David Crockett_ The Lion of the West - Michael Wallis [128]
It was clear to Chapman that Crockett’s “thoughts and sympathies had been abruptly and touchingly recalled from present surroundings to home and heart memories…. The awkwardness of his efforts to resume his usual dash of manner was painful to witness.”17 No amount of public reverie or public adulation, it was clear, could fully detach Crockett from the family he had abandoned, both financially and emotionally.
When he was with Chapman, however, Crockett could be himself. There he had no need to “shake out” of the dramatic pose he often struck when dealing with his doting fans or his foes. Chapman recalled the afternoon he happened upon Crockett at the foot of the great descent to Pennsylvania Avenue looking “very much fagged” and not at all his usual jovial self. He told Crockett how tired he looked, as if he had just delivered a long speech to the House of Representatives. Crockett exclaimed, “Long speech to thunder, there’s plenty of ’em up there for that sort of nonsense, without my making a fool of myself, at public expense. I can stand good nonsense—rather like it—but such nonsense as they are digging at up yonder, it’s no use trying to—I’m going home.”18
By “going home,” Crockett meant that he was going back to his quarters at the nearby boardinghouse, not back to his estranged family in Tennessee. Yet even as he trudged down the avenue, forces were hard at work to ensure he would indeed go home to those canebrakes where his detractors thought he belonged and should forever remain.
Everyone in Congress, including Crockett’s Whig friends, noticed a change in him after the book tour. Many historians and biographers agree that going on the tour with Congress still in session was possibly the greatest political blunder Crockett ever committed. They maintain it gave his enemies in the Jackson camp plenty of fodder to use against him. All that had to be done was to point out that, as a duly elected representative of the people, Crockett missed important votes, floor debates, and other congressional business while he traipsed around the country having a high time with his Whig pals. Although he would not be the last American politician to evade his legislative duties, his constituents in Tennessee felt they had been taken advantage of. The man supposed to be looking out for their interests was busy peddling books and speaking out against America’s laudable commander-in-chief, a Tennessee man himself. It was a point well made, and when Crockett offered feeble excuses for his absence by blaming it on illness, it only compounded the severity of the situation.19 Everyone in the country, let alone Washington City, had been reading about Crockett’s junket for weeks.
Crockett’s frustration was evident in his verbal assaults on Jackson, Van Buren, and their followers, as they became more caustic and breached all sense of decorum, even for the already raucous House of Representatives. There were several instances in the chamber when the sound of the gavel rang out like a rifle shot as the Speaker of the House tried to bring the out-of-control Crockett to order. The sergeant-at-arms and his underlings stood at the ready and legislators pushed their brass spittoons beneath their desks in case a scuffle erupted in the aisles between feuding members, especially the demonstrative gentleman from the cane.
The book tour had clearly diminished his political effectiveness. Crockett was fully aware that his entire political future hinged on the passage of his land legislation, and he knew the chances of