While I was in college, I was asked to create this
blog and for this particular post I was to read Catherine Albanese’s article
called “Savage, Sinner, and Saved: Davy Crockett, Camp Meetings and the Wild
Frontier,” discussing the mores of the early nineteenth century by examining Crockett Almanac and other sources. What struck me about the article was the reference
to Davy Crockett’s political campaigns.
Apparently
thus almanac told highly fictionalized stories about the frontiersman turned
politician. The almanac encouraged violence, depicting the fictionalized
Crockett killing animals with his bare hands and fighting people of all races
and ethnicities, including Whites, Blacks, Mexicans and of course Indians.
Albanese cites the use of alcohol as a form of manliness including quoting how
Davy Crockett as a boy supposedly drank a pint of whiskey with breakfast and a
quart at lunch. Albanese further says that often these stories would end with a
political message like people wanting to make Crockett president after
displaying a great feat of strength. Albanese brings a point that these stories
were not historical in nature. Crockett had been dead for up to twenty years by
the time that many of these stories were written. Albanese indicates that these
stories were moral tales. A form of propaganda to show the rest of America the
best way to go out west. That the only way was through strength. That it did not matter whether that strength
be physical or political, it encouraged the idea superiority among whites as
Americans. The idea of might makes right is still in use today.
We do not have to look very far to see the modern
version of exaggerated strength and violence through satire just think of the
last Chuck Norris joke you have heard. Or even the last Action movie you
watched. Americans still associate
strength and violence with manliness and power. One can here the desire for
political strength in any politician’s speech, although the feat of strength
may have changed but Americans still expect presidents George W. Bush to save
the world from terrorists after 9/11. The belief that Barak Obama should save
America from financial ruin, health care worries, political party back biting
etc. And of course most recently Donald
Trump’s rhetoric that America must me be made great again! As if America has
fallen and needs a new Davy Crockett to battle the world for her sake.
There are two main differences between the Crockett
almanacs and today’s media. One, the media outlets are greater instead of a
publication in the form of a magazine or newspaper it is now on television news
agencies, movies and the internet spreading a message wider than any nineteenth
century publication could. The second is the audience is wider, such sentiment
is not just directed at whites anymore, and such messages are carried to all
races and ethnicities. The term American has a far greater inclusion than in
the nineteenth century. This being said,
the message really hasn’t changed in two hundred years.
Bush, George W. Decision Points. New York: Crown Publishers. 2010.
Catherine Albanese, “Savage, Sinner, and Saved: Davy Crockett, Camp Meetings and the Wild Frontier,” American Quarterly 33:5 (1981): 482-501. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2712799
Scherer, Michael. “How Barack Obama Became Mr. Unpopular.” Time Magazine, September 2, 2010. http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2015779,00.html
