Most of you probably know Davy Crockett as a 3 year old bear-killer, the King of the Wild Frontier, and the hero of the Alamo. You might even know that he served in the House of Representatives but did you know that it was during his term as a congressman that he performed his greatest deed on behalf of his country?
One night, during his first term, Davy was standing on the steps of the Capitol with some other members of Congress when they saw the light of a great fire burning in Georgetown (on the outskirts of Washington, D.C.) Many houses were burned and many families left homeless with nothing left but the clothes on their backs. The congressmen rushed to the scene and saw the poor children shivering in the cold night. The next morning a bill was introduced appropriating $20,000 for their relief. It passed immediately and unanimously.
The next summer Col. Crockett was back in Tennessee campaigning for reelection when one of his constituents told him that although he had voted for him the first time, he would not do so again. He cited Crockett's vote to appropriate tax revenue to "some suffers by fire in Georgetown" and stated that that vote showed that "either you have not the capacity to understand the Constitution or that you are wanting in the honesty and firmness to be guided by it." The man added that taxation "reaches every man in the country...and the poorer he is the more he pays in proportion to his means" and that the power to collect and disburse that money is a most dangerous power which "opens the door for fraud, corruption, and favoritism on the one hand and for robbing the people on the other hand." He concluded by reminding Davy that Congress has no right to give charity and that once it does so, this sets a dangerous precedent--"for when Congress once begins to stretch its power beyond the limits of the Constitution, there is no end to it and no security for the people."
Seeing that the man was absolutely correct, Davy promised to mend his ways and was subsequently reelected to his seat in the House. When another charity case bill came on the floor (as was inevitable), Rep. Crockett reminded his esteemed colleagues that they did not have the power to expend their constituent's money on objects of benevolence (as James Madison had stated many years before), but they could, as individuals, give away as much of their own money as they pleased for charity. Not one of them did so. According to Crockett, "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." Things haven't changed much, have they?
Rebecca Barbour has Undergraduate degrees in Nursing and History from the Univ. of Maryland, an M.A. in Antebellum Southern History from Univ. of Charleston/The Citadel. She is copy editor of the Southern Partisan magazine, Author of South Carolina's Revolutionary War Battlefields: A Tour Guide, Treasurer of Charleston Civil War Roundtable since 1998, Chairman of the SC Southern Party and a Tour Guide at Middleton Place Plantation and Gardens. Her book reviews and articles appear in the Southern Partisan and other publicatios Her latest book, A Tour Guide Author of Richmond's Wartime Hospitals (will be published in the near future)