DAVY CROCKETT HDT WHAT? INDEX DAVY CROCKETT DAVID CROCKETT 1786 David Crockett was born in Tennessee.1 1. The movie “The Alamo,” perhaps to associate him more closely with the firearm known as “the Kentucky squirrel rifle,” would suggest that he had been born in Kentucky. REMEMBERING THE ALAMO HDT WHAT? INDEX DAVY CROCKETT DAVID CROCKETT 1821 David Crockett was elected to the Tennessee legislature. (He was on his way to being elected to the national Congress in 1827, on the basis, mostly, of a real gift for publicity.) HDT WHAT? INDEX DAVY CROCKETT DAVID CROCKETT 1825 What had once been a nice 5-acre pond, “The Collect,” about which New-Yorkers had congregated for summer pic-nics and winter ice-skating, had by this point become a slum, and the worst of our nation. It was being referred to as “Five Points” because it was near the complex intersection of Baxter, Park, and Worth. It was under the control of gangs denominated, in the public press, the “Dead Rabbits” and the “Plug Uglies,” the thugs of which could travel underneath the tenements by means of secret tunnels. The “Old Brewery” tenement, which slept more than 1,000 persons in its 95 rooms, would average a murder per night for the next 15 years. Commenting on the Scorsese movie “Gangs of New York”: “In my own research of New York history, through first-person accounts and newspaper reports, I have found that our past was often at least as violent and squalid, if not more so, than the movie depicts.” — Kevin Baker Charles Dickens, one of the notables who would go slumming there,2 would write: Let us go on again, and plunge into the Five Points.... Where dogs would howl ... men and women and boys slink off to sleep, forcing the dislodged rats to move away in quest of better lodgings.... All that is loathesome, drooping and decayed is here. John Whitehead, a New-York deliveryman, began selling off parcels of his farm higher up on Manhattan Island to black New-Yorkers. A trustee of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church who was earning his living as a common laborer, Epiphany Davis, either on his own initiative or for his church, purchased twelve of the lots in what would come to be known as “Seneca Village” for $578. A 25-year-old “shoe shine boy” named Andrew Williams purchased three lots for $125.00 and by 1832 his little farm would have been subdivided into more than 24 land parcels owned by black citizens. Due primarily to segregation, of the 100 black voters in New-York in 1845, 1 in 10 would live in Seneca Village, and of the 71 black property owners in New- York as of 1850, 1 in 5 would own their property there. The first stage in ethnic cleansing would therefore seem to be the segregation of the ethnics who are later to be cleansed. The second state of this ethnic- 2. Other notables who would go slumming there would include a Russian grand duke, Davy Crockett, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., and Abraham Lincoln. HDT WHAT? INDEX DAVY CROCKETT DAVID CROCKETT cleansing effort would be that this is the area which would be targeted for demolition by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in 1857 when they set out to create a “surpassingly beautiful pleasure grounds [for the] refreshment and recreation” of the real citizens of New-York. You can visit this Seneca Village area near the West 85th Street entrance to the present Central Park, where a spring now trickles picturesquely through picturesque rolling hills covered with picturesque white oaks. In the course of creating these hills and this spring in 1871, and installing these trees, decomposed bodies would be dug up.3 Brillat-Savarin’s PHYSIOLOGY OF TASTE described “Edward,” a sumptuary monster he had encountered in 3. And, may one presume, discarded? —The record which remains does not state. According to Roy Rosenzweig’s and Elizabeth Blackmar’s THE PARK AND THE PEOPLE (NY: Henry Holt, 1994), no historical village of the Senecas ever has been situated anywhere near this site — so that is not going to provide us with an explanation for the name. HDT WHAT? INDEX DAVY CROCKETT DAVID CROCKETT America during the mid-1790s on display in a tavern window on Broadway Avenue in New-York: Edward was at least six feet four in height, and as his fat had puffed him out in every direction, he was almost nine feet round the waist. His fingers were like those of the Roman emperor who used his wife s bracelets as rings; his arms and his thighs were tubular, and as thick as the waist of a man of ordinary stature, and he had feet like an elephant, covered with the thick fat of his legs. The weight of fat kept down his lower eyelids and made them gape; but what was hideous to behold were three round chins hanging on his breast, and more than a foot long, so that his face appeared to be the capital of a truncated column. Thus Edward passed his life, sitting at a window on the ground floor looking out on the street, drinking from time to time a glass of ale, of which a pitcher of huge capacity stood always near him. So extraordinary an appearance could scarcely fail to arrest the attention of the passers-by; but they had to take care not to stop too long, as Edward quickly put them to flight by saying to them in a sepulchral voice: “What are you staring at like wild cats? Go your way, you lazy bodies! Begone, you good-for- nothing dogs!” and other similar amenities. (MED. XXI) HDT WHAT? INDEX DAVY CROCKETT DAVID CROCKETT 1828 There is an 1828 speech entitled “Not Yours to Give,” by Tennessee Congressman David Crockett (1786- 1836, Congress 1827-1831), currently being quoted by libertarians and conservatives, that appears to be utterly spurious. The story is that under the influence of constituent Horatio Bunce, Congressman Crockett delivered this speech to Congress condemning public relief as inconsistent with the Constitution. Crockett was a darling of the Whigs (and their successors) after turning against Andrew Jackson in 1829-1830, splitting with Jackson over land reform and Indian removal among other issues, and even after his death he was used as a cats-paw to attack the Democrats. Crockett mythologized himself during his lifetime as frontiersman, and it is now difficult to separate any truth out of what has been put on the record from this political/popular media creation he enabled. This speech was first alleged in the January 1867 issue of Harper’s Magazine, as “Davy Crockett’s Electioneering Tour,” by a “James J. Bethune” (this was a nom de plume employed by Edward S. Ellis, 1840- 1916. This “Bethune” published another piece in Harper’s Magazine, “Walter Colquitt of Georgia,” also about a wonderful speech which was had not been recorded except in his own later reconstruction. He was most well known for his dime novel DEERHUNTER and other Wild West tales.) Although Edward S. Ellis also alleged that Bunce’s opposition to Crockett had originated in a vote Crockett made in favor of relief for victims of a fire in Georgetown, that fire had occurred not in Georgetown but in Alexandria and the vote in question had occurred on January 19, 1827 before Crockett had become a congressman. Edward S. Ellis positioned his 1867 “Bethune” article in his 1884 edition of THE LIFE OF COLONEL DAVI D CROCKETT although he had not included it in his original 1861 book about Crockett. We note that Ellis could not himself have been present at this unrecorded speech because it had been allegedly delivered some 12 years before his own birth. According to Gale and Seaton’s REGISTER OF DEBATES FOR THE HOUSE ON APRIL 1, 1828, although there had been a debate about whether to award funds to a Widow Brown after which Crockett had requested a roll-call vote and voted against that appropriation, this person had been the widow of a general rather than of a naval officer and Crockett had been absent during the discussion. Contrary to what the “Bethune” article in Harper’s Magazine asserted, this bill passed not only in the House but also in the Senate. HDT WHAT? INDEX DAVY CROCKETT DAVID CROCKETT 1830 January 22, Friday: In the federal House of Representatives, Congressman David Crockett raised a class issue in regard to the military academy at West Point: “I want to know if it has been managed for the benefit of the noble and wealthy of the country, or for the poor and orphan.” It was his consideration that the graduates of this academy were “too delicate” to be real American macho men — like for one fine example he himself. January 29, Friday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day 29 of 1st M 1830 / This Morning the remains of our Schollar Timothy Gifford were removed from hence homeward: - His father accompanied by his neighbour & friend Isaac Lawrence & Ellis Gifford to drive the herse set out Wm Jenkins with the myself in a Chaise followed by teachers & large Schollars went as far as Moses Brown’s Bridge where we parted with them, leaving them to go a solitary & Mournful journey of 36 Miles the weather was very cold. The Thermometer standing when they set out at 5 above 0 - this with other circumstances have made them much the companions of my mind thro’ the day - as we returned from the Bridge Wm Jenkins & I stoped at Moses Browns & took breakfast with him.