Digital History
David Crockett Announces his Decision to Move to Texas
Digital History ID 308

Author:   David Crockett
Date:1834

Annotation:

In this selection, Crockett complains of Jackson's sway with American voters, calling them "Volunteer Slaves," and announces his plans to leave the United States and move to Texas.


Document:

I wrote you a short time ago and as I have caught a leisure moment I will write again although I can add but little.... The western & southern men dare not to sustain Jackson in his mad Caesar [like rages] and when they refuse all the blood in the nation will be let loos[e] on them.

The time has come that virtue is expected to be transferable and as negotiable and a promissory note of hand in these days of glory and Jackson and reform &c. [L]ittle Van [Martin van Buren] set in his chair and looks as Sly as a red fox and I have no doubt but that he thinks Andrew Jackson has full power to transfer the people of these United States at his will and I am afraid that a majority of free Citizens will submit to it and Say amen. Jackson done it, it is right. If we judge by the past, we can reach no other calculations.

I have almost given up the ship as lost, I have gone so far as to declare that if Martin Van Buren is elected that I will leave the United States for I never will live under his Kingdom. [B]efore I will submit to his government I will go to the Wilds of Texas. I will consider that government a Paradise to what this government will before I never will...submit to his government[.] In fact at this time our Republican Government has dwindled almost into insignificance, our boasted land of liberty have almost bowed to the yoke of Bondage our happy days of Republican principles are near at an end when a few is to transfer the many[.] This is Van Buren principles. There is more slaves in New York and Pennsylvania than there is in Virginia and South Carolina and they are the meanest kind of slaves; they are volunteer slaves....

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