From
The Life of Colonel David Crockett,
by Edward S. Ellis (Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1884)
Crockett was then the lion of Washington. I was a great admirer
of his character, and, having several friends who were intimate
with him, I found no difficulty in making his acquaintance. I
was fascinated with him, and he seemed to take a fancy to me.
I was one day in the lobby of the House of Representatives when
a bill was taken up appropriating money for the benefit of a
widow of a distinguished naval officer. Several beautiful
speeches had been made in its support – rather, as I thought,
because it afforded the speakers a fine opportunity for display
than from the necessity of convincing anybody, for it seemed to
me that everybody favored it. The Speaker was just about to put
the question when Crockett arose. Everybody expected, of course,
that he was going to make one of his characteristic speeches in
support of the bill. He commenced:
"Mr. Speaker – I have as much respect for the memory of the
deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings of the living,
if suffering there be, as any man in this House, but we must not
permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of
the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of
the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that
Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of
charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the
right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as
we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no
right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money. Some
eloquent appeals have been made to us upon the ground that it is
a debt due the deceased. Mr. Speaker, the deceased lived long
after the close of the war; he was in office to the day of his
death, and I have never heard that the government was in arrears
to him. This government can owe no debts but for services
rendered, and at a stipulated price. If it is a debt, how much
is it? Has it been audited, and the amount due ascertained? If
it is a debt, this is not the place to present it for payment,
or to have its merits examined. If it is a debt, we owe more
than we can ever hope to pay, for we owe the widow of every
soldier who fought in the War of 1812 precisely the same amount.
There is a woman in my neighborhood, the widow of as gallant a
man as ever shouldered a musket. He fell in battle. She is as
good in every respect as this lady, and is as poor. She is
earning her daily bread by her daily labor; but if I were to
introduce a bill to appropriate five or ten thousand dollars for
her benefit, I should be laughed at, and my bill would not get
five votes in this House. There are thousands of widows in the
country just such as the one I have spoken of, but we never hear
of any of these large debts to them. Sir, this is no debt. The
government did not owe it to the deceased when he was alive; it
could not contract it after he died. I do not wish to be rude,
but I must be plain. Every man in this House knows it is not a
debt. We cannot, without the grossest corruption, appropriate
this money as the payment of a debt. We have not the semblance
of authority to appropriate it as a charity. Mr. Speaker, I have
said we have the right to give as much of our own money as we
please. I am the poorest man on this floor. I cannot vote for
this bill, but I will give one week's pay to the object, and if
every member of Congress will do the same, it will amount to
more than the bill asks."
He took his seat. Nobody replied. The bill was put upon its
passage, and, instead of passing unanimously, as was generally
supposed, and as, no doubt, it would, but for that speech, it
received but few votes, and, of course, was lost.
Like many other young men, and old ones, too, for that matter,
who had not thought upon the subject, I desired the passage of
the bill, and felt outraged at its defeat. I determined that I
would persuade my friend Crockett to move a reconsideration the
next day.
Previous engagements preventing me from seeing Crockett that
night, I went early to his room the next morning and found him
engaged in addressing and franking letters, a large pile of
which lay upon his table.
I broke in upon him rather abruptly, by asking him what devil
had possessed him to make that speech and defeat that bill
yesterday. Without turning his head or looking up from his work,
he replied:
"You see that I am very busy now; take a seat and cool yourself.
I will be through in a few minutes, and then I will tell you all
about it."
He continued his employment for about ten minutes, and when he
had finished he turned to me and said:
"Now, sir, I will answer your question. But thereby hangs a
tale, and one of considerable length, to which you will have to
listen."
I listened, and this is the tale which I heard:
Several years ago I was one evening standing on the steps of the
Capitol with some other members of Congress, when our attention
was attracted by a great light over in Georgetown. It was
evidently a large fire. We jumped into a hack and drove over as
fast as we could. When we got there, I went to work, and I never
worked as hard in my life as I did there for several hours. But,
in spite of all that could be done, many houses were burned and
many families made homeless, and, besides, some of them had lost
all but the clothes they had on. The weather was very cold, and
when I saw so many women and children suffering, I felt that
something ought to be done for them, and everybody else seemed
to feel the same way.
The next morning a bill was introduced appropriating $20,000 for
their relief. We put aside all other business and rushed it
through as soon as it could be done. I said everybody felt as I
did. That was not quite so; for, though they perhaps sympathized
as deeply with the sufferers as I did, there were a few of the
members who did not think we had the right to indulge our
sympathy or excite our charity at the expense of anybody but
ourselves. They opposed the bill, and upon its passage demanded
the yeas and nays. There were not enough of them to sustain the
call, but many of us wanted our names to appear in favor of what
we considered a praiseworthy measure, and we voted with them to
sustain it. So the yeas and nays were recorded, and my name
appeared on the journals in favor of the bill.
The next summer, when it began to be time to think about the
election, I concluded I would take a scout around among the boys
of my district. I had no opposition there, but, as the election
was some time off, I did not know what might turn up, and I
thought it was best to let the boys know that I had not forgot
them, and that going to Congress had not made me too proud to go
to see them.
So I put a couple of shirts and a few twists of tobacco into my
saddlebags, and put out. I had been out about a week and had
found things going very smoothly, when, riding one day in a part
of my district in which I was more of a stranger than any other,
I saw a man in a field plowing and coming toward the road. I
gauged my gait so that we should meet as he came to the fence.
As he came up I spoke to the man. He replied politely, but, as I
thought, rather coldly, and was about turning his horse for
another furrow when I said to him: "Don't be in such a hurry, my
friend; I want to have a little talk with you, and get better
acquainted."
He replied: "I am very busy, and have but little time to talk,
but if it does not take too long, I will listen to what you have
to say."
I began: "Well, friend, I am one of those unfortunate beings
called candidates, and – "
"'Yes, I know you; you are Colonel Crockett. I have seen you
once before, and voted for you the last time you were elected. I
suppose you are out electioneering now, but you had better not
waste your time or mine. I shall not vote for you again.'
This was a sockdolager... I begged him to tell me what was the
matter.
"Well, Colonel, it is hardly worthwhile to waste time or words
upon it. I do not see how it can be mended, but you gave a vote
last winter which shows that either you have not capacity to
understand the Constitution, or that you are wanting in honesty
and firmness to be guided by it. In either case you are not the
man to represent me. But I beg your pardon for expressing it in
that way. I did not intend to avail myself of the privilege of
the Constitution to speak plainly to a candidate for the purpose
of insulting or wounding you. I intend by it only to say that
your understanding of the Constitution is very different from
mine; and I will say to you what, but for my rudeness, I should
not have said, that I believe you to be honest. But an
understanding of the Constitution different from mine I cannot
overlook, because the Constitution, to be worth anything, must
be held sacred, and rigidly observed in all its provisions. The
man who wields power and misinterprets it is the more dangerous
the more honest he is."
"I admit the truth of all you say, but there must be some
mistake about it, for I do not remember that I gave any vote
last winter upon any constitutional question."
"No, Colonel, there's no mistake. Though I live here in the
backwoods and seldom go from home, I take the papers from
Washington and read very carefully all the proceedings of
Congress. My papers say that last winter you voted for a bill to
appropriate $20,000 to some sufferers by a fire in Georgetown.
Is that true?"
"Certainly it is, and I thought that was the last vote which
anybody in the world would have found fault with."
"Well, Colonel, where do you find in the Constitution any
authority to give away the public money in charity?"
Here was another sockdolager; for, when I began to think about
it, I could not remember a thing in the Constitution that
authorized it. I found I must take another tack, so I said:
"Well, my friend; I may as well own up. You have got me there.
But certainly nobody will complain that a great and rich country
like ours should give the insignificant sum of $20,000 to
relieve its suffering women and children, particularly with a
full and overflowing Treasury, and I am sure, if you had been
there, you would have done just as I did."
"It is not the amount, Colonel, that I complain of; it is the
principle. In the first place, the government ought to have in
the Treasury no more than enough for its legitimate purposes.
But that has nothing to do with the question. The power of
collecting and disbursing money at pleasure is the most
dangerous power that can be entrusted to man, particularly under
our system of collecting revenue by a tariff, which reaches
every man in the country, no matter how poor he may be, and the
poorer he is the more he pays in proportion to his means. What
is worse, it presses upon him without his knowledge where the
weight centers, for there is not a man in the United States who
can ever guess how much he pays to the government. So you see,
that while you are contributing to relieve one, you are drawing
it from thousands who are even worse off than he. If you had the
right to give anything, the amount was simply a matter of
discretion with you, and you had as much right to give
$20,000,000 as $20,000. If you have the right to give to one,
you have the right to give to all; and, as the Constitution
neither defines charity nor stipulates the amount, you are at
liberty to give to any and everything which you may believe, or
profess to believe, is a charity, and to any amount you may
think proper. You will very easily perceive what a wide door
this would open for fraud and corruption and favoritism, on the
one hand, and for robbing the people on the other. No, Colonel,
Congress has no right to give charity. Individual members may
give as much of their own money as they please, but they have no
right to touch a dollar of the public money for that purpose. If
twice as many houses had been burned in this county as in
Georgetown, neither you nor any other member of Congress would
have thought of appropriating a dollar for our relief. There are
about two hundred and forty members of Congress. If they had
shown their sympathy for the sufferers by contributing each one
week's pay, it would have made over $13,000. There are plenty of
wealthy men in and around Washington who could have given
$20,000 without depriving themselves of even a luxury of life.
The Congressmen chose to keep their own money, which, if reports
be true, some of them spend not very creditably; and the people
about Washington, no doubt, applauded you for relieving them
from the necessity of giving by giving what was not yours to
give. The people have delegated to Congress, by the
Constitution, the power to do certain things. To do these, it is
authorized to collect and pay moneys, and for nothing else.
Everything beyond this is usurpation, and a violation of the
Constitution."
I have given you an imperfect account of what he said. Long
before he was through, I was convinced that I had done wrong. He
wound up by saying:
"So you see, Colonel, you have violated the Constitution in what
I consider a vital point. It is a precedent fraught with danger
to the country, for when Congress once begins to stretch its
power beyond the limits of the Constitution, there is no limit
to it, and no security for the people. I have no doubt you acted
honestly, but that does not make it any better, except as far as
you are personally concerned, and you see that I cannot vote for
you."
I tell you I felt streaked. I saw if I should have opposition,
and this man should go talking, he would set others to talking,
and in that district I was a gone fawn-skin. I could not answer
him, and the fact is, I did not want to. But I must satisfy him,
and I said to him:
"Well, my friend, you hit the nail upon the head when you said I
had not sense enough to understand the Constitution. I intended
to be guided by it, and thought I had studied it full. I have
heard many speeches in Congress about the powers of Congress,
but what you have said there at your plow has got more hard,
sound sense in it than all the fine speeches I ever heard. If I
had ever taken the view of it that you have, I would have put my
head into the fire before I would have given that vote; and if
you will forgive me and vote for me again, if I ever vote for
another unconstitutional law I wish I may be shot."
He laughingly replied:
"Yes, Colonel, you have sworn to that once before, but I will
trust you again upon one condition. You say that you are
convinced that your vote was wrong. Your acknowledgment of it
will do more good than beating you for it. If, as you go around
the district, you will tell people about this vote, and that you
are satisfied it was wrong, I will not only vote for you, but
will do what I can to keep down opposition, and, perhaps, I may
exert some little influence in that way."
"If I don't," said I, "I wish I may be shot; and to convince you
that I am in earnest in what I say, I will come back this way in
a week or ten days, and if you will get up a gathering of the
people, I will make a speech to them. Get up a barbecue, and I
will pay for it."
"No, Colonel, we are not rich people in this section, but we
have plenty of provisions to contribute for a barbecue, and some
to spare for those who have none. The push of crops will be over
in a few days, and we can then afford a day for a barbecue. This
is Thursday; I will see to getting it up on Saturday week. Come
to my house on Friday, and we will go together, and I promise
you a very respectable crowd to see and hear you."
"Well, I will be here. But one thing more before I say good-bye.
I must know your name."
"My name is Bunce."
"Not Horatio Bunce?"
"Yes."
"Well, Mr. Bunce, I never saw you before, though you say you
have seen me; but I know you very well. I am glad I have met
you, and very proud that I may hope to have you for my friend.
You must let me shake your hand before I go."
We shook hands and parted.
It was one of the luckiest hits of my life that I met him. He
mingled but little with the public, but was widely known for his
remarkable intelligence and incorruptible integrity, and for a
heart brimful and running over with kindness and benevolence,
which showed themselves not only in words but in acts. He was
the oracle of the whole country around him, and his fame had
extended far beyond the circle of his immediate acquaintance.
Though I had never met him before, I had heard much of him, and
but for this meeting it is very likely I should have had
opposition, and had been beaten. One thing is very certain, no
man could now stand up in that district under such a vote.
At the appointed time I was at his house, having told our
conversation to every crowd I had met, and to every man I stayed
all night with, and I found that it gave the people an interest
and a confidence in me stronger than I had ever seen manifested
before.
Though I was considerably fatigued when I reached his house,
and, under ordinary circumstances, should have gone early to
bed, I kept him up until midnight, talking about the principles
and affairs of government, and got more real, true knowledge of
them than I had got all my life before.
I have told you Mr. Bunce converted me politically. He came
nearer converting me religiously than I had ever been before. He
did not make a very good Christian of me, as you know; but he
has wrought upon my mind a conviction of the truth of
Christianity, and upon my feelings a reverence for its purifying
and elevating power such as I had never felt before.
I have known and seen much of him since, for I respect him – no,
that is not the word – I reverence and love him more than any
living man, and I go to see him two or three times every year;
and I will tell you, sir, if everyone who professes to be a
Christian lived and acted and enjoyed it as he does, the
religion of Christ would take the world by storm.
But to return to my story. The next morning we went to the
barbecue, and, to my surprise, found about a thousand men there.
I met a good many whom I had not known before, and they and my
friend introduced me around until I had got pretty well
acquainted – at least, they all knew me.
In due time notice was given that I would speak to them. They
gathered around a stand that had been erected. I opened my
speech by saying:
"Fellow citizens – I present myself before you today feeling
like a new man. My eyes have lately been opened to truths which
ignorance or prejudice, or both, had heretofore hidden from my
view. I feel that I can today offer you the ability to render
you more valuable service than I have ever been able to render
before. I am here today more for the purpose of acknowledging my
error than to seek your votes. That I should make this
acknowledgment is due to myself as well as to you. Whether you
will vote for me is a matter for your consideration only."
I went on to tell them about the fire and my vote for the
appropriation as I have told it to you, and then told them why I
was satisfied it was wrong. I closed by saying:
"And now, fellow citizens, it remains only for me to tell you
that the most of the speech you have listened to with so much
interest was simply a repetition of the arguments by which your
neighbor, Mr. Bunce, convinced me of my error.
"It is the best speech I ever made in my life, but he is
entitled to the credit of it. And now I hope he is satisfied
with his convert and that he will get up here and tell you so."
He came upon the stand and said:
"Fellow citizens – It affords me great pleasure to comply with
the request of Colonel Crockett. I have always considered him a
thoroughly honest man, and I am satisfied that he will
faithfully perform all that he has promised you today."
He went down, and there went up from the crowd such a shout for
Davy Crockett as his name never called forth before.
I am not much given to tears, but I was taken with a choking
then and felt some big drops rolling down my cheeks. And I tell
you now that the remembrance of those few words spoken by such a
man, and the honest, hearty shout they produced, is worth more
to me than all the honors I have received and all the reputation
I have ever made, or ever shall make, as a member of Congress.
"Now, Sir," concluded Crockett, "you know why I made that speech
yesterday. I have had several thousand copies of it printed and
was directing them to my constituents when you came in.
"There is
one thing now to which I will call your attention. You remember
that I proposed to give a week's pay. There are in that House
many very wealthy men – men who think nothing of spending a
week's pay, or a dozen of them for a dinner or a wine party when
they have something to accomplish by it. Some of those same men
made beautiful speeches upon the great debt of gratitude which
the country owed the deceased – a debt which could not be paid
by money, particularly so insignificant a sum as $10,000, when
weighed against the honor of the nation. Yet not one of them
responded to my proposition. Money with them is nothing but
trash when it is to come out of the people. But it is the one
great thing for which most of them are striving, and many of
them sacrifice honor, integrity, and justice to obtain it."
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