Congressmen to-day do not employ language quite so picturesque, or methods of vote-getting quite so crude. The story is a trifle apochryphal; yet Crockett himself, in what is called his autobiography, a work which he no doubt dictated, or at least authorized, gives the following account of one of his speeches to a stranger, at Raleigh, while Crockett was en route to Washington to take his first seat in Congress.
"Said he, 'Hurrah for Adams!' and said I, 'Hurrah for hell, and praise your own country!' And he said, 'Who are you?' Said I, 'I'm that same Davy Crockett, fresh from the backwoods, half horse, half alligator, a little touched with snapping turtle, can wade the Mississippi, leap the Ohio, ride a streak of lightning, slide down a honey locust and not get scratched. I can whip my weight in wildcats, hug a bear too close for comfort, and eat any man opposed to Jackson.'" Which last remark he fain would qualify largely later in his political career! An innate shrewdness that told him how to avoid committing himself was Crockett's original capital in politics, as it was in life. His native wit, his good fellowship, his rollicking good humor, his courage and strength, his skill with weapons brought him success. He was fitted for success in those surroundings.
Crockett is always chronicled as one of the great American hunters, and this name he deserves. He was a good rifle-shot. In his cane-brake country he hunted the black bear just as it is hunted to-day in the similar country of the Mississippi Delta, by means of dogs, without which the hunter would only by the remotest chance ever get sight of an animal so shy as the black bear.
Abbott, who seems to apologize for Crockett, needs for himself an apologist, for he displays a lamentable ignorance of the environment of which he writes, as well as of many common facts in natural history. As a matter of fact there was no risk whatever in the pursuit of the black bear, even when the hunter was not accompanied by his dogs, whose presence eliminated the last possible danger of the chase. In those days the rifle was a single-shot muzzle-loader, in no wise so effective as the modern hunting arm, but even thus early in the history of American wild game, the black bear had ceased to be a formidable animal, if indeed he ever was such.[14]