Davy Crockett's Last Stand

Davy Crockett, a frontiersman and congressman from Tennessee, lost reelection to the U.S. Congress in 1831 after opposing President Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act, a law that forced the Cherokee from land they legally owned and that led to the “Trail of Tears.” Though Crockett won when he ran again in 1833, he soon suffered another defeat. In is autobiography he wrote, “I told the people of my district that I would serve them as faithfully as I had done; but if not . . . you may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas.”

Following his last defeat, he headed for Texas. He was subsequently trapped in the Alamo by Santa Anna’s Mexican troops. After the battle, Ben, a former American slave who acted as cook for one of Santa Anna’s officers, maintained that Crockett’s body was found in the barracks surrounded by at least sixteen Mexican bodies and that Crockett’s knife was stuck in one of them.