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QUESTION: Alleged Davy Crockett Speech, Not Yours To Give

Submitted by LD50 on Thu, 03/22/2007 - 3:52am
question / pregunta: 

There is a speech attributed to Davy Crockett, Not Yours To Give that can be found all over the internet. It appears to have first surfaced and circulated (as legit) in print in the early 60s among right wing tax protest groups. It even found its way into the wikipedia entry on Davy Crockett and from there links to Texas Congressman Ron Paul's government website as a source, saying that it was Originally published in "The Life of Colonel David Crockett," by Edward Sylvester Ellis.

http://www.house.gov/paul/nytg.htm

It states Crockett was so fond of this speech he had 100s of copies printed up, yet in my preliminary research I can find no record of it in the Register of Debates of the period at the Congressional Record website:

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwrd.html

It apparently does not come from the only book Crockett co-authored, (he was functionally illiterate until late in his life and could only read and write marginally even then), but rather from this book, The Life of Colonel David Crockett, by Edward Sylvester Ellis, a man born long after Crockett died at the Alamo and who wrote mostly "dime novels" of the day:

http://www.ulib.niu.edu/badndp/ellis_edward.html

Like this one:

http://www.bigredhair.com/steamman/index.html

I suspect this alleged "Crockett speech" is pure fiction. Can you verify it, or are my suspicions correct?

Thank you, Rad Refs.

UPDATE 9/23/2009:
We closed comments on this question because it became a flame/spam magnet.

Answers

Answer posted by: cransell

The Register of Debates (which covers Davy Crockett's first two terms in Congress from 1827-1831) and the Congressional Globe (which covers his last term in Congress from 1833-1835) do not provide verbatim transcripts of speeches made on the House floor. There is no way to know therefore if the text of the speech that has been widely distributed is true to what Davy Crockett said.
(click for more)

However, there is a historical record that supports a similar story - the House considered a bill of relief for the family of deceased general Brown in April of 1828 and Davy Crockett is on record opposing that bill and offering personal support to the family. You can read the (very brief) summary of that in the Register of Debates here. Crockett's comments are summarized at the bottom right of the page.

Answer posted by: jbeek

It appears that this query gets a lot of attention, and so needs to have the most complete answer possible. We asked Tennessee historian Ann Toplovich to help us sort out the real US Congressman David Crockett from the dime-novel fictionalized character Davy Crockett. She in turn queried the larger TN historical community. Her summary of the results can be found here.