David Crockett_ The Lion of the West - Michael Wallis [116]
“I had Mr. Fitzgerald, it is true, for my open competitor,” Crockett wrote, “but he was helped along by all his little lawyers again, headed by old Black Hawk, as he is sometimes called (alias) Adam Huntsman, with all his talents for writing ‘Chronicles,’ and such like foolish stuff…. But one good thing was, and I must record it, the papers in the district were now beginning to say ‘fair play a little,’ and they would publish on both sides of the question.”16
The results of the election in August 1833 were close, but Crockett surprisingly managed a victory. “The contest was a warm one, and the battle well-fought,” explained Crockett, “but I gained the day, and the Jackson horse was left a little behind.”17 In fact, the Jacksonian machine was left a total of 173 votes behind, according to official election returns, with Fitzgerald polling 3,812 votes to Crockett’s 3,985.
Crockett’s victory, given his popular celebrity, got the attention of the nation, particularly the leaders of the Whig Party. Crockett was now considered electable and, with the exception of Andrew Jackson, probably the most popular man in Tennessee, if not the nation. The influential Niles’ Weekly Register, a pro-Whig national journal published in Baltimore, came out with a glowing tribute to Congressman Crockett. It read, in part:
A great deal has been said in the newspapers concerning Col. Crockett, who has been again elected a member of congress from Tennessee. It was the misfortune of the colonel to have received no school education in his youth, and since to have had but little opportunity to retrieve that defect; but he is a man of a strong mind, and of great goodness of heart. The manner of his remarks are so peculiar that they excite much attention, and are repeated because of their originality; but there is a soundness, or point, in some of them which shows the exercise of a well disciplined judgment—and we think it not easy for an unprejudiced man to communicate with the colonel without feeling that he is honest.18
Out in west Tennessee, Crockett readied himself for a triumphal return to the nation’s capital. As he had done in the past when facing debt, he again treated human beings like the livestock he took to market. In his capacity as the executor of the Robert Patton estate, it is recorded that he sold an eighteen-year-old slave, Sofia, to his friend Lindsey Tinkle for $525. He also sold two slave boys, Aldolphus and Samuel, to his stepson George Patton for $480 and $372, respectively, as well as a husband and wife, Daniel and Delila, together for $660.19 The infusion of cash paid off some bills and also provided Crockett with some cash until his congressional pay resumed.
His bag packed and the hounds entrusted to his sons, Crockett once more headed east to Washington City, arriving at Mrs. Ball’s Boarding House well before the December 2 opening of Congress. Crockett had new people to meet, old friends to greet, and some scores to settle. He also had a book that needed to be written.
THIRTY-TWO
GO AHEAD
WITH HIS CONFIDENCE RESTORED, his seat in Congress reclaimed, Crockett was more than ready to leave behind the makeshift cabin, where he lived alone on a piece of hardscrabble leased land, and join his Whig allies while ensconced at Mary Ball’s comfortable boardinghouse on Pennsylvania Avenue. His two-year absence from Washington City had made him grow fonder of the drama and excitement of the national political scene; the capital even in these early days pulsed with an energy not to be found in Tennessee and addictive to those who experienced it.
True to the familiar motto customarily ascribed to him—“Be always sure you are right, then go ahead”—Crockett behaved, in effect, like a lead hound plunging into the cane. When the Twenty-third Congress convened, on December