Davy Crockett

Davy Crockett came to define the image of the frontiersman while fighting for U.S. expansion on multiple fronts. During the Creek War (1813–14), he served with the Tennessee militia under Andrew Jackson and participated in the Battle of Tallushatchee, in which 186 Red Stick Creeks, including women and children, were killed. Following Jackson’s election as president, Crockett frequently opposed his policies, most notably the Indian Removal Act (1830), which he lambasted as “oppression with a vengeance.”

This portrait, painted in Boston while Crockett was promoting his autobiography (1834), presents him in the guise of a gentleman, as befit his position as a Tennessee congressman (1827–31; 1833–35). After his last term, Crockett headed west, joining Anglo-American settlers who had been promised land in exchange for fighting for Texan independence from Mexico. He died at the Battle of the Alamo in San Antonio on March 6, 1836.