Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press, 1987 |
"One of the primary social documents of America...[a] 'classic in homespun.'" --J. Frank Dobie, Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest "Davy Crockett was, in essence, a nineteenth-century celebrity--perhaps the first American to make a living portrayin his own fanciful image...He is that rarest of American icons: a legendary hero who turns out, after all, to have been more or less a decent, admirable human being."--Paul Andrew Hutton in Texas Monthly Even as a pup, Davy Crockett "always delighted to be in the very thickest of danger." In his own inimitable style, he describes his earliest days in Tennessee, his two marriages, his career as an Indian fighter, his bear hunts, and his electioneering. His reputation as a b'ar hunter (he killed 105 in one season) sent him to Congress, and he was voted in and out as the price of cotton (and his relations with the Jacksonians) rose and fell. In 1834, when the autobiography appeared, Davy Crockett was already a folk hero with an eye on the White House. But a year later he would lose his seat in Congress and turn toward Texas. At the Alamo he would cap off a legend that still holds Americans in it spell. Paul Andrew Hutton examines that legend in a foreword to the Bison Book edition of Davy Crockett's own story. |