David Crockett in Congress: The Rise and Fall of the Poor Man's Friend, with Collected Correspondence, Selected Speeches, and Circulars (review)

This handsome volume provides a cornucopia of material on "Davy" Crockett's political life and rhetoric as well as the mythology that surrounded him. Part 1, "David Crockett in Congress," offers a biographical overview from Crockett's first election to the lower house of the Tennessee state legislature in 1821 to his US congressional re-election defeat in 1835. Parts 2 and 3 contain "every extant letter and circular of Crockett's" as well as a few letters to him and "third-party letters that lend context to the issues he faced" (9). Part 4 consists of records of four of his speeches in the House of Representatives and two of his speeches to citizenry, one in Virginia and one in Boston.

In Part 1, the authors do a fine job of contextualizing Crockett's actions, motivations, political compromises, and refusals to compromise. First entering the US House of Representatives in 1827, he was repeatedly stymied in his attempts to promote a land bill favorable to those with little money or political clout. A letter he wrote in May 1827 neatly sums up his stance: "I envy no man his wealth ... but when our rights (the rights of the poor) are threatened by monopolizing institutions, for the advantage and convenience of the wealthy, I cannot ... remain a silent and submissive spectator" (149). His enmities with Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, and Martin Van Buren are explored and explained here, as are his alliances with the Whigs. Boylston and Wiener seek to show that Crockett was no naive political rube, and although he did not always navigate the political waters with finesse, he did so with some skill and certainly with conviction, earning his designation as the "poor man's friend." Particularly impressive is his opposition to Jackson's 1830 Indian Removal Bill, with Crockett arguing that any removal of the Cherokees from Georgia should be done fairly and humanely, "in a manner agreeable" to the Cherokees themselves (68).

Literary scholars may welcome in this work the opportunity to trace the rhetoric of Crockett's letters and speeches and the growth of his fame as a national frontier figure, looming large in American popular narrative. The backwoods image he cultivated gave his enemies fodder for ridicule as early as 1828 but also helped make him a man and myth with whom to be reckoned. After his 1831 defeat in trying to hold onto his congressional seat, he continued to grow in the national imagination through the popularity of James K. Paulding's play based on Crockett's character, The Lion of the West, first performed in 1831, and James French's 1833 biography, The Life and Adventures of Colonel David Crockett of West Tennessee. Regaining his congressional seat in 1833, Crockett also penned his autobiography. It is clear from the primary and secondary material in this volume that the mythology surrounding the real man sometimes helped him and sometimes hurt him, that he sometimes had a degree of control over it and sometimes didn't. In this regard and in others, the authors follow through on their stated desire to "retrieve the real Crockett" (7).