Congressman Crockett takes on President Jackson

Last weekend, Maxine and I watched the 1955 Walt Disney film, Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier. We both could recall it being very important to us in our youth, although I, at age 12, was a bit too old to get as involved in it as did younger kids. For example, I never owned, nor even wanted, a coonskin cap.

One scene that I had not thought about for decades came back with such clarity that it surely had a big impact on me at the time. It’s the scene where U.S. Congressman Crockett gives an impassioned speech against the abrogation of treaties made with (actually, forced upon) the Creek Indians.

In making his speech, Crockett takes a stand in direct opposition to the man who had convinced him to run for congress and who expected his undying support in return, President Andrew Jackson. Although Crockett’s fellow congressmen wildly applaud his remarks (which almost certainly did not happen!), the president is not amused, and Crockett is defeated in the next election.

Crockett’s main motivation for arguing against breaking the treaties is that he had given his word that they would be kept. The extent to which he is also compelled by some higher principles is hard for me to say, but perhaps that is enough: I made a promise, and I keep my promises.

Now, there is much that is objectionable about Davy Crockett. I can see why Disney shows a disclaimer before it. The whole history of the “Indian Wars” is at the very least problematic, and at the worst tragic. Crockett may be more concerned with his integrity than with achieving social justice.

But I am more forgiving of historical persona who at least give hints of being just than are those who need them to be perfect—by current standards at least—in order to be admired. And when I was twelve years old, Davy Crockett’s courageous speech taking on the president himself must have really touched me, because it touched me the other night when I heard it again for the first time in perhaps 65 years. Maybe it touched me because it’s the kind of thing that continues to be hard for me to do.

There’s a lesson in that scene: we don’t have to be right about everything in order to be right about ourselves and our values. Perhaps if more of us where at least true to ourselves, we’d be in better shape as a nation than we are now. We might even solve some of our problems.

Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier is probably more fiction than fact. But it’s the kind of fiction that, when incorporated into the real world, can inspire us to better behavior and greater good. That’s not so bad, and it is much needed these days.

(Oh, I forgot to mention that at the end of his speech, Congressman Crockett tears the offending bill in half and lets its two pieces drift to the floor. Not the last time that kind of thing happened in the House of Representatives...)