee that just woke up one
Speaker 3: day and famous, you know, kind of like Boon And
Speaker 3: you're always comparing these two guys. But and that doesn't
Speaker 3: make me discount Crockett at all. It's just something that
Speaker 3: I think about. Do you think about that well?
Speaker 2: And honestly, he was so much on the front of
Speaker 2: this fame. You know, people hadn't really been famous in
Speaker 2: America like that. And so I think about, you know,
Speaker 2: I think about some of the people that I've worked
Speaker 2: with in my career who are famous, quote unquote, who
Speaker 2: manage when they get ready to have a photograph taken.
Speaker 2: They manage where the lights are, they manage how they look.
Speaker 1: They want to see a clip of what if you're.
Speaker 2: Shooting video, They want to manage how their image is
Speaker 2: projected publicly. And so there were no cameras yet then
Speaker 2: very soon thereafter there would be photography.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: But I think what you're saying is that we can't
Speaker 3: blame Crockett for doing the same thing that all our
Speaker 3: heroes today are doing.
Speaker 1: Well, or any of us would do.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you're smart, you want to how many
Speaker 2: of us have a photograph taken and you say, oh,
Speaker 2: don't post that? Yep, you know, I mean, we control
Speaker 2: our self images. But Crockett had a painting done, and
Speaker 2: he controlled the gun. He was holding the dogs that
Speaker 2: were in the shot. He wanted to be holding a
Speaker 2: hat like he was waving at his neighbor, you know,
Speaker 2: And and that's a that's a photograph that you.
Speaker 4: Know, if he orchestrated that painting.
Speaker 2: And the painter lived to be a you know, very
Speaker 2: old man, and he wrote about the whole experience of
Speaker 2: painting David Crockett, and he wrote about what it was like,
Speaker 2: what they talked about. Crockett was dealing with some family
Speaker 2: issues at the time and his his uh son was
Speaker 2: upset with him because he was spending too much time
Speaker 2: in d C. And he said, these the dogs you're using,
Speaker 2: those are not what I would use if I were
Speaker 2: hunting bear and a hurricane as he called it. And
Speaker 2: he he took the painter into the streets of DC
Speaker 2: and they rounded up dogs that he thought he would use.
Speaker 2: He had when he's looking at it, he said, right,
Speaker 2: I'm on the gun, right, go ahead, And so the
Speaker 2: painter wrote. You could see where the painter wrote go
Speaker 2: ahead on the gun. The painter rights that Crockett was
Speaker 2: just not quite happy with the painting.
Speaker 1: He just kept saying, I'm not quite there, and that one.
Speaker 2: Day he came in and he was just exuberant and
Speaker 2: he said, I've got it.
Speaker 1: Here's what I want you to do.
Speaker 2: Paint me holding my hat up, waving like I'm waving
Speaker 2: to my neighbor and saying how he you know, because
Speaker 2: he wanted to be approachable. He wanted to be. He
Speaker 2: didn't want you to be, you know, a stuffy you
Speaker 2: know painting. So and he also said he also wrote,
Speaker 2: you know, every painter always makes me look like a
Speaker 2: Methodist minister.
Speaker 1: So he didn't want to look like a Methodist man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. And so that's the famous painting.
Speaker 3: And that that gave America a template for kind of
Speaker 3: the folk hero too, because we we came from the
Speaker 3: white Europeans that primarily established the colonies in the States
Speaker 3: in the East came from Europe, and their aristocracy was
Speaker 3: very stuffy, very very proper, very prim and so Crockett
Speaker 3: was like, I ain't like those guys, right.
Speaker 2: He rewrote the book, you know, he rewrote the book
Speaker 2: on what it means to be famous. You know, he
Speaker 2: also would love to have been able to capitalize off
Speaker 2: of it financially and make enough money to where he
Speaker 2: could support his family. And who could blame him for that?
Speaker 2: You know, I mean, don't we all want to do that?
Speaker 3: Numerous people painted Crockett, and he said he always looked
Speaker 3: like a Methodist preacher.
Speaker 4: That's funny.
Speaker 3: But in eighteen thirty four, John Gadsby Chapman set out
Speaker 3: to paint the authentic Crockett, who was then forty seven
Speaker 3: years old, the original painting. After Crockett's death, the Ylamo
Speaker 3: was acquired by the State of Texas and hung in
Speaker 3: the State Capitol Building in Austin. Chapman had the pain
Speaker 3: for self for one thousand dollars, but was never paid
Speaker 3: by the State of Texas, or at least that's what
Speaker 3: they say. Tragically, a faulty stovepipe burned the entire State
Speaker 3: Capitol Building to the ground, including the painting, so the
Speaker 3: original painting is gone today.
Speaker 4: What we have is replicas.
Speaker 3: Crockett would die two years after the painting was complete,
Speaker 3: and Chapman wrote a memoir about painting Crockett called Reminiscences
Speaker 3: of Colonel David Crockett. Chapman wrote, quote, with all the
Speaker 3: disadvantages consequent upon deficiency and timely educational training, Colonel Crockett's
Speaker 3: command of verbal expression was very remarkable. Say what he might,
Speaker 3: his meaning could never be misinterpreted. He expressed opinions and
Speaker 3: told his stories with unhesitating clearness of diction, often embellished
Speaker 3: with graphic touches of original wit and humor, sparkling and
Speaker 3: even startling, yet never out of place or obtrusively ostentatious.
Speaker 3: As for his backwoods slang, it fell upon the ear
Speaker 3: meaningly and consistent as the crack of his rifle, or
Speaker 3: the halloo from a hurricane or from a cane break.
Speaker 3: It was to him truly a mother tongue in which
Speaker 3: his ideas flowed most naturally and found most empathetic and
Speaker 3: unrestrained utterance during the progressive intimacy that grew out of
Speaker 3: familiar intercourse with Colonel Crockett. While engaged upon his portrait,
Speaker 3: he rarely, if ever, exhibited, either in conversation or manner,
Speaker 3: attributes of coarseness of character that prevailing popular opinion very
Speaker 3: unjustly assigned him. I cannot recall to mind an instant
Speaker 3: of his indulgence of gasconade or profanity. There was an
Speaker 3: earnestness of truth in his narrations of events circumstances of
Speaker 3: his adventurous life that made it obvious, while the heroic
Speaker 3: type of his grand physical development equal to any emergency
Speaker 3: of achievement. His clear, unfaltering eye, with all gentle and
Speaker 3: sympathetic play of features, telegraphing as it were, directly from
Speaker 3: a true heart overflowing with kind feeling and impulse, irresistibly
Speaker 3: dispelled suspicion of insincerity and braggartism. The ease and readiness
Speaker 3: with which Colonel Crockett adapted himself to circumstances of personal
Speaker 3: position and intercourse were remarkable, at times even masterly. He
Speaker 3: would seem to catch in the first moment of introduction
Speaker 3: the tone and characteristics of a new acquaintance, and was
Speaker 3: well to comprehend and rarely failed and agreeably confirming pre
Speaker 3: entertained opinions in reference to himself.
Speaker 4: End of quote.
Speaker 3: Wow, that was some incredible writing and description. It seemed
Speaker 3: to be moved by the accounts of these portrait painters.
Speaker 3: If you recall, a young painter by the name of
Speaker 3: Chester Harding traveled to Missouri in eighteen twenty and painted
Speaker 3: the only portrait of Daniel Boone we have. Just months
Speaker 3: before his death, Chester Harding wrote a fascinating piece about
Speaker 3: meeting the elderly Boone. Here's what he wrote, Remember this
Speaker 3: is Boone. In June of this year, I made a
Speaker 3: trip of one hundred miles for the purpose of painting
Speaker 3: the portrait of Colonel Daniel Boone. I had much trouble
Speaker 3: finding him. He was living some miles from the road
Speaker 3: in one of the old cabins of an old block house,
Speaker 3: which was built for the protection of the settlers against
Speaker 3: the incursion the Indians. I found that the nearer I
Speaker 3: got to his dwelling, the less was known of him.
Speaker 3: When within two miles of his house, I asked a
Speaker 3: man to tell me where Colonel Boone lived, he said
Speaker 3: he did not know of any such man. Why, yes,
Speaker 3: you do, said his wife. It's that white haired old
Speaker 3: man who lives on the bottom near the river. A
Speaker 3: good illustration that a prophet is not without honor save
Speaker 3: his own country. End of quote. For some reason, that
Speaker 3: passage almost brings me to tears every time I read it.
Speaker 3: I don't really know why. Harding went on, and he wrote,
Speaker 3: I found the object of my search engaged in cooking
Speaker 3: his dinner. He was lying on his bunk near the fire,
Speaker 3: and had a long strip of venison wound around his ramrod,
Speaker 3: and was busy turning it before a brisk blaze and
Speaker 3: using salt and pepper to season his meat. I at
Speaker 3: once told him the object of my visit. I found
Speaker 3: he hardly knew what I meant. I explained the matter
Speaker 3: to him, and he agreed to sit. He was eighty
Speaker 3: six years old and rather infirm. His memory of passing
Speaker 3: events was much impaired, Yet he would amuse me every
Speaker 3: day by his anecdotes of his earlier life. I asked
Speaker 3: him one day, just after his description of one of
Speaker 3: his long hunts, if he never got lost, having no compass.
Speaker 4: No, he said, I can't say I was.
Speaker 3: Ever lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.
Speaker 4: End of quote.
Speaker 3: The intimacy with which these portrait painters interact with people
Speaker 3: to create their art, and the pictorial expression of their
Speaker 3: candidate's humanity births a unique angled story, and I think
Speaker 3: it may be one of the most accurate. Clearly they're
Speaker 3: viewing these people in their best light, perhaps even an
Speaker 3: idealized one. But who is qualified to tell the story
Speaker 3: of any man? What angle gives the clearest, most true
Speaker 3: version of a human Every man has his own version
Speaker 3: of his life, which is one version. His enemies also
Speaker 3: have a version, his family, his friends, and even the
Speaker 3: people that never knew him. Who do we believe to
Speaker 3: interpret for us who a man is? Let me ask
Speaker 3: you a question, who do you hope gets to release
Speaker 3: the canonized version of your story. Brothers and Sisters, you
Speaker 3: may have already seen my hand, but I love Crockett.
Speaker 3: But perhaps by contrasting these two portrait sessions of these
Speaker 3: great American backwoodsmen, we can see the differences in these men.
Speaker 3: Boone was just so much less aware of his own fame,
Speaker 3: and that lends him credibility to me. But I do
Speaker 3: believe that Crockett was a good man, really an incredible
Speaker 3: man who wore his flaws on his sleeve. And though
Speaker 3: I'm kind of disappointed with the way Crockett would handle
Speaker 3: his fame, as we're going to talk about in just
Speaker 3: a seconds, it seems like a lot to ask a
Speaker 3: guy who came from absolute poverty on the backwoods frontier
Speaker 3: of America to get this global fame and just respond
Speaker 3: with perfect humility in this idealized way that I have
Speaker 3: in my mind. It just doesn't seem fair. Did I
Speaker 3: ever tell you about the time he stopped to pay
Speaker 3: a widow a one dollar debt that he owed her
Speaker 3: husband from ten years before. Did I tell you about
Speaker 3: the bill he sponsored that kept freed slaves from being
Speaker 3: able to be repurchased. Did I tell you that he
Speaker 3: owned some slaves in his lifetime. Here's Robert Morgan on
Speaker 3: Crockett's demise.
Speaker 5: And Crockett was so really intoxicated by all this adulation,
Speaker 5: apparent adulation and the play about him. Everybody knew it
Speaker 5: was about him been so successful, and they laughed at it,
Speaker 5: and they forgot they were laughing at it. So that
Speaker 5: on new yr work and they put him from fancy hotels,
Speaker 5: and that's that would turn any of us. Really, we
Speaker 5: find it hard to resist that he kind of went
Speaker 5: for it, and it probably was the most disastrous thing
Speaker 5: he had done in his whole life. It was more
Speaker 5: damning than losing his mill on the flood or his
Speaker 5: flat boats on the Mississippi. Yeah, it hurt him more.
Speaker 5: I think it really hurt him when he lost that
Speaker 5: election in eighteen thirty one and then again in eighteen
Speaker 5: thirty five and went off to Texas.
Speaker 3: Oh, that ominous trip to Texas. Crockett's book tour cost
Speaker 3: him the election in eighteen thirty one and again in
Speaker 3: eighteen thirty five, and he never recovered. On the next
Speaker 3: and final episode, we're going to dive in deep into
Speaker 3: Crockett's last stand at the Alamo and all the drama
Speaker 3: and controversy that surrounds it. I can't thank you enough
Speaker 3: for listening to I hope you're enjoying Brent Reeves this
Speaker 3: country life podcast, and I look forward to talking to
Speaker 3: the folks on the Render next week. Be thinking about
Speaker 3: whether you think Crockett should be in the Bear Grease
Speaker 3: Hall of Fame.