rejoicing in the east over davy’s re?lection—one of his attacks upon jackson in congress—he undertakes a journey to the atlantic cities—starts for baltimore by stage—the steamboat carroll of carrollton—davy first sees a railway train—a grand welcome in philadelphia—davy addresses five thousand people in front of the exchange—he visits fairmount, the united states mint, the walnut street theatre, and sees jim crow—his reflections upon eastern manners—he is dined by the young whigs—gives directions for making the celebrated rifle “betsy,” the gift of philadelphia admirers.
the news of davy crockett’s re?lection, in spite of the opposition of the jackson party, was received in the eastern states with joy, and even the southern states of the atlantic coast, hugging to their bosoms the fragments of the new idol of nullification, heard of the backwoodsman’s victory with grim satisfaction. clay and webster and john quincy adams stood with such men as albert[226] gallatin and the quaker statesmen of philadelphia. the voters who had made the hero of the treaty at hickory grove their president still had a kindly feeling for the man who had dared to offer an honest opposition to the irascible old general. the wily politicians cultivated the renown of davy crockett as a plant of great promise, that might even make presidential timber.
davy’s opposition to andrew jackson was outspoken and undisguised. after his tour of the eastern cities, to be hereinafter described, he spoke in congress upon the subject of the “bill making appropriations for fortifications.” the records show that his words were in part as follows:
“sir, we have no government but andrew jackson, without secretaries; and, sir, he is surrounded by a set of imps of famine that are as hungry as the flies that we have read of in ?sop’s fables, that came after the fox and sucked his blood. sir, they are a hungry swarm, and will lick up every dollar of the public money.”
mr. dunlap, of tennessee, replied to crockett with heated language, and crockett again took the[227] floor to reply, saying that he wished it to be distinctly understood that he took back nothing that he had said, but that he would reassert everything and go even further. standing in his place for almost the last time, he lifted his hand in passionate protest against the proposed use of the public funds, and took his seat with these words:
“we have no government, no government at all. god only knows what is to become of the country in these days of misrule. sir, i am done.” such attitude as this accounts for the infinite pains with which the opposition fought him two years later in his campaign for a fourth term. while he was attending to his congressional duties, his political fences were demolished by the stay-at-homes, and in their places were set up what in these days of such unsightly nuisances might be called the bill-boards of partisan defamation.
the comparatively inactive life of a congressman had begun to tell upon the scout and bear-hunter of the mississippi cane. he decided to take a trip through the eastern states for the benefit of his health. although it was in the midst of the spring[228] session of congress, he left washington on the 25th of april, 1834, and did not return until the latter part of june. he says of this proposed journey:
“during this session of congress, i thought i would take a travel through the northern states. i had braved the lonely forests of the west, i had shouldered the warrior’s rifle in the far south; but the north and east i had never seen. i seemed to like members of congress who came from these parts, and wished to know what kind of constituents they had.”
up to this time his knowledge of the east was confined to baltimore and washington. he had read and heard much of the wonders of the greater cities of the atlantic seaboard, but he had never felt free to describe them to his fellow-citizens of western tennessee. he has left no word regarding his impressions of the nation’s capital. it would be interesting to compare his views with those of charles dickens, who visited many of the same cities a few years later. this is what dickens thought of washington in 1842:
[229]
“take the worst parts of the city road and pentonville, or the straggling outskirts of paris, where the houses are smallest, preserving all their oddities, but especially the small shops and dwellings, occupied in pentonville (but not in washington) by furniture-brokers, keepers of poor eating-houses, and fanciers of birds. burn the whole down; build it up again in wood and plaster; widen it a little; throw in part of st. john’s wood; put green blinds outside all the private houses, with a red curtain and a white one in every window; plow up all the roads; plant a great deal of coarse turf in every place where it ought not to be; erect three handsome buildings in stone and marble, anywhere, but the more entirely out of everybody’s way the better; call one the post office, one the patent office, and one the treasury; make it scorching hot in the morning, and freezing cold in the afternoon, with an occasional tornado of wind and dust; leave a brick-field without the bricks, in all central places where a street may naturally be expected; and that is washington.”
from this sort of place, perhaps even less beautiful,[230] davy was whirled away on the april morning before mentioned, viewing from his seat on the top of a great coach the roadside scenes between washington and baltimore. upon arriving at the latter city, he put up at barnum’s hotel, kept by “uncle davy,” whom he gladly hailed as a namesake. he says that no one could find better quarters or a more hospitable city. he was asked to dine with his friend wilkes and other baltimore gentlemen, and spent the evening pleasantly in their company.
the next morning he was up early, in order to take the steamboat to philadelphia. at this time only seventeen miles of railroad existed between the two cities, crossing the land in the vicinity of wilmington and havre de grace. it was called the charlestown and augusta railway. the departure from baltimore seems to have given davy a sense of lonesomeness. he felt what so many others since have felt—poor human mites among a swarm of busy ants!—that the loneliest place in all the world is a great city. he realized, and tells us so, that the tens of thousands who passed him[231] by in the noisy streets neither knew nor cared who he might be, and that at the best he might expect to be valued at about the price of a coon-skin. this we have already seen to be no more than a york shilling, or a quart of new england rum.
“the steamboat,” says davy, “was the carroll of carrollton, a fine craft, with the rum old commodore chaytor for head man. a good fellow he is—all sorts of a man—bowing and scraping to the ladies, nodding to the gentlemen, cursing the crew, and his right eye broadcast upon the ‘opposition line,’ all at the same time. ‘let go!’ says the old one, and off we walked in prime style.”
they soon passed fort mchenry, forever glorified by the stubborn defense that has made “the star-spangled banner” our national song of victory, and north point was pointed out to davy as the spot where the british had once planned to land their attacking forces. the run to charlestown was soon finished, and here davy saw the sight of his life: a train, on the seventeen-mile railroad between delaware city and chesapeake bay. 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. the locomotive looked much like the kind now used by threshing outfits.
behold, then, davy, seated upon the top of one of the coaches, as if on a diligence in the days of claude duval, intent upon every move:
“after a good deal of fuss we all got seated and moved slowly off, the engine wheezing as if she had the tizzick. by and by she began to take short breaths, and away we went with a blue streak after us.”
soon after starting a team was sighted in the gathering darkness of the evening. when they saw the shower of sparks from the stack of the infernal machine that was coming towards them, the horses[233] ran away with a right good will, upsetting the wagon, and scattering the freight along the way.
let us now follow davy’s own story of his visit. after the dinner on the boat, he went on deck, in time to see that a great display of flags was taking place on board. when he asked the reason, the captain told him that it was to be a signal that crockett was coming, given on account of the desire of the philadelphia people to meet him at the wharf.
“we went on till we came in sight of the city,” says davy’s account, “and as we drew near to the wharf i saw the whole face of the earth covered with people, all anxiously looking on towards the boat. the captain and myself were standing on the bow deck. he pointed his finger at me, and people slung their hats and huzzaed for colonel crockett. it struck me with astonishment to hear a strange people huzzaing for me, and made me feel sort of queer. but i had to meet it, and so i stepped on to the wharf, where the folks came crowding around me, saying, ‘give me the hand of an honest man.’ i did not know what all this[234] meant; but some gentlemen took hold of me, and, pressing through the crowd, put me into an elegant barouche, drawn by four fine horses. they then told me to bow to the people; i did so, and with much difficulty we moved off. the streets were crowded to a great distance, and the windows full of people, looking out, i supposed, to see the wild man. i thought i would rather be in the wilderness, with my gun and my dogs, than to be attracting all that fuss. i had never seen the like before, and did not know exactly what to say or do. after some time we reached the united states hotel, in chestnut street.”
the crowd having followed his carriage to the hotel, davy at last showed himself upon the balcony front, bowing repeatedly with hat in hand, as we have seen taft and roosevelt do upon so many occasions, in these days of presidential travel. at the last he was constrained to speak a few words of thanks, in which he recognized the existence of a state of high excitement in political affairs, which he wished to make no worse. he promised to speak again at one o’clock the next afternoon,[235] and then withdrew. that night, as he lay restless in a strange place, he looked forward to the promised speech with much doubt and fear, but at last consoled himself by trusting to the good luck that had already got him “through many a scrape before.”
the next morning judge baldwin, judge hemphill, john sergeant, and others, called upon davy, and afterwards he was invited to visit the fairmount waterworks, then the pride of the whole state. he was astonished at the volume of water lifted by a “few wheels,” but even more so by the lavish use of the supply. he says that such scrubbing of steps and even of pavements he had never seen, and he strongly suspected the housemaids of having web feet. the next place visited was the mint, and the sight of real money, as he calls it, stirred him to comment upon the flood of paper then in circulation. the statement made to davy that the workmen were too much accustomed to handling coin ever to think of stealing it, was a “poser.” he had thought that such constant temptation was the most powerful cause of crime. during[236] the forenoon a visit was made to the asylum for the insane, whereat davy thanked god for the bounty and humaneness of the city in thus providing for the unfortunates within its walls. when the round of the city had been made, the time for the promised speech had nearly arrived. he says that he had made set speeches in congress, when all his colleagues were against him, and further:
“i had made stump speeches at home, in the face of all the little office-yelpers who were opposed to me; but indeed, when i got in sight of the exchange, and saw the streets crowded, i ’most wished to take back my promise, but i was brought up by hearing a youngster say, as i passed, ‘go ahead, davy crockett.’ i said to myself, ‘i have faced the enemy; these are friends. i have fronted the savage red man of the forest; these are civilized. i’ll keep cool, and let them have it.’”
davy went to the exchange, and in a few moments stood before that great crowd, bowing in response to the continued cheering that delayed the possibility of his being heard. he says there were five thousand people in front of the building;[237] it was philadelphia exalting to the skies the symbolism of its dislike and hatred of andrew jackson, personified in “the wild man from the west.” for half an hour davy spoke to the immense audience, and for an hour afterwards stood upon the steps of the exchange, shaking hands with eager admirers.
here is the spectacle of a man who had risen, as we have seen, from the lowly log-house settlement of the western slopes, unschooled, unpolished, except by the rude processes of hardships and necessity, yet who could rise to such self-command as this. thousands of men of the higher order of the educated fail when they try to think and talk at the same time. the possibilities that were in davy crockett’s pathway were without limit; a vision of political greatness hovered about his pillow in the midnight hours, and beckoned him onward in the glare of day. that he should thus be known by the people of the seaboard filled his soul with pride and his heart with hope. he forgot the bitter words he had spoken in honest wrath against what he believed to be the misdeeds of the[238] administration of andrew jackson. like one camping in the peaceful forest, unmindful of the stern and silent foe upon his trail, he rested in a contentment that was undisturbed by doubt. he looked forward to re?lection the next year, or to a gift from the people of even greater power. there is no sign of his honest nature being spoiled by so much attention. he was never blind to the possibility of deception in the adulation of the public, but the loud cheers of the men of the quaker city rang true in his ears, and he believed them as sincere as himself.
in the evening davy visited the walnut street theatre, where he saw jim crow—“as good a nigger,” he says, “as if he was clean black, except the bandy legs.” after the theatre, davy said that he thought his own people found quite as much pleasure in their own simple recreations as did the city folks in their more expensive and showy ones, and against anything the city could show he would put the fun of the all-night country dance.
“it would do you good to see our boys and girls dancing,” said he. “none of your straddling and[239] mincing and sadying, but a regular sifter, cut-the-buckle, chicken-flutter set-to.” it is well, sometimes, to get another view of ourselves from such a standpoint as davy’s.
the philadelphia people, especially the politicians of the whig party, outdid themselves in entertaining the hero of the hour. the next morning he was presented with a forty-dollar seal for his watch-chain. the design showed a “match race,” as he styles it, with two horses at full speed, and with the motto, “go ahead!” he thought it the finest seal he had ever seen, and says that after his return to washington in june, the members of congress almost wore it out in making impressions to send all over the country.
the seal had hardly been presented before mr. james sanderson was announced. he had come to ask davy for his wishes and advice in procuring a rifle that the young whigs of the city desired to present to colonel crockett. davy was perhaps more pleased with this gift than by any other that could have been offered him. he gave the specifications as to size, weight, and so on, and it was[240] arranged that the rifle should be given to him on his way back to congress.
on tuesday davy visited the navy yard and saw on the stocks the largest ship that had ever been laid down in the united states. he also visited the schuylkill bridge, and was shown the railroad that had been extended a hundred miles into the state, “without making any fuss about it.” upon seeing girard college, he remarked that blood is thicker than water, and that he would have made his own kin rich first of all, and afterwards might have given away the rest. his last evening was the occasion for a “pick-knick” supper. he says this meant as much as he and his friends could eat and drink, with nothing to pay.
