Davy Crockett

The title of this article is ambiguous. Further meanings are listed under Davy Crockett (disambiguation) .

Davy Crockett

David 'Davy' Crockett (actually David de Crocketagne ; born August 17, 1786 in Greene County , then State of Franklin , now Tennessee , † March 6, 1836 in San Antonio , Republic of Texas ) was an American politician and war hero. He represented the westernmost part of the state of Tennessee in the US House of Representatives and died during or after the Battle of the Alamo .

Life

Early years

Davy Crockett's birthplace (reconstruction)

Crockett was born in Greene County in the only four-year-old State of Franklin . His ancestors were French Huguenots who left France during the Reformation and settled in Ulster . He was the fifth of nine children and had almost no education. By the physical standards of the early 19th century, Crockett was considered a great man; he was about 1.78 m tall and weighed about 86 kilograms.

On September 24, 1813, he joined the 2nd regiment of the Tennessee Volunteer Mounted Riflemen (English for Volunteer Mounted Riflemen of Tennessee), but his service lasted only 90 days. Crockett's commander was General Andrew Jackson , who was to become US President in 1829 . Crockett took part in the campaign against the Muskogee Indians.

In 1815 his wife Polly died at the age of 27. The couple had three children, and in the same year Crockett married Elizabeth Patton, with whom he had four other children.

Political rise

Crockett's political career began as a magistrate in his home parish. There he eliminated corruption . Shortly thereafter, he was elected to the US House of Representatives as a member of the Tennessee Ninth Constituency in 1826 and 1828 . At that time his home region was only sparsely populated by whites. Poor pioneers were often illegal squatters who did not have an officially recognized right to stay on "their" property. In addition, they were stuck in a kind of vicious circle: Since they did not own any land, they were not allowed to buy it. Crockett supported the interests of the squatter movement.

Crockett soon came into conflict with his former commander, US President Andrew Jackson , when he opposed the Indian Removal Act . Jackson wanted to pass this law because he hated all Indians and therefore wanted to oust them; on the other hand, Crockett advocated peaceful coexistence. Still, the new law was very popular with the white population, and in 1830 Crockett lost his second election campaign. In 1832 he was re-elected, this time as the representative of the National Republican Party for the twelfth district of his state.

Davy Crockett 1834

In 1834 he published his memoir, "A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett." Having spent too much time on the east coast to write the book, he lost the election again. He said angrily, “You can go to hell; I'm going to Texas! ”He decided to support and participate in the Texan revolution against Mexico . The Texans, led by Sam Houston , wanted to detach their newly settled territory from Mexico and found their own state, which should also be independent of the USA. Crockett left Tennessee in November 1835 for Texas. On January 14, 1836, Crockett and 65 other men took an oath on the Texas Provisional Government . The government promised each man 19 square kilometers of land in return.

Death in the Alamo

On February 6, 1836, Crockett rode with twelve men to San Antonio de Bexar (Bejar). The Battle of the Alamo , an ancient Mexican fortress, began on February 23. It was Crockett's job to defend the southern palisade in front of the chapel. The Texans numbered between 180 and 250 fighters. For them, the situation was hopeless if additional troops did not come from the city of Goliad, as they faced between 1,300 and 1,600 Mexican soldiers under the Mexican President and Commander-in-Chief General Antonio López de Santa Anna . The reinforcements never arrived. The Battle of Alamo was a defeat for the Texans, although they eventually won the war. According to popular legend, Crockett died fighting. In 1955 new evidence appeared (the diary of José Enrique de la Peña ). Today's historians believe that after the battle, Mexican General Manuel Fernández Castrillón arrested Crockett, Jim Bowie, and the other leaders of the Texas Revolution . The following day, Crockett and the other Texans were reported to have been shot on General Santa Anna's orders .

In 1838 his son Robert Patton Crockett went to Texas to administer his inheritance. Elizabeth Crockett came to Texas in 1854, where she died in 1860. Davy Crockett was a Freemason and a member of the Texan “Holland Lodge No. 1".

Crockett in the culture of remembrance

David Crockett, a legend in his lifetime, became an American myth after his death. His traditional sayings were published in the period from 1835 to 1856. The most famous of them was: "Make sure you are right, then go ahead !" ( "Always be sure you are right, then go ahead." )

Movie

In the 1950s, Walt Disney made a television series about Crockett's life in which Fess Parker portrayed him. Disney referred to Crockett as "Davy" and painted him as an adventurer and a man with a good deal of "peasant cunning". In reality, Crockett was always "David Crockett", a man who had fought against the Indians and the British and was known to be a serious, dignified person, but possessed of puns and self-irony. The Disney character was very popular. They even composed a ballad, "The Ballad of Davy Crockett," which tells the story of his entire life in twenty verses.

Two cinema films were cut from the television films and were shown on screens in Germany under the titles Davy Crockett, King of the Trappers and Davy Crockett and the River Pirates .

In 1960, John Wayne played the American national hero Crockett in his film Alamo . Almost 45 years later, Billy Bob Thornton Crockett portrayed in the new cinema production Alamo - The Dream, Fate, the Legend (2004) about the events of the legendary Battle of the Alamo.

In an episode of the television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , his story is reproduced and packed into a frame story.

In the 5th episode Alamo (season 1) of the series Timeless, Davy Crockett tells one of his legendary stories in the Fort Alamo.

music

As a folk hero, Crockett also found its way into popular music, as was particularly evident in the great number 1 US pop hit of the 1950s The Ballad of Davy Crockett , which was published in numerous versions and a. sung by Bill Hayes (original from 1955 based on the popular adventure TV series about Crockett), followed by Tennessee Ernie Ford and the Sons of the Pioneers , or in Remember The Alamo by Jane Bowers (sung by The Kingston Trio , Donovan and Johnny Cash ).

Billy Joel also mentioned the folk hero in his hit We Didn't Start the Fire authoritative for the year 1955 , in which a television series produced by Walt Disney started.

Weapons technology

The US Army's M28 / M29 tactical nuclear weapon was named after Crockett .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Joe Hembus (Ed.): The Western Lexicon . Heyne, Munich 1995, pp. 118f. ISBN 3-453-08121-8 .

literature

• Dan Kilgore, James E. Crisp: How did Davydie? And why do we care so much? University Press, College Station, Tx. 2010, ISBN 978-1-603-44194-0 .
• Mark Derr: The Frontiersman. The Real Life and the Many Legends of Davy Crockett . William Morrow and Co., New York 1993, ISBN 0-688-09656-5 . (engl.)
• Graham Seal: Davy Crockett . In: Ders .: Encyclopedia of folk heroes . ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara, Calif. 2001, p. 50, ISBN 1-576-07216-9 .
• Michael Wallis: David Crocket. The Lion of the West . WW Norton, New York 2011, ISBN 978-0-393-06758-3 . (engl.)

Web links

Commons : Davy Crockett  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

• Davy Crockett in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• David Crockett in Project Gutenberg ( currently not usually available to users from Germany ) ; by John SC Abbott . (English)