[XVI.]
IN CONGRESS
Davy’s place in politics—He is elected for a second term—His opposition to President Jackson—After two terms in Congress, he is defeated by a contemptible trick—The influence of the Murrell gang is felt—Two years in retirement—Writing his autobiography—The Middle Fork camp-meeting—The wildcat hunter from the Wolf Creek Branch—At a shooting-match—The generosity of Davy—He is elected by a large majority.
During his first term in Congress, in 1828 and 1829, Davy seems to have been lined up with the Jackson faction, which was opposed to the Adams administration, then allied with the friends of Henry Clay. In 1828 Andrew Jackson was elected President by a remarkable percentage of the electoral college, and Davy Crockett, one of his former scouts, watched him as he rode to the Capitol, dismounted, and with lifted hand swore loyalty to the nation that had chosen him for the highest place in its power to give. How many have pictured the rude simplicity of such a proceeding—the rugged soldier, the sorry steed! Their democratic souls have been much deceived. Jackson’s horse was the finest that could be found in Kentucky or Tennessee. He wore no uniform, but in his broadcloth coat and ruffles he sat his saddle like a king, more stately, more exemplary of power, than many of his successors who have been seated upon the velvet cushions of landaus.
There was a rattling of dry bones in the Departments as Old Hickory swept from power and position hundreds of the appointees of his predecessors. The now familiar cry, “To the victors belong the spoils,” became the slogan of his followers. Davy seems to have had no place in the crowd that fawned about their master’s feet. He may have seen the ill-mannered mob that thrust aside the doorkeepers of the White House at the public receptions, invaded the parlors and dining-rooms, climbed upon the satin upholsteries, and fell upon the refreshments like the locusts of Egypt, “filling the houses, and eating the residue of that which escaped”; but of his two years’ term he has written hardly a hundred words. He went back to his cabin home, conducted another campaign, and was again elected by an overwhelming majority of nearly 3,600 votes.
During Davy’s second term, in 1830 and 1831, Jackson urged the removal of the Cherokees and other Indian tribes from the lands east of the Mississippi. Davy did not see the relentless power of advancing civilization behind the unquiet of the frontier, and the impossibility of resisting the impulse towards the separation of the whites and the aborigines, and voted against the removal, in spite of strenuous urging by those who favored it. It was of this vote that he has said:
“I would rather be honestly and politically damned than to be hypocritically immortalized.”
Returning again to his district, in 1831, he found, as he says, the storm raised against him. He was accused of the unpardonable sin of turning against Jackson.
“I was hunted down like a wild varment,” he has told us, “and in this hunt every little paper in the district, and every little pin-hook lawyer, was engaged.” He was accused of receiving pay for sessions from which he was absent, and his wrath was kindled by these charges of dishonesty in doing what every other Congressman had done. His district was “gerrymandered,” and all the political weapons of his opponents were set to work. In the language of the cowboy of a later generation, “they wore their guns, and they wore ’em mighty low.” Davy was beaten by a smart and entirely unscrupulous scheme. He says that the “little four-pence-ha’penny limbs of the law” gave notice all over the district of dates upon which Crockett would appear to explain his actions in Congress and his reasons for his opposition to Jackson. When crowd after crowd gathered at the time and place announced, the absence of Crockett—entirely unaware of the trick that was being played—was laid to his fear of facing the issues raised. He was afraid, the “four-pence-ha’penny lawyers” cried, and the disappointed voters went to their homes stirred with doubt and resentment. When the votes were counted in August, Davy was in the majority in seventeen counties, but in Madison County, the home of the Murrell outlaws and their allies, his opponent had enough to overcome all that Davy had in the rest of the district.