Conversations in Management: Davy Crockett

"You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas." -Davy Crockett

Davy Crockett delivered this line to an appreciative after-dinner audience on January 5, 1836 in Nacogdoches, Texas. The crowd loved it and Davy knew he’d finally gotten it right. It will probably surprise some folks to learn that Davy Crockett, like most politicians, had a stump speech that he burnished till it glowed like a new penny. He’d coined this particular phrase a little more than two years earlier in a speech about the likely presidential candidacy of Martin Van Buren—a man he detested. People seemed to like it so he kept playing with it until he got the words just right—by which time, of course, he was already in Texas. In the process, the “you” had switched from Van Buren to the constituents who had recently declined to send him back to a fourth term in congress—but the general sentiment was the same.

Now folks, who found that last bit of information surprising, will be even more surprised to learn that Davy Crockett had expected to spend 1836 running for President on the Whig party ticket against the aforementioned, Martin Van Buren. This was no idle dream. The Whigs had sent Crockett on two east coast trips to test his candidacy. He proved to be wildly popular. In his plain-spoken frontiersman way, he seemed the perfect foil to the urbane and prim Van Buren. Of course it didn’t hurt that he was America’s favorite celebrity at the time. The most popular play of the day featured a buck-skin clad hero named Col. Nimrod Wildfire who, despite the playwright’s denials, everyone immediately recognized as Davy Crockett. His own best-selling book, A Narrative of the Life of Davy Crockett cemented his fame.

All Crockett needed to secure his future was reelection. He didn’t think it would be a problem, but Andrew Jackson thought otherwise and ensured Crockett’s defeat. Though he had never had any particular interest in Texas, the public expected him to follow through on his promise and actually go. And so he went; figuring it might be a good way to restart his political career. Unfortunately, everyone along the way expected him to go and fight, though that had never entered his mind. So it was that Davy Crockett found himself in the Alamo—willing of course to die—but there largely because the public left him no other choice.

Crockett’s dilemma is not unlike the one many of us face today. Often we find ourselves behaving in ways that are aimed at pleasing everyone but ourselves. Work, family and social expectations lash us like belligerent mules until we drop. What’s more, our time slips away like air leaving a balloon because we can’t say no. As we are propelled towards someone else’s vision of us, we can barely remember who we are or who we hoped to be. We end up being prisoners of someone else’s expectations.

There are Alamo moments in everyone’s life—times that test your mettle and demand much from you. When they come, be sure they are your moments. Don’t let yourself be drawn into situations where you’re asked to put everything on the line for something you really don’t believe in. And if you’re not careful, it can happen before you know it.

I suspect Davy Crockett thought about the White House and of the presidency as dawn cracked the horizon on March 6, 1836. He was probably wryly amused by the events that led him to San Antonio de Bexar. A year and a day later, Martin Van Buren became the eighth President of the United States.