Main currents in American thought An interpretation of American literature from the beginnings to 1920
agricultural. But he seems to have been quite unread in political
theory, and probably had never heard of John Taylor’s economic
principles. Suffering from an incurable political itch, he was one of
the earliest and most ardent of states-rights advocates. He went for
Nullification before either Calhoun or McDuffie had espoused it; and
he followed his premises through to the logical end of secession. But
with the growth of northern Abolitionism his Jeffersonianism began
to disintegrate. Garrison’s appeal to equalitarianism and the rights
of man aroused all his southern prejudices. A philosophy that could
be turned against the sacred institution was no philosophy for a
southern gentleman, and like Calhoun he repudiated the whole French
liberal philosophy that he had imbibed in his youth. He even went so
far as to play with Calhoun’s doctrine of economic representation.
Writing to President Lamar, of Texas, in the late thirties, he said,
“A government should have a legislative assemblage to represent
each of its large economic interests, one, say, agricultural, one
manufacturing, one commercial. No bill not acceptable to all three
of these assemblages should become a law” (_ibid._, p. 138). But in
defense of slavery he argued as a minister rather than an economist. He
declined to consider it an economic question; he would not discuss it
as a social question; political theories, he believed, had nothing to
do with it. The right to hold slaves he regarded as a moral question
to be determined exclusively by the authority of the Bible, and on
such a question he professed to speak with assurance. He was vastly
annoyed at the Abolitionists’ unchristian appeal to the old doctrine
of equalitarianism, and in 1845 he wrote angrily, “Will not some
of you accept my ideas and then argue through the question on that
basis, without taking recourse to the Declaration of Independence or
throwing up a breastwork out of the long-forsaken rubbish of the Social
Contract, or bewildering your pursuers in the mazes of metaphysical
subtlety?” (_ibid._, p. 282). His religion was deeply involved in
the institution of slavery, and it seemed to him uncharitable for
an intellectual like Theodore Parker to question the sufficiency of
a southern minister’s texts, or to drag him beyond his intellectual
depths. So exasperated did he grow that finally he would have no
fellowship with northern Methodists, and was a prime mover in the great
schism that rent the church into sectional branches. Abolitionism
seemed to him hypocrisy and blasphemy and as a minister of Christ
he could not hold fellowship with those who rejected the Master’s
word. After the war, in reviewing the long controversy, his Christian
pugnacity flared up anew, and he flung at the northern churches the
accusation that they had been “the most man-astounding, God-offending
foes that we had” (_ibid._, p. 367).
There could be no more telling commentary on the literary poverty of
_ante-bellum_ Georgia than the extraordinary popularity of Longstreet’s
sketches. Written for the most part between the years 1832 and 1836,
while he was publishing the _State Rights Sentinel_, they profess to
be authentic documents of frontier life in Georgia in the early years
of the century, and the deliberate note of realism contributes to the
impression of authenticity. The love of the romantic that spread like
the plague among southern men of letters during the long reign of Sir
Walter, fortunately did not infect the robust nature of Longstreet.
The best of the sketches are spun out of the vernacular; they are
as objective as Longstreet could make them--conscious studies in
the local, done with obvious delight in butternut ways and frontier
dialect. The quality of the work improves as he draws nearer the
backwoods, and comes upon the unregenerate Cracker in his native
habitat. There his humor has free play, exuding in practical jokes and
ready repartee, in boyish pranks and homely idiom. And there he finds
characters to his liking and bits of realistic drama. If one were to
single out the sketch that is most indigenous to the Georgia frontier,
the truest local document, the choice might well fall on _The Fight_,
an account of a bloody meeting between backwoods gladiators brought
on by skillful diplomacy of Ransy Sniffle, a grotesque clay-eater and
Longstreet’s favorite character. Other excellent sketches are _The
Gander Pulling_, _The Shooting Match_, _Georgia Theatrics_, _The Horse
Swap_, _The Militia Company Drill_--stories that throw an unromantic
light on the ways of the Georgia Cracker. Longstreet was as uncritical
as his readers and his frequent failures are glaring in their badness.
Perhaps the worst of the sketches are the absurd _The “Charming
Creature” as a Wife_, a crude sermon on the folly of marrying a lazy
woman; _The Song_, an overdone burlesque, and the puerile _The Debating
Society_, a heavy practical joke which for some inexplicable reason Poe
thought the best of the whole.
Slight though the sketches in _Georgia Scenes_ are, they embody
solid merits; they are not literary and they are quite unaffected by
Irving and the exploitation of the picturesque. Realism was only too
rare in those days of high-flown romance, and how honestly realistic
was Longstreet’s work is revealed by a comparison with James Hall’s
contemporary stories of the West, such as _Harpe’s Head_, or even with
Kennedy’s _Swallow Barn_. After all Gus Longstreet was an original,
and he set the style that was followed in a long series of frontier
sketches, and established the tradition of frontier humor that flowered
at last in Mark Twain.
2 • The Davy Crockett Myth
_The Narrative of the Life of David Crockett of the State of Tennessee_
was woven from the same stuff that Longstreet made use of, but the
fabric is of far better texture. It is the great classic of the
southern frontier, far more significant than _Georgia Scenes_, far
more human and vital. Realistic in method, it is romantic in spirit.
In its backwoods vernacular it purveys the authentic atmosphere of
the cabin and the canebrake; it exhibits the honesty, the wit, the
resourcefulness, the manly independence of a coonskin hero; it
reveals, in short, under the rough exterior of a shiftless squatter and
bear-hunter, qualities that are sterling in every society where manhood
is held in repute. It is an extraordinary document, done so skillfully
from life that homespun becomes a noble fabric and the crudest
materials achieve the dignity of an epic.
The thing had long been waiting to be done. The literary romantics had
tried their hand at the frontier materials and had failed, and then
came a realist of the Georgia school who used the stuff as he found it
and created a lasting document. A practiced writer collaborated with a
picturesque talker, and the fame of the Tennessee Congressman was made.
Romantic America found a new hero and Davy Crockett reaped a surprising
reward. He had the good fortune to preëmpt the romance of the
backwoods, to file on an unsurveyed tract of western life, and when the
lines were run it was found that his claim embraced all that was native
and picturesque along the Mississippi frontier. Popular imagination
seized upon him and endowed the mighty hunter of the canebrakes
with the fugitive romance that had been gathering for years. He was
erected into a mythical figure that drew to itself the unappropriated
picturesque that sprang spontaneously from the crude western life. How
this astonishing result came about, how good fortune came to single out
Davy Crockett for her smiles, offers a somewhat amusing commentary on
the ways of an unsophisticated generation.
That in its later development, if not in the beginning, the Davy
Crockett myth was a deliberate fabrication scarcely admits of doubt,
nor that its immediate purpose was frankly partisan. It did not
spring from the soil of the Tennessee canebrakes; it was created at
Washington. It was not the spontaneous product of popular imagination;
it was the clever work of politicians. The successive stages through
which it passed in its triumphant progress can be traced fairly
accurately with the aid of a little historical imagination. Roughly
they were three; the exploitation of Davy’s canebrake waggery, the
exploitation of his anti-Jackson spleen, and the exploitation of
his dramatic death at the Alamo. The first phase is embodied in the
_Sketches and Eccentricities of Col. David Crockett, of West Tennessee_
(1833); the second, in _An Account of Col. Crockett’s Tour to the North
and Down East_ (1835), and _The Life of Martin Van Buren_ (1835); and
the last, in _Col. Crockett’s Exploits and Adventures in Texas_ (1836).
Midway between the first and second stages stands _A Narrative of the
Life of David Crockett, of the State of Tennessee_ (1834), which may
be accepted in the main as authentic autobiography. None of the five
was written by Crockett. He probably had a hand in the first in spite
of his repudiation of the work, for most of the important facts of his
life and the language of many of the picturesque episodes were taken
from its pages to be reproduced in the _Narrative_. The _Tour_ and
_Martin Van Buren_ were claimed by him and were certainly done under
his eye and with his help, but the _Exploits_ is quite as certainly
sheer fabrication, done by a hack writer after Davy’s death. It was
the politicians who contributed most to the success of the myth. They
exploited Davy as a convenient weapon against Jackson, saw their work
prosper beyond all expectation, get out of their hands, enlarge itself
to a cento of backwoods romance and pass into folklore. It was an
unforeseen outcome that must have been vastly amusing to those who set
the thing going.
The early thirties, it will be remembered, were robustious times when
broadcloth in politics had suddenly gone out of style and homespun had
come in. The new coonskin democracy had descended upon Washington,
and picturesque figures provided with ample plugs of tobacco were
making themselves free with Congressional perquisites. Nothing like
it had been seen before in the city of dignified politicians, and the
spectacle must have delighted the wags of the capital. But to the
members of the overthrown dynasty the Jacksonian votes which these
picturesque backwoodsmen represented were very far from amusing. The
loss of desirable offices was a hard lesson that taught them the need
of catering to this new element of the great American democracy. In
their remunerative occupation as representatives of the prosperous and
genteel constituencies of the East, the old-school politicians had too
long overlooked the power of the plain voter which the progress of
manhood suffrage was daily increasing. Hence began a desperate campaign
to counteract the Jacksonian appeal. The coonskin vote could no longer
be ignored and shrewd plans were laid to capture the backwoods for the
new Whig party. The program of internal improvements was well enough
in its way, and the old Revolutionary cry of the sword and the purse
might prove useful; but the party needed a picturesque figure to draw
the coonskin democracy to its standard. Men rather than principles
appealed to the West, self-made men, speaking the western vernacular,
imbibing western views with their whisky, uncorrupted by broadcloth.
This explains the tremendous Whig hurrah over log cabins and hard cider
that marked a later campaign; and this explains likewise the singular
fate that overtook Davy Crockett, the bear-hunter from the canebrakes.
Davy had first come to Washington during Adams’ administration, and in
four years’ loafing and boasting at the Congressional bar had achieved
some distinction as a picturesque original with the tongue of a wag.