Bear Grease - Ep. 118: David Crockett - The Blunder (Part 3)

Episode Date: June 14, 2023

On this third episode, we’re navel deep into the life of America’s first celebrity backwoodsman, David “Davy” Crockett. We’ve learned there were four Crockett’s known by America – the bear hunter, the soldier, the politician and the martyr at the Alamo. We ended the last episode with Crockett leaving the military, but today things get dicey – Crockett became America’s first famous working class, populist politician.  We’ll look into when David Crockett’s wife died, learn of his folksy campaign style, see his feud with Andrew Jackson - and his opposition to Old Hickory’s Indian Removal Act of 1830 - and ultimately see Crockett’s biggest political blunder that eventually lead his death. We’ll even talk with Robert Morgan about Crockett’s influence on Abraham Lincoln. We really doubt you’re going to want to miss this one.... Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. First Lights fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days and real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season.

Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware gear at firstlight.com. Who are you going to vote for? If you're going to vote for somebody to represent you in the Tennessee legislature, are you going to vote for some fancy, you know, well-dressed person? Or are you going to vote for somebody that's a lot like you that's going to be able to spin

yarns and tell stories and make you laugh? On this episode, we're naval deep into the life of America's first celebrity back woodsman, David Crockett, who 150 years after his... death, people would call Davy. We've learned there were four Crocett's known by America, the bear hunter, the soldier, the politician, and the martyr at the Alamo. We ended the last episode with Crockett leaving the military, but today things get dicey. Crockett became America's first famous working class populist politician. We'll see his charm and wit on the campaign stump, learn of family tragedy and business failures, and see the pragmatic genius of the

American frontier flow through his life. But ultimately, we'll learn about Crockett's blunder. Don't think for a minute that Crockett's shoe in for the Bear Grease Hall of Fame. Do you think he'll make it? After this episode, I'm certain you'll have a strong leaning. And I really doubt that you're going to want to miss this one. Who else can you think of? who's a famous politician who came literally from the laboring class. It's Lincoln, who shares so much with David Crockett. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is the Bear Grease podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant.

Search for insight in unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land. presented by FHF gear, American-made, purpose-built, hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. Celebrity at its core in many ways is the fan's interpretation of that individual. And so it is impossible for anyone to live up to another person's interpretation of who we are. And so we will never know some of what motivated David Crockett. You know, also we changed throughout our lives. You know, we can't take a human being and put them in one, this person is this, because we evolve, we grow, we learn, we fail.

You know, and I think he was a great example of somebody who did that, who just tried to figure it out. You know, but he was, you know, he was just a fascinating, fun, interesting person in a time where there wasn't, know, people were just struggling to survive. It seems like he would have been hard not to like if you actually met him. Cruckett biographer R. Scott Williams believes that Davy was America's first real celebrity, and despite our exploration of his life, we'll never know his full motivations. Western culture has obsessed over the fleeting fame of mortal men, with the veracity of an October squirrel hoarding acorns,

but I think the pace has even increased in modern times. I'm certain since our hunter-gatherer days as a species, we've looked for leaders and warlords to look up to. Later in history, kings, chiefs, authors, artists. But the global celebrity is a relatively new thing and it's gaining steam. Today, with social media and television, celebrities are a dime a dozen. From sports players, race car drivers, actors, musicians, to coondog breeders and world-class trotliners, That's a joke. Celebrities are everywhere.

But Crockett was surely America's first. He had widespread name recognition in America and Europe in his lifetime. People made money off his name, image, and likeness. They wrote books and even had a Broadway play about him in his lifetime. In my mind, his interaction with his own fame characterizes him as a true celebrity. but I think it's notable that the foundation of his identity and fame was that he was a bear hunter. Don't forget that.

On the last episode, we talked about Crockett's childhood, first marriage and his time in the Creek War. I'd argue this was the most formative part of his life. Crockett married Polly Finley in 1806, and he returned from the war, and in 1814 he wrote after his arrival home. though I was only a rough sort of backwoodsman, they seemed mighty glad to see me. He was talking about his family.

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 world. That's good. He loved Polly. But in 1815, tragedy struck, and we see our man expressing perhaps the most iconic expression of humanity. grief. So Crockett returns back to Polly in 1814, then tragedy strikes when...

She dies. Yeah. Soon after he returned. And this was a truly traumatic loss. He had children. He didn't like farming. His business affairs were not in good order. He had lost his wife, beautiful, young Irish. I mean, she married in her teens. He was only 20 and he was on the frontier. Here's Crockett's account of Polly's death in his own words from his autobiography. But in this time I met with the hardest trial whichever falls to the lot of men.

Death, that cruel leveler of all distinctions to whom the prayers and tears of husbands and even the helpless infancy are addressed in vain, entered my humble cottage and tore from my children in affectionate mother. and from me a tender loving wife. It is a scene long gone by and one which it would suppose I had almost forgotten, yet when I turned my memory back on it, it seems as but the work of yesterday. It was the doing of the Almighty, whose ways are always right, though we sometimes think they fall heavy on us. And as painful as is even yet the remembrance of her sufferings

and the loss sustained by my little children and myself, Yet I have no wish to lift up the voice of complaint. I was left with three children, the two oldest were sons, the youngest a daughter, and at that time a mere infant. It appeared to me at that moment that my situation was the worst in the world. Death, the cruel leveler of all distinctions. Polly was 26 years old. Crockett wore his heart on his sleeve. Perhaps the most mysterious phenomenon of human life is that it

ends. Death must be one of the most written about, feared, and explored occurrences in existence. The reaction of the living to death is something that interests us all. I suspect the curiosity is instinctual and we're hoping to learn how to respond to what we know is coming, this inevitable crisis that no man's money, good looks, or wit can circumnavigate. Death. Human death is really a wild concept, almost unbelievable. In death we see the greatest picture of the dual nature of human life. It's both spiritual and physical. The essence of a human departs their physical body in a peculiar, untraceable moment characterized more by what is gone than by what remains. The lifeless corpse, once occupied by the energy of life and governed by the inexplicable architecture that built the body,

now begins to be disassembled back into its individual physical elements, redistributing the matter of the human body back into the chemical cycles of the earth. Death is wild. This small window into Crockett's response to death is endearing, but also shows us his pragmatism, which people on the frontier had to have. So here's what he did very quickly. So he had to do something and he knew there was a widow not too far away. Elizabeth Patton, who also had kids.

He was very young also. He goes to see her and they actually get marriage. He's a very different kind of person from him. He's a very practical, hardworking, realistic. They say opposites attract and I guess they do to some extent. It almost sounds like kind of like a transactional thing too. From the mouth of Crockett in his autobiography, he just basically says, my wife died. Soon enough, I realized I needed a new wife.

My kids needed a new mother. And there was a widow down the road. And we met and she was agreeable. And we got married. I mean, it was just like, you know, I'm a man. You're a woman. Let's do this. Crocket said he was as sly about it as a fox when he is going to rob a hen house when he courted Elizabeth.

And it worked. David and Elizabeth were married at her home. During the ceremony, a hog named Hook pushed open the door and walked inside and everyone laughed. And Crockett said, Oh, Hook, from now on, I'll do the grunting around here. That's good. In some ways, romance is a novelty of the modern prosperous world. The original idea of marriage was primarily one of practicality.

This could be why more than 50% of marriages in America end in divorce. Could it be that using the tickly feelings of cheap emotion as our primary guide on marriage are leading us astray? I'm not suggesting that a marriage should be absent of love. Just a question. In Crockett's political career, he would sponsor bills that would make it harder to get a divorce in Tennessee. We don't know the exact date of Polly's death, but she's. died in 1815 and he married Elizabeth on March 6, 1815, so he remarried inside of three months of Polly's death. It's notable, too, that Elizabeth's first husband was killed in the Creek

War that Crockett also fought in. Elizabeth had two children that she brought into the marriage and David 3, and then they would have three children together, bringing their total number of children to 8. That's a respectable size Tennessee family. The pragmatism of David, and Elizabeth's marriage was evidenced by their business ventures together. The new Crockett family would then move to Shoal Creek near Lawrenceburg, southeast of Nashville, Tennessee. Today, there's a Crockett State Park there. Here is an event in 1819 that shaped their family's life. Another way that Crockett's life parallels Daniel Boone's is that both started many enterprises,

businesses, and they never worked out. They always collapsed one way or another. And using his wife's money, he builds this huge business, grist mill, powder mill, distillery, and thinks, you know, well, I've got it made now. It comes a flood and it's all washed away. He has to start over again. You know, it seems like poverty chased these guys around a lot and shaped a lot of their life. I mean, if Crockett had been wealthy, he wouldn't have been Crockett. If Boone had been

independently wealthy, he never would have had to have taken the risks that he took. You know, I feel like these guys, even though if they, if you had them choose poverty or choose wealth, they would inevitably have chosen wealth and had maybe an easier life. It was this thing that was following them, that drove them. And that drive that they had is what made them who they were. They were both gamblers, and they were willing to take huge chances. I think both of them had a sense that they were going to lose in practical things, but they were willing to try really risky things.

Because it might have a big payoff. You might go through the Cumberland Gap and get 10,000 acres in Kentucky that's yours, or you might go to West Tennessee or Texas. and get land. But also, I think Crockett felt sometimes that he was kind of born to failure. It became a part of the persona, the public persona, the self-deprecating. You know, I've done this, I've done that. You know, this, you know, the loss of the mill starts a streak that ends up at the Alamo.

He didn't choose failure, but he was willing to risk failure. Yeah. Yeah, if the Gristmill had worked out, that flood hadn't come. and that had been a major source of prosperity for his family. He probably maybe would have never gone to Texas. Well, certainly you've never gone to Texas. He'd probably never gone to Congress either. Yeah.

Wow, you know, that's a really interesting thought. You think about the failures in your life or the difficulty, the stuff that was hard. And so often that looks like a black X. But that Black X is probably what pushed you to do other stuff that ended up being wins for you. They'll end up doing the thing that nobody expected. I'll tell you one thing I've learned from looking at frontier history is owning a grist mill is risky business. Oh, man, it's just like every time when I hear that they build a grist mill, I'm like, oh, man, here comes financial failure. After the failure of the mill, Crockett's wanderlust for land got the best of him, and he went on an exploration into Alabama, the land formerly owned by the creeks.

He gets down there on a several-month excursion and contracts what most likely was malaria. He gets so sick, his buddies literally leave him for dead, returned to Tennessee, and give his horse to Elizabeth with news of his death. But as we know, reports of death aren't always true. Again, remember Mark Twain's other reports of my death? I want to ask you about that. So, yeah, so these guys that were with Crockett, go back and tell Elizabeth, with Crocket's dead, even though they actually didn't see him die.

They just, when they left him, he was basically. They assumed he would, yes. This seems so common back during this time. The frontier was so dangerous. The communication was so slim. We know it happened with Boone when he went into the wilderness for two years. It was just assumed that he was dead. It happened with Crockett.

It just seems like today, I think about, you know, my wife or it would just be be so bizarre to have some period of your life when you did not know if your spouse or loved one was dead or alive? The most famous case is Hugh Glass, remember that Jim Bridger, as a 16-year-old, left him because he was so close to being dead. He seemed he was going to die and wanted to get away from the grizzly bears and the Sioux, so he just left him as soon as he was dead. No, the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.

Mark Twain said. Man, that is a, when you think about human emotions and how we're geared to deal with crisis in life, that has got to be probably one of the most dramatic things that can happen is when you think somebody's dead that you find out there alive. And you can even take that analogy back to the pinnacle of the Christian faith, which is Jesus died and then was resurrected. Three days later, he shows back up alive. It's a pretty, I don't know, it just takes a human on a massive roller coaster. And it's interesting because that happened all the time back in these days. Obviously, they were happy to see him when he showed up, but she had sent somebody to look for him.

She was a pragmatic woman, wasn't she? She was like, I don't think he's dead. That old sucker, you can't kill him that easy. There's more to that near death story that's really interesting. Will somebody on the next render please remind me to talk about his near death? in Alabama. Now that is pragmatism. You know, I'm amazed at how quickly they moved past loss. And you see that with Elizabeth Patton, Elizabeth Crockett. When the gristmill washed away, she just kind of said, well, there was a quote from her, and she used the words, we'll

scuffle around and get some more, you know, get something else going, you know. They're just kind of like. What's the American way? I mean, you move further west. You're dead. You lose everything, get in trouble with the law, whatever. Just keep going west. You try again and then you try again. It's just, you know, how the country was developed. People who failed in Europe or they wanted to go, you know, they were in Ireland or somewhere. You know, that makes me see a real connection to the actual land of America, the physical land, how big it is, and kind of American identity, that we had room to.

make mistakes and continue to move. I mean, just the idea of a literal geographic move after some type of failure. You know, if back in Europe when everything was settled from coast to coast and you fail in your little hometown, I mean, there's not a vast wilderness to the west of you to just go and try something new. You might end up in jail in England if you got debt. But here, there was a place to run. I've never really thought of that as such a part of American identity and the... Well, I think it's true in other ways than just geography, that if you fail, you know, you can start another career.

I mean, somebody, you know, COVID comes and people lose their job and they go to the community college or, you know, start another. That's why, you know, there's so many jobs begging, people have moved on to something else. Do you think that's unique to Americans? It's not unique, but it's certainly a part of our character that nothing is the end of the world. I mean, you lose something. You know, you can always try again. It's a part of the character that is most successful, what we call pragmatism. The people who are pragmatic usually win over those who are idealistic or have some fantasy about the way things have to be. It's said

that in the Civil War, the Union was much more pragmatic than the South, which had grown up on the novels of Sir Walter Scott, this chivalry and grandness and a place where you invent something, you have a little shop or a factory, that it's hard for one to ultimately compete with the other. You may have generals that are better, but it's the supplies, the material that finally won the war. Yeah, that makes sense. If we have any genius, it's pragmatism.

If we have any genius, it's pragmatism. That's interesting to think about. Seems to me like there should be a fine balance of idealism and pragmatism in one's life. On blood trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag. And there was a full of blood.

Oh, my God. doesn't have a head. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors. Where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence.

Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper. From cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness.

Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. The year 1817 is when the world began to take notice of Crockett. He was 32 years old, which for the frontier was on the ripe side of middle age.

It was then he was appointed as a magistrate of his county, which is basically a low-level judge. Crockett said, this was a hard business for me, for I could just barely write my own name. But to do this and write warrants to was at least a huckleberry over my persimmon. That was a cute way to say that this was above his pay grade, and he went on to say, I made my decisions on the principles of common justice and honesty between man and man and relied on natural-born sense, not on law learning to guide me, for I had never read a page in a law book my whole life. Crocett's public life grew over the next few years

when he rose out of the wilderness of West Tennessee and declared that he was going to run for state representative. So in 1821 is when he ran. ran for state representative. And he was age 35. So we've walked through his life from being farmed out to do work for his father when he was 13, running away from home, working for John Kennedy, this astute Quaker who really shaped him to get him married.

And from 20 to 35, he kind of became the bear hunter and backwoodsman and built this, you know, really was on the frontier. year. And then when he was in 1821, age 35, he ran for state representative. It said that he started his campaign at a squirrel hunt. There was a big squirrel hunt down on the Duck River in Hickman County. And it was a big social gathering. And they had a big frolic, as they called, where they had music and bands. And it was a squirrel hunting contest where the guys went out and whoever could bring back the most squirrels would win. And so they called it squirrels. Scouts. Scalps, yeah, they called it.

They brought squirrel scalps back. What I took note of this. He said when he stood up before those people, and again, he's not polished in public speaking at this point. He's just done it a couple of times probably. And when he stood up before him, he got choked up big time. And I can identify with that, standing up before people and being self-conscious and just being. His knees were shaking, he said. Yeah, just locked up.

and he made a joke. Like he was stumbling for what to say, and he said, well, when I stood up here, it was like a, there was a little bit of whiskey at the bottom of the barrel, and I thought I could get it out by turning it over and shaking it. And when I did, nothing came out. And he was a metaphor about him thinking he had something to say,

but didn't. And when he did that, all the people started laughing, and it encouraged him. And all of a sudden he was able to give this. the palm of his hand. Yeah, yeah. And I can identify with that so much.

But, and he had a very successful first speech. And then that became like the fire of his political career was standing up and talking to people. Well, I think he discovered this talent that when he's actually in front of people, however nervous he was before, when he's up there looking them in the face, that suddenly the words do come to him. That's true for some people. and it's not. I've always been that way. I'm a very shy person. But when I get up in front of people, the words come. Yeah, yeah. And I think Crockett found out there. That was the important point. He somehow had this rapport with people that he kind of knew what they wanted to hear and how he wanted to present himself. Because he's creating a persona. Every public person is an actor. And from the time he was very young,

He was sort of an actor. He's like Boone in that way. I mean, everybody is an actor in a sense. You create the role of yourself. And Crockett was really good at it. That was the real beginning of his political career when he got up there. And was it LBJ who said,

if you really have the talent, be a politician, and you walk into a room, you've got to know within, I don't know, 45 seconds or something, what people's attitude, to you are, you just sense it if people are hostile or friendly or believe you and he had that.

Crocket would win the election and it would set a new course for his life. Here's Scott Williams with some context. So you have to look at what was going on in the country at the time. So expansion is what everybody was all about. America was needing to grow. There needed to be a lot more farmland.

A lot of trade was going on international. and all of the area where I am, all around us for thousands of miles, is prime agriculture land. People up east, though, were curious. They were trying to figure out, you know, what is this land like? And so there were songs, and there was a lot of, you know, the media was really writing about it. And there were a lot of people writing books about it. And so it was very romanticized. And so people like Andrew Jackson, who were the last person you would ever think would be running for office,

you know, could win. And someone like a David Crockett who, who are you going to vote for? You know, if you're going to vote for somebody to represent you in the Tennessee legislature, are you going to vote for some fancy, you know, well-dressed person? Are you going to vote for somebody that's a lot like you that's going to be able to spin yarns and tell stories and make you laugh? And I guess back in the east, that was the typical political leader. Oh, 100%.

And it was the standard. I read, I think it was in your book, that a lot of the politics back east maybe weren't even that much different than Europe. What these people had left. And so when Crockett was, when he rose up, America was like, yeah, that's who we are. We're not those guys. This is who we are. Yeah, that's exactly right. Crockett biographer Michael Wallace said, the political campaign evoked in Crockett a fulxiness and frontier flare that displayed his expansive

personality and full force. He would continue to use this template of folksy speeches that vividly differed from the stuffy political vibe of his opponents. The founding fathers weren't exactly commoners, you know. Wallace also said

Crockett never put on airs. He was trying to represent the common men and women, just like himself, and not the landed gentry, creating an ethic for this western portion of Tennessee that challenged the hierarchical structure of the plantation culture.

End of quote. He would maintain this stance his whole political career and become America's first frontier populist politician as he would later go to Congress. So 1821, he's a state representative. This is his first time to really be in the public eye and he's in the chamber of the legislature. One of the more prominent legislators stand up and they're talking about Crockett. And he belittles Crockett when he says, the gentleman from the cane. This was designed to be, basically it was just saying, this is a common man, an uneducated man, a man that doesn't need to be here.

And he was trying to take the knees out from Crockett. And then what does Crockett do? He calls himself the gentleman from the cane. At the time, there were vast expanses of River Cain associated with wilderness. That's what he's talking about when he says the cane. The man who belittled him wore a ruff, which was a high frilly collar, you know, like those European guys wore. And the next day, Crockett stood before the Congress wearing a rough and calling himself a man from the cane. This made his aggressor the laughingstock of the Tennessee legislature.

And let's remember how difficult it is to come from his background and to be in a chamber of people who are much better dressed. who have the confidence of people who have more money. This is really challenging. Somebody really from the working class, particularly when things get difficult. You may be able to act confidently when things are going smoothly. But when you're criticized, somebody's making fun of you,

and you still act with confidence, not many people can really do that. Another option would be for someone to make a fool of themselves and get mad and, and go on a rant. I mean, if you're just thinking about all the options, you know, option one, option two, when you're belittled by people in power.

And he did the absolute best option. He used it the rest of his life. His enemies gave him a beautiful plan for marketing and branding for his career. We could also say that he created that role in American politics. That in the era of the founding fathers and the early 19th century,

almost all politicians are from advantaged backgrounds. In some ways that still is true. You know, you find out politicians about Harvard or Princeton, however folks he may act. But Crockett's the real thing. I mean, he did come from the cane.

In Wallace's book, he said, quote, one of Crockett's favorite ploys developed early on in his political career was to campaign in a buckskin hunting shirt with two large pockets. One pocket he kept a big twist of tobacco and then the other a bottle of liquor.

Crocket said, when I met a man and offered him a dram, he would throw out his quid, a tobacco, and take on. And after he had taken his horn, I would out with my twist and give him another chaw. And in this way, he would not be worse off than when I found him. End of quote. Now, I could do without the hard liquor and mouth tobacco,

but the concept is solid. And I'll give you one guest who also wore buckskin in the state legislature. I compared him to Michael Jordan on the last episode, and he's clearly the goat, the American frontier. Yep, old DB, Daniel Boone. You know, I might run for political office one day, first of all, so I could represent my people, but secondly, so I could wear my first light and a pair of briar-proof bibs into the state house to lecture those crusty yuppies on the virtue of true Arkansas living.

You know what? Brent Reeves might even be my running mate. We might even run for governor and vice governor. Bill cut that out. That's ridiculous. I've got to read another excerpt from Wallace's book. Crockett certainly didn't know it at the time, but with his victory in 1823, he was well on his way to becoming a folk hero in a nation that had heroes, such as George Washington, but no genuine folk heroes. There were plenty of mythologized heroes from the past and the founding fathers,

including some of who were still alive, who were admired and respected, but not other than Washington, the stuff of legend. Even the admirable Daniel Boone, who died an old man just a few years before in Missouri, seemed distant and removed, particularly since he had much preferred solitude to the legend that overshadowed him. Andrew Jackson and other notable political leaders were objects of hero worship in many circles, but especially the so-called common man saw something else in the brash yet unpretentious David Crockett of Tennessee. The common man was on the rise as Jackson's political success revealed. And Crockett also had the makings to become one of America's first heroes for the masses.

End of quote. This helps me understand a difference in Boone Crockett's persona. Boone would become an American archetype for manhood, freedom, independence, and the natural man connected to nature. Wallace calls Crockett a folk hero. A more modern word we've used would be celebrity because all this happened in his lifetime. Crockett would serve a two-year term from 1821 to 23

and win re-election in 23 to serve a second term in state government. While in office, Crockett was very effective and his primary focus was helping Tennessee settlers buy land at a reasonable price. But he also sponsored bills promoting navigable rivers, marriage with widows, things that oppose divorce, banning dueling, and opposing prisoner labor. But he did lose his first national race in 24 for a seat in the Senate. His opponent had more money. By now his family had moved to West Tennessee, living near Realfoot Lake and later near present-day Rutherford, Tennessee near Memphis. And after these two terms, he returned home,

And a literal shipwreck business venture would lead him to his next step. Congress. But one thing that I did pick up on about David Crockett is he was a good friend. If you were a friend of David Crockett, he kept you by his side. One of my favorite stories in his life, this is a great little example of how things went for David Crockett. You know, back then, think about it. Burials were the most important thing you can have. Whether you're on the farm or in a city or wherever you are, a barrel is crucial. Because you would store things in it, it kept things dry, it kept things safe.

Major transportation of commodities. Absolutely. The barrels were huge. So the Obion River is near here in Obion County. So his house was, his cabin was close to the Obion River. He and his wife owned that land. And so his idea was, I'm going to pay you to cut the barrel pieces. And then we're going to build a boat, two boats, and then we're going to take them to New Orleans.

And we're going to sell them. Go down the Obion to where it hits. It's the Mississippi. We're going to go down the Mississippi. Take these staves to New Orleans. Yep, that's what they were called, barrel staves. Then he'll pay you. So these guys had a lot of trust.

So they get into the Mississippi River, and suddenly he's like, wow, I really didn't realize. It was this crazy out here on the Mississippi River. And the people he had hired to do this also didn't realize. So there is a place near Memphis called Patty's Hen and Chicken Island. something like that. They hit it. And when they hit it, one boat fell apart. They had to get everybody get on the other boat. And he was asleep at the time. And his crew pulled him through the window. When they did, they pulled all his clothes off. Here's Robert Morgan on the Mississippi River wreck.

When you read that passage of him going down the Obion River and getting on the Mississippi, you have to remember that wonderful book by Mark Twain. life on the Mississippi. And the most brilliant passages in it, the most brilliant writing by him and possibly an American literature are describing how you navigate on the Mississippi that a pilot has to memorize the whole thing.

He knows the current, he knows when the sandbars are, knows where the eddies are, the sucks. I mean, it takes you years and here are these people with these two flat boats and know absolutely nothing about the Mississippi hoping to navigate it. Seems like he would have known better than that. Well, there's something in Crockett.

I don't have a name for it. I'm still working on it. That, like Edgar Allan Poe, I don't want to call it a death wish, but it's something like that. That when he does something, he has to know it's so risky. It probably won't work.

Crocket was wild, and that ever-present thing, Mr. Morgan can't put his finger on would eventually kill him. Here's Scott on the rest of the shipwreck story that ultimately leads him to a run for Congress. So he is hovering naked on this island when a boat comes down from Memphis and picks him up and takes him to Memphis and they get him something to drink and something to eat him and his crew. Of course, I don't know what he's thinking in his mind. This is like a disaster. Everything. Years worth of work. Right. His investment. It's gone. And these guys, I'm sure, like, going, so where are we going to get paid?

And so, you know, here he is going in Memphis and they introduce him to Marcus Winchester, who is the mayor of Memphis and the son of Winchester, who was one of the founders of all of West Tennessee. And so they just hit it off like gangbusters, you know. And Marcus Winchester is this guy who's from, you know, very fancy background, great schools. well-respected, but who had actually married a woman who was part Native American, possibly, some African-American blood. And so he was in many ways a figure with a lot of controversy swirling around him at the time. So Marcus Winchester and his wife were having to live outside the city

of the city limits of the city he was the mayor of. And from then on, Marcus Winchester funded a lot of David Crockett's campaigns. Right. Winchester would encourage and fund Crockett to run again for a national seat in Congress, which he did in 1827. And this river wreck was a major crisis, with over one years of work completely lost and a near-death experience on the Mississippi River that would have made a great story on a immediate or close-call's audio book. Him ending up half-naked on the banks of the Mississippi in his vulnerability opened a door for a political alliance. You would think that strength would land big deals. but sometimes its weakness.

It was in these highly contested campaigns for Congress that Crockett's campaign style began to rock the free world. He was a force of nature to be reckoned with on the campaign trail. They typically traveled with the person they were running against and they'd go from town to town given stump speeches. Once Crockett's opponent paused his speech when a flock of guineas began to chatter loudly and he asked some people to run off the guineas.

Crocket stood up after and he said his opponent was the first person he'd ever known to understand the language of guinea fowls. Everyone laughed. Another time, Crockett asked his opponent if he could go first at the next town. And then Crockett proceeded to recite the man's campaign speech word for word. His opponent was flustered and speechless. Once Crockett was running against a man with a peg leg, a prosthetic leg, and they stayed at this farmer's house who had a beautiful young daughter. In the night,

Crocket took a wooden chair and thumped it down the hall and knocked on the girl's door and quickly ran back to his room before the irate, awakened father accused Crocett's opponents of some serious misconduct. Crocket was playing chess

while these boys were playing checkers. Here is Robert Morgan introducing us to the political rival that would define Crocett's life. Andrew Jackson. somebody like David Crockett had from his youth had this resistance against the upper classes also because the upper classes had owned all the land and charged them money for renting it and in effect trying to make them serfs really people tied to the land doing all the work it's a very interesting

to think of Crockett's relationship with Andrew Jackson because Jackson was ostensibly for the poor people. He was a populist, but Jackson had become a great landowner, many slaves. As Crockett became much more familiar with politics and then with Washington, he understood that, that Jackson had really become a friend of the ruling classes, the slave-owning ruling class. So it's very important to understand that. He'd been a Jacksonian earlier because he thought that the Jacksonians, not just Jackson himself, but his whole party were people for the poor people. And then he came to realize that was absolutely not true, that they were very much for the ruling class and had little interest in the squatters on land

who needed land and needed title to the land. This resentment, this war really between the Scotch Irish and the ruling classes went all the way back to Scotland and almost to the Middle Ages. And that really defined who Crockett would become in that he was. was constantly communicating to people that he was a common man and kind of had a chip on his shoulder against the entitled, the rich. It's almost like you can trace that thing in him all the way back across the Atlantic to the history that their family brought with him, even though he was never there. He was born in Tennessee. To me, it's interesting how generational ideas and worldviews just passed down. Well, Crockett is one of the few leaders of the United States who actually came from the laboring

working class. That if you look at the great politicians of the 19th century, at the founding fathers, they're mostly from middle class anyway. But Crockett really came from the laboring classes. People had very little education. And that's very important in thinking about him, but also in thinking about The politics of the 19th century. Who else can you think of who's a famous politician who came literally from the laboring class?

It's Lincoln, the greatest president of all, who shares so much with David Crockett, including the sense of humor, backwards humor, and who tried so much for working for the poor people and the black people, the slaves. He had that sympathy, but Lincoln is one of the few people of the 19th century who comes literally from the working class. So think about that. But Crockett has an enormous influence on the political culture. So you think he influenced people's ideas of who could be a leader, but also directly influence Lincoln as a politician? Absolutely. I mean, Lincoln shares so much with Crockett, including.

you know, telling corny jokes all the time. And also being kind of like a poker player with his policy. Remember, I think it was Chase who said early in Lincoln administration, Mr. President, you've got to tell us what your policy is. And Lincoln famously answered my policy is to have no policy. And both Crockett and Lincoln, Lincoln were deeply influenced by the culture of the frontier, which was deeply influenced by Indian politics and culture. That's exactly the way a famous Indian chief would act.

You didn't know what he was going to say. You didn't know what his policy was going to be to the last minute. And that's exactly the way Lincoln acted. So Crockett being this kind of first significant American frontier populist, And he kind of emerged as this political leader and kind of forged a pattern. And he for sure was the first guy that was a notable, notable politician that was absolutely uneducated, that was for sure from the frontier. And he, like, created this space that then influenced American politics from there on out.

He's the model. Yeah. As Boone was the model for the frontiersman. Crocket is the model of the Frontiersman. the laborer who arrives in Washington and becomes a very famous, an iconic figure. That's big fodder for quantifying how Crockett influenced America.

He influenced Lincoln. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps Game Calls and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen.

But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out prime cuts at Phelps game calls.com. I think you'll be glad you did.

And you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. Here's Scott with the D.L. on the Jackson Crockett feud. You know, I happened to be researching and writing my book during one of the most contentious eras in recent memory when Trump was in office. And so I couldn't help but have a lot of that resonate with me, the comparison. between Trump and Andrew Jackson and, you know, how some of those... Tell me about that.

Interesting. Well, yeah, like Trump, Andrew Jackson was like, hey, I'm going to do things my way. No matter, I don't care what you... I don't care what anybody says. You know, I'm the anti-government person, you know. And also, at the time, political campaigns were vicious. I mean, you think they were vicious, you know, during the Trump era. They were even ten times more vicious during Andrew Johnson.

Jackson's, you know, him and his wife, Andrew Jackson's wife, you know, she may or may not have still been married when they got married. So she was likely a little bit of a scandal. A polygamous, you know, if you go strictly by the law. And the stress of the media coverage and his political enemies, you know, using that killed her. And so, so imagine the anger and the fury that was directed towards him by Andrew Jackson. Yeah. You know. And this is a guy that was involved in, I think, like a hundred duels.

Oh, yeah. I mean, he was... He was literally in shootouts, like constantly. And so as research in David Crockett, you can help, but also research Andrew Jackson quite a bit. And, you know, here the bullets that were still in his body caused long-term lead poisoning. Yeah. And so he lived for, you know, a really long time. But, oh, my gosh, the last years of...

So he had bullets from the... Dules, at least one or two bullets lodged in his body. They couldn't get out. And it just slowly leaked into his body until he died a horrible death. They exhumed his hair from the grave. Yeah. I guess they dug him up. Yeah, and found all that lead. And did analysis on it, modern analysis, and found that he died of lead poisoning. Which is what ultimately killed him. But he was just, I mean, he was a hot head. And, you know, he was really the antithesis, ultimately, of what David Crockett was about. And you would think these two guys would have more in common than they had different, but they really had more different. So Andrew Jackson was anti-government. Is that right? But now

Crocket, where would Crockett have stood? Well, what Andrew Jackson and James Cape Hulk, what they needed more than anything was for all the congressmen to fall into line. And so if Andrew Jackson and if they needed something done, they wanted, they wanted David Crockett to vote yes when they wanted yes and no when they voted no. And I tried to figure out, was David Crockett in many cases that he went against him? Was he going against him because he knew they wanted him to go for them? Or was he truly? And I do think it's a mixture of the two.

So it could be that he was actually not playing politics and just doing what he thought was right in each situation. That would be the most noble. Yeah, I think it's somewhere in the middle, as most usually is the case. Yeah, yeah. He wasn't going to let anybody boss him. around. He wasn't going to let anybody push him around. So probably the most notable was the 1830 Indian Removal Act where Andrew Jackson was spinning it as, hey, you know what, we're going to do

something nice for the Native Americans. We're going to help them preserve their way of life, and we're going to send them to Oklahoma, out west. And David Crockett knew enough to know that that was not true. And that a lot of the Native Americans had actually assimilated. but they had assimilated and their tribes still owned a huge amounts of land. And so David Crockett, there's a quote that's in the book that probably, to me, his most noble moment is when he said, look, I know Native America. My territory that I represent has more Native Americans touching it than any place else. And I can tell you, this is not a good bill unless they choose to go.

If they choose to, great, but I'm going to vote no. and so, you know, that is what really at the end of the day, that was the last draw for Andrew Jackson and his cronies. Do you think that Crockett's motivations inside of that were truly he was empathetic towards the Native Americans? I mean, I've tried to figure that out. It's impossible really to ever know, but I do think so. Because in that particular case, it wouldn't have hurt him in any way to vote yes. Yeah. Unless he really truly believed that it was the wrong thing to do. Yeah. And so I do think, especially by that point in his life, you know, you got to think by then,

you know, I mean, this is a guy, and it's hard for us, because for us, David Crockett is, you know, Davy, Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier, is so ingrained in our culture. It's hard to think about the fact, here's this real person who is going to Washington, and there are plays on stage about him. And he's going to a play that is about him. You know, and so there are books and magazines. I mean, he has reached the height of fame unlike really anybody else. I mean, there were lots of congressmen and senators, and there was lots of politicians and, you know, but.

Other famous people. Yeah, but he just, by far was the most well-known, most recognized, most famous. And so by voting no on that bill, he was the only Tennessean to vote no. And it was in all the papers. everybody wrote about it and wrote about it and wrote about it and wrote about it. And here's the other thing that's interesting. So he had a campaign coming up to be reelected, but by voting against Jackson, they all put as much force and energy as they could behind Adam Huntsman so that he could win. And ultimately... So it hurt him politically. It did. It really did. And the wigs, so the, you know, the wigs were funding this little book tour. And, you know, these guys are all, you know, for the most part, Easterners, you know, and they're all, you know, these are the guys that have... So the guys... So the guys... in the East are funding Crockett because they think he could beat. They think maybe he could be a wig. Maybe we'll convert him over to us. He'll run for president and he could win. But he needed to win his next campaign. So if he had won, then he could potentially have gone on. So that could have cost him voting against the Indian Removal Act.

A couple of bounces away could have kept him from running for president. Yep, because he really lost. He lost. to Adam Huntsman by just a few hundred votes. Wow. And so if he had not lost, history would have been a lot different. Crocett was the only Tennessean to vote no to Jackson's Indian Removal Act. It's important for me to try to peer into the inner workings of his vote. We've got to decide if this guy is going to be in the Bear Grease Hall of Fame.

I think there's a line of thought that could be, Crocket, his identity was that he was a poor, kind of overlooked from a marginalized group of people. I mean, that was his whole identity. It's like, these rich folks don't know what's going on. We're these poor folks from the cane. Right. I think that would lend itself to having a genuine empathy towards people that he saw being abused, misused by the establishment. Well, and think about this.

So the other thing that could have made him win is before the land was truly surveyed and before it was truly able to be purchased legally, a lot of people came in here. A lot of people were just flooding in here, setting up a space and saying, surely the government will let me have this once it becomes available. And so they're setting up farms. Some people, the father and the grandfather set up the farm, well, by the time, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the, you know, young man is in his 20s and he's farming. That's his whole, that's where he's from. You know, they didn't even own the lands. They were squatters.

And so what David Crockett was trying to do is pass legislation that would allow these people to purchase their land. Well, first he tried to allow them to have it. Just have. You know, if they had been farming in a certain amount of time, they could have it. Yeah. But then there was no way that was going to go. So it became, could they get it at a reasonable amount of money, which they could never

settle upon what is reasonable. There were a few times he got close. Ultimately, no legislation was ever passed. And when he would have really been in there fighting for that legislation, the time he should have been, he was out promoting his book. So it was sort of a missed opportunity there. So would you say that his two main things that he did as a politician was fight for essentially squatters' rights to have their own land?

and then the Indian Removal Act and a general opposition to anything Andrew Jackson did. Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah. I mean, that was kind of his political career. Anti-establishment, but Andrew Jackson was anti-establishment, so I guess he was anti-establishment. He was anti-squared, David Crockett. David Crockett, anti-squared.

You know, we skipped over an important part of Crockett's political career that will sum up quickly. The Whigs, which would be equivalent to modern-day Republicans, saw him as a potential presidential candidate. They courted him, flattered him, brought him to Washington, D.C., and funded his famous autobiography book tour. Yes, it's the book we've been reading stuff out of. The book tour was during a political session, and so he didn't show up to Congress. And this would end up biting him in the buckskins. This was Crocket's blunder.

This is where Crockett really gets in trouble because he starts overplaying it, encouraged by the newspapers and the audience. He's the man from McCain, and he's the real thing, and he's working hard in Congress. But the Whigs begin to perceive that he's against the Jacksonians. He's fallen out with them. He's from Tennessee, and it's deadly to be from Tennessee against Jackson. It was the most popular person in the country. So, huh, the Whigs from the Northeast primarily saying, we can use this guy.

And they encourage other people and even Crooked himself to exaggerate this. It becomes sort of the clown, the buffoon. And there's a book published about him that really hypes that image. And he may have had a hand in it. Was it ego? I mean, were they playing to his ego? And he kind of fell for it?

To his ego and his vanity, yes. that he was a handsome fella. And they, I mean, nobody could resist this, of course. That this fellow from the backwoods of Tennessee is in the finest parlors and is told he's great. He's a greater future. And, you know, we're going to maybe run you from president. Eventually they're convincing that he's going to run for president.

And the more he's a clown, the more it's going to be, the better it's going to be. So Crockett begins. to go off track in that period. I think this really gives us some solid insight into who Crockett was and what defined his political career. All this stuff is really important to me because internal character plays a big part

of being in the Bear Grays Hall of Fame. But does being enamored with fame count against you in the realm of internal character? In some ways, I can see the argument of my friend Cleave Stinella at Meat Eater who thinks Crockett was a vain and self-serving man. But that seems like it's kind of part of being a celebrity, which doesn't necessarily make it right. Here's Scott with the tough question.

You know, in my little talk that I give, I do ask people, what do you suppose David Crockett, the man would think about Davy Crockett, the entertainment brand that sprung up around parts of his personality. And my answer is always, you know, I think he would love it if he could capitalize off it some way and make money off of it. So he would be one of those folks at those celebrity things where you're signing autographs. He'd be signing autographs. He'd have a podcast, Shirley. Yeah.

You know, he'd have a big social media presence. Yeah. Crockett would have a huge social. He would have a huge Instagram. He'd be all over TikTok, Instagram. No, he'd be TikTok and with the best of them. And so he would, but also having researched him, he would spend a whole lot more than he made. doing those things.

I keep going back to this though. Does that not spoil the authenticity of Crockett for you personally to think that he would have... Because I feel like as Americans, we want this guy that never wanted fame, but fame found him because of his character and how great a man he was. It's sort of what's the lore around Boone,

which isn't entirely true. He did quite a bit of stuff to help raise his fame, like probably any of us would if we had the opportunity. But that's where I keep going with Crockett, because I'm torn. I mean, look at, look at like, you know, the Earnhardt's and race car driving, you know, look at, you know, like, do I think they're bad people because they're, because they want to capitalize off of, I mean, other people were making money off his name, image, and likeness. Why shouldn't he be compensated as well? And see, that's where I think we're totally hypocritical, me, hypocritical, because when I think of this, this guy that was

formative in America's identity, I don't want him to be a celebrity. I don't want him to be someone that had awareness of his own fame and would have done things to manipulate that and grow it. I want him to be this guy in West Tennessee that just woke up one day and was famous, you know, kind of like Boone. And you're always comparing these two guys. And that doesn't make me discount Crockett at all. It's just something that. that I think about. Do you think about that or no? Well, and honestly, he was so much on the front of this fame.

You know, people hadn't really been famous in America like that. And so I think about, you know, I think about some of the people that I've worked with in my career who are famous, quote unquote, who manage when they get ready to have a photograph taken, they manage where the lights are, they manage how they look, want to see a clip of what if you're shooting video yeah they want to manage how their image is projected

publicly yeah and so there were no cameras yet then very soon thereafter there would be photography yeah you know but i think what you're saying is that we can't blame crockett for doing the same thing that all our heroes today are doing well or any of us would do i mean if you're smart you want to how many of us have a photograph taken um and you say oh don't post that yeah You know, I mean, we control our self-images. But Crockett had a painting done, and he controlled the gun he was holding, the dogs that were in the shot. He wanted to be holding a hat like he was waving at his neighbor. You know, and that's a photograph that, you know, if you...

So he orchestrated that painting. And the painter lived to be a, you know, very old man. And he wrote about the whole experience of painting David Crockett. And he wrote about what it was like, what they talked about. Crockett was dealing with some family issues at the time, and his son was upset with him because he was spending too much time in D.C. And he said, the dogs you're using, those are not what I would use if I were hunting bear in a hurricane, as he called it. And he took the painter into the streets of D.C. And they rounded up dogs that he thought he would use.

he had when he's looking at he said right um on the gun right go ahead and so the painter wrote you could see where the painter wrote go ahead on the gun the painter writes that crockett was just not quite happy with the painting he just kept saying i'm not quite there and that one day he came in and he was just exuberant he said i've got it here's what i want you to do paint me holding my hat up waving like i'm waving to my neighbor and saying how he you know because he wanted to be approachable he wanted to be he didn't want to be should be, you know, a stuffy, you know, painting. So, and he also said, he also wrote, you know, every painter always makes me look like a Methodist minister. So he didn't want to look like a Methodist minister. He wanted to be in his buckskin with his dogs and his gun. That's right. And so that's a famous painting.

And that, that gave America a template for kind of the folk hero too. Because we came from, or the white Europeans that primarily established the colonies in the states in the east came from Europe, and their aristocracy was very stuffy, very, very proper, very prim. And so Crockett was like, I ain't like those guys. Right. He rewrote the book. You know, he rewrote the book on what it means to be famous. You know, he also would love to have been able to capitalize off of it financially and make enough money to where he could support his family. Yeah. And who could blame him for that? Yeah. Don't we all want to do that? Numerous people painted Crockett, and he said he always looked like a Methodist preacher.

That's funny. But in 1834, John Gadsby Chapman set out to paint the authentic Crockett, who was then 47 years old. The original painting, after Crockett's death, the Yallamo, was acquired by the state of Texas and hung in the state Capitol building in Austin. Chapman had the painting for sale for $1,000, but was never paid by the state of Texas. or at least that's what they say. Tragically, a faulty stovepipe burned the entire state Capitol building

to the ground, including the painting. So the original painting is gone. Today, what we have is replicas. Crocket would die two years after the painting was complete, and Chapman wrote a memoir about painting Crockett called Reminiscences of Colonel David Crockett. Chapman wrote, quote, With all the disadvantages consequent upon deficiency in timely educational training,

Colonel Crockett's command of verbal expression was very remarkable. Say what he might, his meaning could never be misinterpreted. He expressed opinions and told his stories with unhesitating clearness of diction, often embellished with graphic touches of original wit and humor, sparkling and even startling, yet never out of place, or obtrusively ostentatious. As for his backwards slang, it fell upon the ear meaningly and consistent as the crack of his rifle or the halloo from a hurricane or from a cane break. It was to him truly a mother tongue in which his ideas flowed most naturally and found most empathetic

and unrestrained utterance. During the progressive intimacy that grew out of familiar intercourse with Colonel Crockett while engaged upon his portrait. He rarely, if ever, exhibited either in conversation or manner, attributes of coarseness of character that prevailing popular opinion very unjustly assigned him. I cannot recall to mind an instant of his indulgence of gasconade or profanity. There was an earnestness of truth in his narrations of events, circumstances of his adventurous life that made it obvious, while the heroic type of his grand physical development, equal to any emergency of achievement, his clear, unfaltering eye, with all

gentle and sympathetic play of features, telegraphing as it were, directly from a true heart, overflowing with kind feeling and impulse, irresistibly dispelled suspicion of insincerity and braggartism. The ease and readiness with which Colonel Crockett adapted himself to circumstances of personal position and intercourse were remarkable, at times even masterly. He would seem to catch in the first moment of introduction

the tone and characteristics of a new acquaintance and was well to comprehend and rarely failed and agreeably confirming pre-intertained opinions in reference to himself. End of quote. Wow, that was some incredible writing and description. I always seem to be moved by the accounts of these portrait painters. If you recall a young painter by the name of Chester Harding traveled to Missouri in 1820

and painted the only portrait of Daniel Boone we have just months before his death. Chester Harding wrote a fascinating piece about meeting the elderly, Boone. Here's what he wrote. Remember, this is Boone. In June of this year, I made a trip of 100 miles for the purpose of painting the portrait of Colonel Daniel Boone. I had much trouble finding him. He was living some miles from the road in one of the old cabins of an old block house, which was built for the protection of the settlers against the incursion to the Indians. I found that the nearer I got to his dwelling, the less was known of him when within two miles of his house I asked a man to tell me where Colonel Boone lived.

He said he did not know of any such man. Why, yes, you do, said his wife. It's that white-haired old man who lives on the bottom near the river. A good illustration that a prophet is not without honor save his own country. End of quote. For some reason that passage almost brings me to tears every time I read it. I don't really know why. Harding went on and he wrote, I found the object of my search engaged in cooking his dinner. He was lying on his bunk near the fire and had a long strip of venison wound around his ramrod and was busy turning it before a brisk blaze and using salt and pepper to season his meat. I at once told him the object of my visit. I found he hardly knew what I meant. I explained the matter to him and he agreed to sit. He was 86 years old

and rather infirm. His memory of passing events was much impaired. Yet he would amuse me every day by his anecdotes of his earlier life. I asked him one day just after his description of one of his long hunts if he never got lost, having no compass. No, he said, I can't say I was ever lost, but I was bewildered. once for three days. End of quote. The intimacy with which these portrait painters interact with people to create their art and the pictorial expression of their candidates'

humanity births a unique angled story. And I think it may be one of the most accurate. Clearly, they're viewing these people in their best light, perhaps even an idealized one. But who is qualified to tell the story of any man? What angle gives the clearest, most true version of a human? Every man has his own version of his life, which is one version. His enemies also have a version, his family, his friends, and even the people that never knew him.

Who do we believe to interpret for us who a man is? Let me ask you a question. Who do you hope gets to release the canonized version of your story? Brothers and sisters, you may have already seen my hand, but I love Crockett. But perhaps by contrasting these two portrait sessions of these great American backwoodsmen, we can see the differences in these men. Boone was just so much less aware of his own fame, and that lends him credibility to me. But I do believe that Crockett was a good man.

really an incredible man who wore his flaws on his sleeve. And though I'm kind of disappointed with the way Crockett would handle his fame, as we're going to talk about in just a second, it seems like a lot to ask a guy who came from absolute poverty on the backwoods frontier of America to get this global fame and just respond with perfect humility in this idealized way that I have in my mind. It just doesn't seem fair. Did I ever tell you about the time he stopped to pay a widow, a $1 debt that he owed her husband from 10 years before?

Did I tell you about the bill he sponsored that kept freed slaves from being able to be repurchased? Did I tell you that he owned some slaves in his lifetime? Here's Robert Morgan on Crockett's demise. And Crockett was so really intoxicated by all this adulation, apparent adulation, and the plurface. And the play about him, everybody knew it was about him, but, you know, been so successful. And they laughed at it, and he forgot they were laughing at it. So, you know, in New York,

and they put him from fancy hotels, and that, you know, that would turn any of us, really. We'd find it hard to resist that. He kind of went for it, and it probably was, it's the most disastrous thing he'd done his whole life. It was more damning than losing his mill on a flood, or his flat boats on the Mississippi. It hurt him more.

I think it really hurt him when he lost that election in 1831 and then again in 1835 and went off to Texas. Oh, that ominous trip to Texas. Crocett's book tour cost him the election in 1831 and again in 1835 and he never recovered. On the next and final episode, we're going to dive in deep into Crockett's last stand at the Alamo and all the drama and controversy that surrounds it. I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease. I hope you're enjoying Brent Reeves' This Country Life podcast, and I look forward to talking to the folks on the render next week.

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