Edward S. Ellis. The Life of Colonel David Crockett. 1884. Winston, n.d.

When I was eight, my parents let me stay up later than usual on three Sunday nights so I could watch the Davy Crockett rebroadcast miniseries on The Wonderful World of Disney television show. The morning after the last episode, I walked to school. School began at nine but the doors usually did not open till about 8:55. By the time a teacher opened the doors, the crowd of young students was normally pretty rowdy, but not that morning. The boys were all subdued. A friend of mine came up to me and spoke in a low, serious tone.

“Did you see it?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. We both nodded our heads wistfully.

The night before had been the last installment where we watched Davy Crockett and his 182 companions die at the Alamo to save Texas.

Along with Abraham Lincoln, my historical boyhood hero was Davy Crockett. Ellis’s The Life of Colonel David Crockett must have been a popular tome. It would be considered Young Adult today. Though originally published in 1884, the edition I was reading must have come out three decades later in a series of biographies. The inner flaps had a drawing of a biplane as part of the illustration for the series. There was no other date on the book, but it probably came out no earlier than, say 1909, and likely later.¹

While the book occasionally shows some evidence of what we could consider a florid style more typical of the nineteenth century, it is an honest and fair account of an American hero who achieved some legendary status. Ellis is careful to separate the legend from what we know to be true. He does not exaggerate.

Born in 1786 in Tennessee, Crockett was a subsistence farmer most of his life. We might even call him a hunter-gatherer. He was a crack shot. Witnesses tell of him killing thirty bears in less than a month. This was not gratuitous. He preserved them all for food for his family and friends for the winter.

We first really see him in action in his twenties in the War of 1812. As The Frontiersmen tells us, in the territory west of the Appalachians this meant not so much fighting the British as fighting their Indian allies. After the 1813 Fort Mims Massacre, Crockett joined his local militia and fought the Creeks under Andrew Jackson. He would soon be elected Colonel of the militia. The title and rank stuck.

Like most folks from Tennessee, Crockett at first was a big supporter of Jackson. Old Hickory was a war hero, a patriot, a Tennessean, and he cared for the common man. However, by the time Crockett ran for Congress, he was a Whig, not a Democrat. He took issue with a number of Jackson’s policies, especially the Indian Removal Act.

The most detailed part of this story has to do with his politics and his three terms as member of the American House of Representatives. That is simply because there is a paper trail. His most famous speech, on the Constitutionality of welfare, has been reprinted many times. The book includes it in its entirety along with Crockett’s story of how he changed his understanding of the Constitution.

Crockett’s popularity in elections was based in part in his sense of humor. He was an entertaining speaker. The Life of Colonel David Crockett includes a traditional shaggy dog story whose origin goes back into the distant past. I had read years ago that both he and Abraham Lincoln told variations of it.

The way Crockett told it, a blacksmith who had no anvil would make a tool, but only if the customer helped him. The blacksmith got fatigued and, as the process was taking too long, requested progressively simpler tools. He originally was going to forge an axe; then the axe became a mattock, then a plowshare, then, as things were taking too long, the blacksmith suggested a skow. The customer, at this point getting exasperated, agreed. The blacksmith took the red-hot piece of iron, and as he plunged it into the water, “it sung out ‘skow’” with a hiss. (90)

The book devotes two chapters to one the most closely documented part of Crockett’s life, a tour he took of the North. He started in Baltimore and visited Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Pittsburgh, Wheeling, Cincinnati, and Louisville, stopping at other sites in between. He was especially moved by the Revolutionary War sites in Boston and Philadelphia. Because of his stint in Congress and his down-home manner, he was a celebrity, so each stop was recorded in newspapers.

Aware of tensions in the nation, he “urged his Southern associates to follow his example of visiting their Northern friends, assuring them that their mutual good-will would be greatly strengthened when they should come to meet and know each other better.” (170) We have more in common than we have differences.

The story ends, of course, with Crockett’s emigration to Texas. Even in 1836, most settlers from the United States anticipated that Texas would eventually become a state. Andrew Jackson had actually hoped all of Mexico would join the union.

Ellis explains the political background fairly well, though clearly hostile to the “tyrant” Santa Anna. The stand at the Alamo lasted eleven days. Ellis pieces together what he can from the testimony of some inhabitants of San Antonio and the few non-combatant survivors of the siege.

I had read various accounts over the years including at least one that said the Mexicans killed the last survivors after they had thrown down their weapons and surrendered. Ellis finds no evidence either way of that. He does note that Jim Bowie was found killed in his bed (he had taken ill) with ten to twenty dead Mexicans in the room. Indeed, Ellis includes some background on both Sam Houston and the Bowie Brothers. Rezin Bowie, the inventor of the Bowie Knife, also died at the Alamo.

We are told one curious detail about Sam Houston. When Crockett met Houston, Houston was somewhat indisposed and was clothed only in a newspaper covering his private parts. He seemed unselfconscious about this, but Crockett was embarrassed. This reminded me of another Texan, President Lyndon Johnson, who once gave an interview to a woman reporter while sitting on a toilet. If I recall, it was embarrassing for her, too.

As most people familiar with American History know, the siege of the Alamo delayed Santa Anna’s army long enough and did enough damage that when the Mexican forces assembled six weeks later at San Jacinto, the Texans under Houston had organized enough to soundly defeat them, and Texas became an independent republic. By 1840 many European countries had recognized the nation of Texas. When it joined the United States in 1845, that precipitated the Mexican War. That story is told well in another book we reviewed some time ago.

Yes, The Life of Colonel David Crockett is something of a hagiography written for boys. I wonder if Walt Disney read it when he was a boy. But the author is careful to separate fact from legend—there is nothing, for example, of Davy killing a bear at three years old. He notes Crockett’s honesty and conscientiousness is worth emulating. In our era of historical iconoclasm, he and Lincoln are two American political leaders from the nineteenth century who are still admired today. Character counts.

Note

¹ We did find two other titles by Ellis that were reprinted by Winston in 1912 and 1914, so that probably gives us an approximation of when this edition was released.