Online Encyclopedia

DAVID CROCKETT (1786–1836)

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Originally appearing in Volume V07, Page 477 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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DAVID CROCKETT (1786–1836)  ,
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American frontiersman, was born in Greene county,
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Tennessee, on the 17th of August 1786 . His
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education was obtained chiefly in the rough school of experience in the Tennessee backwoods, where he acquired a wide reputation as a hunter, trapper and marksman . In 1813–1814 he served in the Creek War under Andrew Jackson, and subsequently became a colonel in the Tennessee militia . In 1821–1824 he was a member of the state legislature, having won his election not by
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political speeches but by telling stories . In 1827 he was elected to the
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national House of Representatives as a Jackson Democrat, and was re-elected in 1829 . At Washington his shrewdness, eccentric manners and
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peculiar wit made him a conspicuous figure, but he was too
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independent to be a sup-porter of all Jackson's
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measures, and his opposition to the president's
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Indian policy led to administration influences being turned against him with the result that he was defeated for re-election in 1831 . He was again elected in 1833, but in 1835 lost his seat a second time, being then a vigorous opponent of many distinctively Jacksonian measures . Discouraged and disgusted, he
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left his native state, and emigrated to
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Texas, then engaged in its struggle for independence . There he lost his
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life as one of the defenders of the Alamo at
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San Antonio on the 6th of March 1836 . A so-called " autobiography," which he very probably dictated or at least authorized, was published in
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Philadelphia in 1834; a
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work purporting to be a continuation of this autobiography and entitled Colonel Crockett's Exploits and Adventures in Texas (Philadelphia, 1836) is undoubtedly
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spurious . These two
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works were subsequently combined in a single
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volume, of which there have been several
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editions . Numerous popular
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biographies have been written, the best by E .

S .

Ellis (Philadelphia, 1884) .

End of Article: DAVID CROCKETT (1786–1836)
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