David Crockett_ The Lion of the West - Michael Wallis [65]
In the last days of January 1815, as David Crockett returned from the war, he had no thoughts of “blushing victories.” He could not have known that the nation had been set on a course of transformation from an undeveloped country of frontiersmen and small farmers, like him, into an economic power. Crockett’s vision of the nation and beyond was limited to his own domain. Like the other soldiers he had served with, he only cared about getting home to Tennessee. The sight of a curl of wood smoke rising from the chimney at his cabin on Bean Creek in Franklin County had to have been a sight to behold for war-weary Crockett. He was anxious to be back with Polly and his children and he was determined not to leave his family again.
“I found them all well and doing well,” Crockett recounted of his homecoming, “and though I was only a rough sort of a backwoodsman, they seemed mighty glad to see me, however little the quality folks might suppose it. For I do reckon we love as hard in the backwood country, as any people in the whole creation.”1
Crockett had been home for a few days and was only beginning to tell stories of his latest experiences when he received official orders to report back for duty. His enlistment had not been completed, and he was still subject to military recall until March 27. The new orders directed Crockett’s outfit to return to Mississippi Territory and proceed to the country between the Black Warrior and Cahaba rivers to scout for any remaining hostile Indians. Crockett had no intention of obeying. “I know’d well enough there was none, and I wasn’t willing to trust my craw any more where there was neither any fighting to do, nor any thing to go on.”2
Instead of dutifully packing up and heading out for yet a third time, Crockett solved the problem by using a common legal procedure—paying someone to serve as a substitute. Crockett offered the balance of his army wages to a young man who was eager to go and fight Indians. In the past, a neighbor wanted to pay Crockett to go to war in his stead, and Crockett flatly refused, but it seems he had had a change of heart. The substitute went off to serve out the rest of Crockett’s enlistment, and when he returned Crockett noted that “sure enough they hadn’t seen an Indian any more than if they had been all the time chopping woods in my clearing.”3
Later, Crockett received a discharge certificate signed by Brig. Gen. John Coffee in Nashville on March 27, 1815. It read: “I certify that David Crockett a 4th Sergt. in my brigade of Tennessee Volunteer Mounted Gun-men, has performed a tour of duty of six months service of the United States—that his good conduct, subordination, and valor, under the most trying hardships, entitle him to the gratitude of his country, and that he is hereby honorably discharge [sic] by his general.”4 For his six months and two days of service, Crockett received $66.70, from which he paid off the young man who served out the final weeks of the enlistment. It is unknown if listing his rank as Fourth Sergeant when he started at the higher rank of Third Sergeant was a clerical error, or if a demotion was light punishment for Crockett’s inclination to do as he pleased.
“This closed out my career as a warrior, and I am glad of it,” Crockett wrote about that time of transition, “for I like life now a heap better than I did then; and I am glad all over that I lived to see these times, which I should not have done if I had kept fooling along in war, and got used to it…. The battle at New Orleans had already been fought, and treaties were made with the Indians which put a stop to their hostilities.”5
Yet the peace that Crockett was just beginning to enjoy was short-lived. Death—his constant companion during his time as a soldier—had followed him home and, in the early spring of 1815, arrived at his cabin door. That March, Polly Crockett took to her bed gravely ill. Her health rapidly declined, and, after a painful struggle, Polly died. She was only twenty-six years old. No records have been found indicating the cause of death or the exact