Charles Fletcher Allen

“ There was a rolling of drums as the victorious Santa Anna appeared before the open gates of the Alamo. Five men who had secreted themselves in the barracks were brought before him. Their captors asked what disposition should be made of the prisoners. For answer Santa Anna wheeled his horse until his back was turned. Disregarding all the tenets of military discipline, the guard about him broke ranks and fell upon the captives like a pack of wolves, and in a moment’s time the last of the defenders of the fort had gone to his final accounting. ”

“ As Davy finally went down the old road into the Tennessee valleys, the woods were full of wakening life. The tender green of the beech and maple shimmered on every slope. Beside his path the arbutus showed its pink-white petals, and the azaleas and June-berries, full of bloom, were eagerly sought by droning bees. The spring wind sang in every pine, and the breath of the hemlock and the balsam was like a rare perfume to the homesick boy. ”

“ Among the hemlocks close to the quiet stream, the thrush and the cat-bird sing their liquid scores, and the redbird and the scarlet tanager vie with the Kentucky and blue-winged yellow warblers in the glory of their April dress. All things are changed in these old places of the world, until we climb the mountains to its top, and see the far blue ranging crests that blend at last with gentle skies, unchanging and unchanged.
When Davy set out for Nashville, to take his seat as a member of the Legislature, he had finished his mill, but still owed for labor and material. ”

“ The Americans cast bullets, looked to their priming, and built adobe forts under pretense of building [273] homes. The slow ferment of racial hatred, the antipathies of men who worshipped God in different ways or not at all, the cherishing of the memories of murderous deeds on both sides, grew slowly into a flood of passion, fed by every heart-throb day and night.
After various journeys along and about the Red River, Davy started for the front, where the old city of San Antonio de Bejar stood forever the centre of bloody tragedies and bitter strife. ”

“ There was the crack of a rifle, and the bottle was shattered into fragments, dashing the raw [223] liquor into the rowdy’s eyes and cutting his face with bits of glass. When he could see, Davy Crockett’s gun was almost touching his nose.
“Hand the preacher your gun,” said Davy, “stand where you are, and sing like all possessed. If you don’t, we’ll make you eat a wildcat for sure. All right, preacher, go ahead!”
After the singing was over, the wildcat hunter hung about, trying in vain to recover his gun, and finally departed in discreet silence as the daylight faded in the west. ”

“ When Davy and his party arrived with the news of Santa Anna’s approach, there was not a man who could not have escaped; yet when Travis asked who would stand by him to the last, only one man turned away. His name is known, but it has been borne by braver men, so let us judge him with what leniency we may. The others awaited the supreme hour of battle with a courage that can only animate the defenders of their faith in a righteous cause. ”

“ The few who had left for the New World had not been missed in the ranks of the starving people of Europe’s overcrowded streets and lands. The “black chaos of insurrection” had burst upon the last defenses of the French king, and it may have been while the three looked westward to the promised land that the Swiss Guards—hunted like wild beasts—died to the last man in the Place de Grêve. The time for blood-letting had come to France, and the whole world was in a ferment that was soon to set the red men of America in battle against the aggressions of the colonists. ”

“ Past the tumbling cabin at the Limestone’s mouth, past the gentle confluence of the now tame Cove Creek with the Nolichucky, standing at last near the shaky tavern from which his father and mother had gone to their quiet graves, he longed for the sweet perplexities of his childhood as one longs for a drink from the far-away mossy spring where the luscious berries grew, and the arbutus dropped fragrant petals to its edge. ”

“ It was radiant spring-time when Davy leaned upon his rifle and looked across the Texas plains and over the hills that rose to the north and east of the valley. He had read the grim orders for the expected assault as he might have read an unimportant order of the day. No comments had been heard as the proclamation passed from hand to hand. On the walls of the Alamo and the tops of the flanking stockades were fourteen guns loaded [301] with grape and slugs, ready to be fired at a moment’s notice. Every man was supplied with bullets and a full powder-horn. ”

“ The careless or the hardened shrink from tender memories, but sometimes, in the moment of evil impulse or of passion’s sway, their hands by these are stayed from wickedness. In such a heart as Davy Crockett’s there will always burn the reverential fires that keep the soul alight. ”

“ The sumacs glowed like fire upon the slopes of the Great Smoky Mountains, and among the sombre forests of pine and hemlock were the gold and crimson glories of the maple and the oak. The deer still watched the travellers from its hiding-place, and the owl called solemnly through the twilight, as of old; but the tom-tom no longer summoned the red men to council, or stirred the quiet wilderness with a dread of the tomahawk and the knife. The [210] work of the pioneer was done. ”

“ The men who were urging the people of the country to make Jackson President, and who elected him in 1828, were proud of his origin; they gloried in his lowly birth, and proclaimed him a proof of the virtues that existed beneath the rough garb of the backwoodsman. And as they glorified Andrew Jackson, they exalted Davy Crockett. What Jackson had been, Davy Crockett was; he was still “the man from the cane,” the bear-hunter, the Indian fighter, the man who “went ahead.” In his little cabin on the Obion were his wife and children, sons and daughters of the wilderness ”

“ The battle of Navarino failed to wake Uncle Sam to his need of a navy, and until the wolves, in the shape of the Florida and the Alabama and other ships quite as daring, began to thin his flock, he remained asleep. The politicians of 1827 to 1840 were men who fought each other with any weapons they could wield, and, in want of weapon, they used filth and mud. A merciful oblivion has covered with the dust of many years their words and deeds. ”

“ If he was a poor scholar, he had a keen sense of right and wrong, and disregarded all the cobwebs with which lawyers delight to obscure the spectacles of the learned judges before whom they plead. Red Eagle, or Weatherford, three-quarters a white man, and one of the craftiest and [117] wisest of the nation he ruled, would never learn to read or write, believing these accomplishments would cloud his perception of affairs about him. He was a great orator, and could make a better speech than Davy Crockett ever learned to make. ”

“ When the Missions of the Concepcion, of San José, of San Juan, of San Francis of the Sword, now crumbling to inevitable decay, shall be only mounds in the midst of stunted trees and matted vines, when the exquisite carvings of their broad façades shall have turned to dust again, the traveller will stand before the Alamo with reverence, and enter, with uncovered head, the dim recesses of this altar-place of liberty. ”

“ I reasoned the case with her as well as I could, and told her that if every man would wait until his wife was willing for him to go to war, we would all be killed in our own houses; that I was as able to go as any man in the world, and that it was a duty I believed I owed to my country. Seeing that I was bent on it, all she did was to cry a little, and turn about to her work. The truth is, my dander was up, and nothing but war could bring it right again.”
When the militia was paraded at Winchester, volunteers were called for, and Davy was one of the first to step forward. ”

“ For two years Davy remained at the Bean’s Creek home, where a girl baby was added to his family. Then came a turning point in his career—the death of Polly Crockett. At the age of about twenty-seven, the little wife whom Davy had loved, as he says, “almost enough to eat her,” passed into the far unknown. She had fulfilled the duties of the true woman, and brought her children into the world and cared for them while their father fought back the terror of the scalping-knife and tomahawk. ”

“ Davy Crockett was now thirty-one, a “rough backwoodsman,” unable to write, but strong and brave. His brother and his wife had come to live with Davy, and to help in caring for his two boys and the baby, but he felt the need of a real home. At last he married the widow of a volunteer killed in the Creek War. Between them they had five children to begin housekeeping with. Davy’s second marriage was a wise step, and he never regretted it. Having thus provided himself with a helpmeet, he was at liberty to indulge the restless strain in his blood by an excursion into Alabama, with three neighbors. ”

“ Uncle Sam was surrounded by the growling dogs of war, without a friend in the world.
While thus the clash of arms drew near, Davy still hunted and farmed and trapped on Bean’s Creek, adding to his fame as a rifleman, and, as he said when he had become known in Congress, “laying the foundation of all his future greatness.” We should not blame him for his overestimate of his own importance, when the flattering attentions of great men, who were equally great politicians, had been thrust upon him. ”

“ Davy, who was a lad of eight or nine years at the time, had been terrified by the threats of the corn-thief, and always wondered at the quiet way in which Andrew Jackson had disposed of him.
The small boy’s days are short, but full of zest. Having as yet no conscience, or at least a dormant one, he feels no regrets for his misdeeds, but sleeps the sleep of the just, and wakes with all his faculties for mischief whetted. Where “two or three are gathered together,” there is always danger in [31] the air. ”

“ Davy most profoundly wished for the daylight the old cook was praying for. Suddenly there was a crash and the covering of the way to the deck [200] was crushed flat, perhaps from being struck by the limbs of a tree. There was no chance to get out of the place where he was sitting. The scurrying of feet sounded above, there was a sudden thump and a tipping of the boat, as the clumsy craft struck the head of an island and lodged against a pile of flood-trash and loose timbers. ”

“ In 1828 Andrew Jackson was elected President by a remarkable percentage of the electoral college, and Davy Crockett, one of his former scouts, watched him as he rode to the Capitol, dismounted, and with lifted hand swore loyalty to the nation that had chosen him for the highest place in its power to give. How many have [216] pictured the rude simplicity of such a proceeding—the rugged soldier, the sorry steed! Their democratic souls have been much deceived. Jackson’s horse was the finest that could be found in Kentucky or Tennessee. ”

“ The Bee-Hunter kept every one in good heart with his jests and songs and his unfailing spirits. If he thought of Kate, so far away, he gave no sign. During the afternoon he led a sortie from the rear stockade about the fort, for the purpose of obtaining wood and water. Before they could return they were seen by some of General Sesma’s men, and a running fight followed. [295] The Bible in the Bee-Hunter’s pocket, which had been Kate’s last gift, was struck by a bullet, but it glanced away without harming him. As he fell asleep, Davy heard the girl’s name upon his lips. ”

“ The next day the Major came into camp with a similar report, which set Colonel Coffee into what Davy called “a fidget.” He at once threw up breastworks twelve hundred feet long, and dispatched a messenger to hurry up Jackson’s army. It always rankled in Davy’s memory that the word of a common soldier and scout could be so lightly held, while the Major’s report was never doubted for a moment. Davy had much to learn in a world where so many unjustly receive pay and praise for work that is done by obscure toilers. ”

“ When Davy Crockett and his recruits first saw its walls, the spirit of revenge was rife. The butchery at Tampico of thirty American adventurers, captured in the schooner Mary Jane, in spite of the one hundred thousand dollar ransom offered, and the murder of Governor Salcedo, two other Mexican [290] Governors, and a dozen officers and hidalgos, by Gutierrez and Delgado, Mexican rebels who were allied with a force of Americans camped about the Alamo, had wrought the racial hatred to a frenzy. Every man longed for battle, and the extinction of the last vestige of the power of the enemy. ”

“ As the first locomotive in the United States came from [232] England in 1825, it may be believed that what Davy saw in 1834 would be almost as astonishing to people of to-day. A dozen vehicles that resembled old-fashioned coaches stood in line on the flat rails that formed the railroad, while an ungainly locomotive, with a smoke-stack nearly as large as the boiler, and with a flat-car behind, loaded with wood and barrels of water for use on the run, was blowing off steam and showing every sign of a desire to make a start. ”

“ At times some of the Creeks strayed up from the Coosa country across the Alabama line, and were always treated with courtesy. But after Davy’s last shift, the Alabama Indians were not always friendly. The United States Government had secured a right-of-way for a highway across Alabama into the Tombigbee region, into which the settlers had begun to go in great numbers. The sight of such an influx of whites had alarmed the Creeks, and Red Eagle, or Weatherford, was the leader of those who now planned to go to war, if necessary, for the preservation of their ancient hunting-grounds. ”

“ I handle the administration without gloves, and I do believe I will double my competitor, if I have a fair shake, and he does not work like a mole in the dark. Jacksonism is dying here faster than it ever sprung up, and I predict that ‘The Government’ will be the most unpopular man, in one year more, that ever had any pretensions to the high place he now fills. Four weeks from to-morrow will end the dispute in our elections, and if old Adam is not beaten out of his hunting-shirt, my name isn’t Crockett.”
This was Davy’s state of mind in July, 1835. ”