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By Root 302 0

victory were excellent. Like Crockett, they also knew he could use the income from being in office, and they urged him to offer his name as a candidate. These supporters had to have been as surprised as Elizabeth and the children when, shortly after making his public announcement, Crockett inexplicably left, not just the area he wanted to represent but also the entire state of Tennessee. In March 1821, he assembled a herd of horses and drove them across the state to Buncombe County, North Carolina, where his wife’s parents and other Patton kinfolk lived.10 This was the same journey during which Crockett passed through his old home country near Finley’s Gap and stopped at the John Jacobs place to give Mrs. Jacobs the dollar he owed her deceased husband.

Perhaps Crockett figured the money he made from the sale of the horses would help finance his campaign. The only problem was that he was gone more than three months and did not return to his home until early June, leaving little time to make the rounds of the two county legislative districts before the election, set for August. Crockett was barely back from his North Carolina romp when he kissed Elizabeth—due to deliver yet another baby in less than two months—and rode off on the campaign trail. Fortunately, the older Crockett children and neighbors pitched in to help Elizabeth while her husband searched for votes.

The political campaign evoked in Crockett a folksiness and frontier flair that displayed his expansive personality in full force. One of the first events he attended was a big squirrel hunt down on the Duck River in Hickman County. He soon found that politicking in the canebrakes mostly was a good excuse for a no-holds-barred party. “They were to hunt two days; then to meet and count the scalps, and have a big barbecue, and what might be called a tip-top country frolic,” explained Crockett. “The dinner, and a general treat, was all to be paid for by the party having taken the fewest [squirrel] scalps. I joined one side, taking the place of one of the hunters, and got a gun ready for the hunt. I killed a great many squirrels, and when we counted scalps, my party was victorious.”11

Before the dancing got under way, the various political candidates were called on to make a speech. Instead of using his talent as a storyteller, Crockett became self-conscious, figuring he had to make some sort of formal address. He approached the event organizers and tried to get out of speaking, since, as he put it, making a speech as a candidate “was a business I was as ignorant of as an outlandish negro,” his language reflecting a racist sentiment typical of the day.12 Crockett’s opponent was confident and not at all concerned about running against someone he considered to be “an ignorant back-woods bear hunter.” Seeing he had no choice, Crockett tried to speak to the crowd but “choaked [sic] up as bad as if my mouth had been jam’d and cram’d chock full of dry mush.” Then, as the crowd stood staring at the befuddled Crockett, he had a brainstorm—tell one of the humorous stories he knew so well.

The instantaneous decision would change the course of regional Tennessee political history of the early nineteenth century.

At last I told them I was like a fellow I had heard of not long before. He was beating on the head of an empty barrel near the road-side, when a traveler, who was passing along, asked him what he was a doing that for? The fellow replied that there was some cider in that barrel a few days before, and he was trying to see if there was any then, but if there was he couldn’t get at it. I told them that there had been a little bit of a speech in me a while ago, but I believed I couldn’t get it out. They all roared out in a mighty laugh, and I told them other anecdotes, equally amusing to them, and believing I had them in a first-rate way, I quit and got down, thanking the people for their attention. But I took care to remark that I was as dry as a powder horn, and that I thought it was time for us all to wet our whistles a little; and so I put off to the liquor stand, and