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By Root 340 0

barbs to fling at Crockett. Many people saw Huntsman’s peg leg as a symbol of his courage and service to the nation as an Indian fighter. On at least one occasion during the campaign, Crockett found a way to turn his opponent’s wooden limb to his own advantage. The incident in question occurred during the heat of the campaign battle, when both candidates traveled the circuit together making stump speeches along the way. Often they stayed under the same roof, as was the case on this evening when they were quartered at the home of a prosperous farmer who happened to have a comely daughter. In the wee hours, after everyone was asleep, Crockett crept out of bed, took a wooden chair, and rattled the knob of the door of the young woman’s room. She woke up screaming, and Crockett put one foot on the rung of the chair and used it like a crutch to hobble back to his own bed. The farmer mistook the sound for the tapping of Huntsman’s wooden leg and, aware of the politician’s penchant for beautiful women, burst into his quarters and demanded an explanation. Crockett acted as peacemaker and intervened. He calmed down the farmer but not before getting his vote and a promise that he would tell everyone about the lecherous one-legged Huntsman.

If the farmer kept his word and voted for Crockett in the August election, it was not enough. It turned out to be a close race, but in the end Crockett picked up 4,400 votes compared to 4,652 cast for Huntsman.35

Defeat did not come easily to Crockett. As was the case in past losses, he was bitter and angry. “I have no doubt that I was Completely Raskeled out of my election,” Crockett wrote to his publishers on August 11, just five days after the voting. “I will be rewarded for letting my tongue Speake what my hart thinks…. I have Suffered my Self to be politically Sacrafised to Save my Country from ruin and disgrace and if I am never again elected I will have the gratification to know that I have done my duty.”36

Many newspapers took Crockett to task. The colorful frontiersman always made good copy, no matter if he was portrayed as a superhero or, as the Arkansas Gazette now called him, that “buffoon, Davy Crockett.” When his forty-ninth birthday came around on August 17, there was not much to celebrate. On August 31, the editors of the Charleston Courier offered their assessment:

Col. Davy Crockett, hitherto regarded as the Nimerod [sic] of the West, has been beaten for Congress by a Mr. Huntsman. The Colonel has lately suffered himself to be made a lion, or some other wild beast, tamed, if not caged, for public shew [sic]—and it is no wonder that he should have yielded to the prowess of a Huntsman, when again let loose in his native wilds. We fear that “Go ahead” will no longer be either the Colonel’s motto or destiny.37

The newspaper was wrong, for “Go ahead” was exactly what Crockett had in mind. Soundly defeated in Washington and in his home state, he looked now for solace elsewhere, having heard for a long time stories about the opportunities that waited in Texas. He had repeatedly declared that he would head to Texas and live under Mexican rule if Van Buren ever became president. Crockett decided he could not wait for that election.

During this period of the 1830s and for several years to come, it was not uncommon to see the letters G.T.T. painted or carved on the doorways of cabins in Tennessee and other parts of the country, especially the South. It was a sure sign that the occupants had picked up and were, as they said, “Gone to Texas.” The slogan was first seen in print in 1825, and had become a popular expression for those people who had committed crimes or owed money or just did not want to be found.38 When bill collectors went looking for defaulters and found an empty house, they realized those they sought had absconded and had gone to Texas. It became common that when a grand jury returned indictments but the sheriff had no luck bringing in the accused, he would report back that they had gone to Texas. When a banker rifled the vaults of his institution and made a successful