David Crockett_ The Lion of the West - Michael Wallis [102]
Throughout 1828 and into 1829, however, Crockett tried to maintain a relationship with everyone he could in order to push his land legislation. That definitely still included Old Hickory, who finally defeated his nemesis John Quincy Adams in the bitterly contested presidential election of 1828 and was sworn into office the following March. Jackson’s campaign had positioned the often-arrogant Tennessean as a self-made man of the people and the first president to be born in a log cabin. Adams, on the other hand, was characterized as an aloof aristocrat who, much like his father, lacked the political savvy required to garner support for any of his pet programs.
Although Crockett’s political life consumed much of his time and energy during this period, he also had issues to face back in Tennessee. He wrestled with a substantial debt, and also tried placating Elizabeth, who was tired of her husband’s continued inability to keep the family solvent. She blamed much of Crockett’s troubles on his penchant for drink, lack of any business sense, and failure to maintain any semblance of a spiritual life.
While Crockett had to endure Elizabeth’s personal assaults at home, he also had to suffer an onslaught of scurrilous stories and fabrications about his character, concocted by political enemies who smelled blood. Finally, on November 25, 1828, about a week before Jackson’s victory at the polls, Crockett reached his breaking point and struck back. On that date, the National Banner and the Nashville Whig published an embarrassing description of Crockett’s crude behavior at a dinner hosted by President Adams almost a year earlier, on November 27, 1827, to welcome new members of Congress to the capital.10 The planted newspaper stories presented Crockett as a complete bumpkin who sipped from the finger bowls and accused a waiter of stealing his dinner when the man was simply clearing the table for the next course. “I then filled my plate with bacon and greens,” Crockett was alleged to have said. “And whenever I looked up or down the table, I held on to my plate with my left hand” so no one else would take it away.11
President Adams’s meticulously kept diary indicates that no such behavior occurred on that date. Adams noted that he received Congressman Lewis Williams of North Carolina, accompanied by “Crocket [sic] a new member from Tennessee.” In other notations about the occasion Adams wrote that “Colonel Crockett was very diverting at our dinner,” which more than likely meant the freshman legislator told some of his better frontier tales.12
Humiliated by the guffaws in Washington circles, Crockett was upset when some of his constituents posed questions about his outlandish behavior at a presidential event. To counter the published stories, he contacted two highly respected congressmen who also were in attendance and asked them to write letters refuting such blatant lies. On January 4, just a day after they received Crockett’s request, Congressman James Clark, of Kentucky, and Congressman Gulian Crommelin Verplanck, of New York, responded with letters supporting Crockett.
“I was at the same dinner, and know that the statement is destitute of every thing like truth,” wrote Clark, who had filled the congressional seat vacated by Henry Clay’s elevation to secretary of state and was an early organizer of the Whig Party in Kentucky. “I sat opposite to you at the table, and held occasional conversation with you, and observed nothing in your behavior but was marked with the strictest priority.”13 Verplanck, not only a veteran political figure but a respected man of letters, wrote in his letter of support to Crockett, “Your behavior there was, I thought, perfectly becoming and proper; and I do not recollect or believe that you said or did anything resembling the newspaper