“I am almost induced to believe this flattery—perhaps a burlesque. This is new to me, yet I see nothing but friendship in your faces.”
At a grand banquet in New York City, Crockett having been toasted as “The undeviating supporter of the constitution and the laws,” made this neat and characteristic hit, as he reports it:
“I made a short speech, and concluded with the story of the red cow, which was, that as long as General Jackson went straight, I followed him; but when he began to go this way, and that way, and every way, I wouldn’t go after him; like the boy whose master ordered him to plough across the field to the red cow. Well, he began to plough, and she began to walk; and he ploughed all forenoon after her. So when the master came, he swore at him for going so crooked. ‘Why, sir,’ said the boy, ‘you told me to plough to the red cow, and I kept after her, but she always kept moving.’”
Most enthusiastic of all was his reception in Boston, where President Jackson’s policy was most unpopular. It was even proposed to confer on Crockett the degree of LL.D., an honor that had been awarded to Jackson: but, unlike Jackson, Crockett had the wit to decline an honor which neither of the two deserved.
The more he saw and heard the more humble he became. When called up for an after-dinner speech in Boston he burst out in his honest way—“I never had but six months’ schooling in all my life, and I confess I consider myself a poor tyke to be here addressing the most intelligent people in the world.” If he had not culture, he had what was far more rare in that age of truckling to one-man power—manhood. It seemed as if unlettered David Crockett was the only man in public life to stand up straight, and people acknowledged the power of true character. The culture and wealth of the East bowed to unspoiled manhood; it was a revelation fresh from Nature’s hand.
A few extracts from one of his more sustained and dignified efforts will illustrate the development Crockett had attained by simple observation. After praising New England he said:
“I don’t mean that because I eat your bread and drink your liquor, that I feel so. No; that don’t make me see clearer than I did. It is your habits, and manners, and customs; your industry; your proud, independent spirits; your hanging on to the eternal principles of right and wrong; your liberality in prosperity, and your patience when you are ground down by legislation, which, instead of crushing you, whets your invention to strike a path without a blaze on a tree to guide you; and above all, your never-dying, deathless grip to our glorious Constitution. These are the things that make me think you are a mighty good people.
“I voted for Andrew Jackson because I believed he possessed certain principles, and not because his name was Andrew Jackson, or the ‘Hero,’ or ‘Old Hickory.’ And when he left those principles which induced me to support him, I considered myself justified in opposing him. This thing of man-worship I am a stranger to; I don’t like it; it taints every action of life.
“I know nothing, by experience, of party discipline. I would rather be a raccoon-dog, and belong to a Negro in the forest, than to belong to any party, further than to do justice to all, and to promote the interests of my country. The time will and must come, when honesty will receive its reward, and when the people of this nation will be brought to a sense of their duty, and will pause and reflect how much it cost us to redeem ourselves from the government of one man. It cost the lives and fortunes of thousands of the best patriots that ever lived. Yes, gentlemen, hundreds of them fell in sight of your own city.
“Gentlemen, if it is for opposing those high-handed measures that you compliment me, I say I have done so, and will do so, now and forever. I will be no man’s man, and no party’s man, other than to be the people’s faithful representative: and I am delighted to see the noble spirit of liberty retained so boldly here, where the first spark was kindled; and I hope to see it shine and spread over our whole country.”