David Crockett_ The Lion of the West - Michael Wallis [115]
In general the book is overwritten, in stylized prose filled with clichés and odd characterizations. Several chapters consist of folk tales written in a thick Dutch accent, a popular form of storytelling on the frontier. There is little of substance about Crockett as a man but mostly a series of tales and anecdotes that bolstered, as it did in the later style of action-hero comics, the image of a mythical frontier character. The writing played to the masses of disenfranchised whites who craved stories about feats of great strength, stalking wild beasts, and killing Indians. “Davy Crockett was famous for tales of his hunting, fighting, and joking,” one writer pointed out. “No one bothered to invent similar high-flown stories about Congressman Crockett.”13
While appealing to the masses, the book met a mixed reception elsewhere, particularly among the highbrow classes who considered Crockett nothing more than a bumptious court jester and buffoon. Typical of these detractors was the critique of Sketches that appeared in the New England magazine:
The gentleman who is the subject of these Sketches, was not much known beyond the circle of his neighbors and fellow-hunters, till, a few years ago, when, by one of those strange and erratic concurrences of circumstances, which sometimes happen in the political system, he was found in one of the seats of the House of Representatives of the United States…. The writer of these Sketches has, creditably to himself, withheld his name, and, in that respect, we cannot but think he was more careful of his own reputation than he has been of that of his illustrious subject, or that of the multitude of counselors of which the subject is so useful and ornamental a member.14
Although Crockett claimed to have been irate and embarrassed by an unauthorized biography, he recognized the tremendous impact the book had in expanding his name recognition with the public, elevating his stature on the national political scene—albeit not always in the most flattering manner. Still, it deeply bothered Crockett, given his impecunious circumstances, that he never enjoyed any financial reward from the book and that not one cent of royalties was offered to him. Crockett determined that his pocket and reputation would be better off if he were to pen his own book. After all, there was no one was more qualified to tell the story of a man’s life than the man who lived it. Before any book could be written, however, other business more immediate had to be addressed.
Out in the canebrakes Crockett continued to hear the siren call of Washington City. An election for the Twenty-third Congress loomed in August 1833, and Crockett had a hankering to get back his seat from William Fitzgerald. By then he took nothing for granted when it came to politics. He fully understood that the reelection of Andrew Jackson to a second term in 1832 would make it that much more difficult to unseat the incumbent Fitzgerald. Crockett would need all the help his friends in the Whig Party could muster on his behalf.
During the campaign, he made an effort to keep his sense of humor and build rapport with the voters, but without coming off as the buffoon his critics and enemies portrayed him to be. The Jacksonian camp tried to help Fitzgerald by gerrymandering his congressional district in such a way that it would work against Crockett. They also published a vitriolic tract, The Book of Chronicles, filled with attacks on Crockett and his