The bear referred to as weighing six hundred pounds was a fine specimen of the black bear of the East, but the white bears of Alaska are nearly twice as large. In 1909, near the western extremity of the Alaskan Peninsula, a white bear was killed by Dr. J. Wylie Anderson, of Denver, and Mr. Hornaday, the celebrated zoölogist, estimated its weight at twelve hundred pounds.
In the month of February, 1823, Davy went to Jackson, carrying a great quantity of skins to sell. Jackson was then a little cross-roads settlement, the county seat of Madison County, and about forty miles from Davy’s clearing. He was there only twenty-four hours before the skins were sold, and supplies of sugar, coffee, salt, powder, and lead were bought and packed in readiness for an early start for home the next day.
About this time the outlaws and cut-throats that afterwards came under the leadership of John A. Murrell were haunting the highways of the southwestern part of Tennessee. Now and then stories of murders by Indians were heard with suspicion by the wise; there were white murderers as well as red ones, they thought. Even Davy had little desire to stay any longer than necessary in that vicinity; for the fact that he was now worth robbing might become known to the outlaws, who watched for victims with the keen vision and cruelty of the wolves that howled at night in the dark shadows of the pines. But the evening was before him, and a man who had worked and hunted for six months, as he had, might be expected to look for recreation. He wanted to hunt up some of the men whom he had known in the Creek War, and before long he had found enough of them to make a quorum in the bar-room, whose tallow candles threw a dull glow across the muddy street. If Davy had gone to bed after getting ready to start, his future would have been different, and his history might never have been of especial interest to the world.
While Davy and his fellow-soldiers were busy talking over old times, others came in, among them three prominent candidates for nomination for the Legislature in that district, which included eleven counties. One of these was Doctor Butler, nephew by marriage to General Jackson. Some one said to Davy:
“Crockett, here are three candidates for the Legislature. You ought to offer also, seeing that you know the ropes so well.”
Davy was in doubt as to the man’s sincerity, but he may have had this thought in mind himself. He seems to have had no idea of trying to run, for he told the man that he lived forty miles from a settlement, and had no intention of electioneering. He went home the next morning, with his little boy, and took up his usual round of duties.
About a week afterwards a stranger appeared at the edge of the little clearing of six or seven acres, in the midst of which the smoke curled peacefully from the great “mud-and-sticks” chimney of the Crockett home. He came to the door, which almost always stood open, even in the coldest weather, this being the usual custom in that part of the country, and when he was seated before the leaping flames of the fireplace, he took a paper from his pocket and read aloud the announcement of Davy’s offering for the nomination. Davy heard it with the same suspicion as that with which he had heard the suggestion at Jackson, but the fact that the announcement would look genuine to the public put him on his mettle. It was time to begin the spring work on his little wilderness farm, but for this he hired a young man, and at once set out to feel the public pulse. Everywhere he went his fame as a bear-hunter, and as the member from the cane-brakes, had gone before him. The three men whom he had met at Jackson had settled their affairs by caucus. Doctor Butler had been named, and the others were working for him. To these men, Davy’s electioneering was a huge joke: he lived a three days’ tramp through the wilderness from any public highway; he was a poor man, still a rough backwoodsman, and appeared as little to be feared by his opponents as did Andrew Jackson at first in the eyes of the “silk stockings” of the Old Dominion, who had so nearly monopolized the statesmanship of the nation. As the campaign went on, the news that Davy Crockett would be at a meeting brought out of the woods men who had been there so long that they were like the Butler County man who had to be blindfolded to get him on the cars. Whether it was a barbecue, a shooting-match, corn-husking, log-rolling, or any other of the usual out-of-doors gatherings, Davy, dressed in homespun and wearing a coon-skin cap, and always with his rifle in hand, was the object of attention and admiration.
When he met his opponents he told them that he had little money to use in electioneering. Plenty of tobacco-twist and a jug of liquor would be his best weapons. His young man and the coon-dogs on the Fork would tree and capture all the coons needed to furnish funds for the supplies, but in a pinch he could “go a-wolfing,” kill a wolf, and get three dollars of the State Treasury money for the scalp, to keep him “along on the big string.” His way of talking was more suited to the frontier than to the halls of state; but the voters were with him on election day, and with three candidates against him Davy came out with two hundred and forty-seven more votes than all the others together. The news of his election to the Legislature in a district to which he had just removed, after serving as a Representative from another part of the State, made him famous within the boundaries of Tennessee and even beyond.