American Legend: The Real-Life Adventures of David Crockett Read Online Free PDF

but like him. He had developed a style, complete with a country accent, mannerisms, and scathingly funny comic timing, and most remarkable of all, it was really him. He made certain to season his short speeches with regional jargon, understanding the efficacy of homilies like “A short horse is soon curried,” knowing that the common folk would appreciate the slang. He may have been exaggerating some, but he wasn’t faking it. What Crockett gave them in the congressional race of 1827 was pure and authentic Crockett.
    For years after the election Crockett liked to tell the story of how all three candidates convened once at a stump meeting in the eastern counties, and how, as usual, Arnold and Alexander had completely ignored Crockett, treating him as if he did not even exist. On this occasion Crockett went first, and spoke very briefly and simply, knowing from experience that the other two would be remembered for their long, protracted, and boring speeches, and he for his good humor and cunning wit. Crockett listened attentively as they railed away at each other, first Alexander, then Arnold:
     
The general took much pains to reply to Alexander, but didn’t so much as let on that there was any such candidate as myself at all. He had been speaking for a considerable time, when a large flock of guinea-fowls came very near to where he was, and set up the most unmerciful chattering that ever was heard, for they are a noisy little brute any way. They so confused the general, that he made a stop, and requested that they might be driven away. I let him finish his speech, and then walking up to him, said aloud, ‘Well, colonel, you are the first man I ever saw that understood the language of fowls.’ I told him that he had not had the politeness to name me in his speech, and that when my little friends, the guinea-fowls, had come up and began to holler ‘Crockett, Crockett, Crockett,’ he had been ungenerous enough to stop, and drive them all away. This raised a universal shout among the people for me, and the general seemed pretty bad plagued. 19
     
    David Crockett’s eccentricities were getting him noticed, and crowds of people came just to get a peek at him, and if they were lucky, to hear some of his well-wrought anecdotes. At the same time, Crockett had learned just enough in the legislature to understand that political allegiances mattered, though he never learned that lesson well enough to make it stick—when it came down to a vote, his conscience and his principles always triumphed over any political alliances. Still, despite his vote against Jackson in 1825 and his suspicion of him as privileged rather than one of his own kind, Crockett was outwardly and honestly a backer of Jackson at that time: “I can say, on my conscience, that I was, without disguise, the friend and supporter of General Jackson, upon his principles as he laid them down, and, as ‘I understood them.’ ” Of course, the provision between Crockett’s quotation marks became important later on, foreshadowing a moment when Crockett would make the case that even Jackson himself no longer ascribed to his own principles, but for the moment, Crockett supported Jackson’s upcoming run for the presidency in 1828.
    By election time in the late summer of 1827, Crockett had done all he could in an attempt to unseat an incumbent, one who had beaten him the last time around. His face and voice and outlandish storytelling had been spread all around the district; Marcus Winchester’s endorsement, introductions to influential circles, and fiscal backing had ensured that. The rest was pure Crockett. When the polling numbers came in, even Crockett had to be a bit surprised. Before the election, he had admitted that he was a long shot, as unseating an incumbent like Alexander was difficult in the best of circumstances, and in Arnold he faced a very clever major general in the militia, and a lawyer as well, which Crockett viewed as nearly insurmountable: “I