06 March 2017

David Crockett





The magazine of American history with notes and queries, featuring the Reminiscences of Colonel Chester:

David Crockett," said Colonel Chester, "was a backwoodsman, strong, keen eyed, observant. On the stump he told anecdotes that pleased the people, but in congress he was without influence. Crockett's cabin, on the Obion river, was open to all. I once crossed that river in a canoe — my horse swimming by me — and slept in his house on a bear-skin, and ate bear-meat with a bowie knife and a cane fork." " What is a cane fork?" I asked. "A fork," he replied, " made by splitting a piece of cane— it had two prongs. Crockett," he went on, " boasted a great deal about a coat made from American wool sent him from New England. He used to wear a coon-skin cap, and defeated Colonel Butler for congress by ridiculing him for having carpets on his floors."




I said something about the inscription at the Alamo. He quickly responded, " The fight at the Alamo was a blunder. What did a man shut himself up in a fort, and allow Santa Anna to surround him for? It was downright folly." The inscription, "Thermopylae had one left to tell her story, the Alamo had none," he allowed to be touching, but insisted that Crockett was not comparable to Jackson as a soldier, statesman or citizen.



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