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Race and (In)justice on the Mississippi
An Episode from "The Journals of the Davy Crockett"
THOMAS C. BUCHANAN
| An assessment of "The Journals of the Davy Crockett" must begin with Michael Allen's classic study of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century flatboating. Allen argues that by the Jacksonian years, when the Davy Crockett drifted downriver, flatboatmen's lives were less rough and violent than those of their eighteenth-century counterparts. While commerce had always been central to the river journeys, he writes, by the 1830s flatboatmen were increasingly market-minded as cargoes grew in size and markets expanded along the "coasts" of the lower Mississippi River. In addition, the invention of the steamboat enabled these men to return quickly home after their journeys and therefore to cultivate riverside community and family life. According to Allen, it was during this period that stories of Alligator Horse frontier boatmen became popular, because the work experience itself was becoming more civilized.1 |
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In many ways, the journal reveals the sort of men Allen studies. Its author, Asbury C. Jaquess, the clerk of the vessel, is not a tough-talking, hard-drinking, violent frontiersman but instead a literate, community-minded farmer from Posey County, Indiana. Jaquess reads stories of violence and adventure (including the life of Davy Crockett and the life of William Wallace) as he travels, but his own life is less dramatic. Jaquess would have had more in common with a shopkeeper than with these historic figures. Jaquess reports the murder of a steward on another boat, but for the most part the famously rough culture of flatboating is absent. "Cave-in-Rock," the old pirate den along the Ohio River, is now a tourist destination. Rather than fighting or drinking, Jaquess goes to church and worries about the market for his goods. Should he sell the hams individually or insist on selling them in conjunction with barrel pork? Jaquess's thoughts betray a mind that is savvy in market dealings. He learns quickly what is in demand at various points along the river, discovering, for example, that plantation owners prefer barrel pork for their slaves. He knows, as he frees up space on his flatboat through the sale of foodstuffs in Mississippi and Louisiana, that he should load wood for sale even further south. Jaquess's sober habits continue once he arrives in the city of sin, New Orleans. Rather than spend his money on a spree, he carefully purchases goods for consumption and sale back home. Indiana remains on his mind throughout his journey, and he frequently mentions his joy at seeing other friends from home on the river. The transportation revolution allows him to return just a few months after leaving. While Jaquess's business takes him away from home, he never sheds his "hoosier" identity. |
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The incident that makes "The Journals of the Davy Crockett" significant in comparison to dozens of similar accounts is Jaquess's description of the execution of a "first rate looking black fellow" named Nat in Natchez on January 30, 1835.2 Apparently drawn by the lure of the spectacle, Jaquess left his flatboat and walked up to the Natchez jail, where he waited for half an hour before twelve armed guards escorted the prisoner from his cell. Jaquess watched as the man got on a cart, sat on his coffin, and rode to the gallows. "Without any visible marks of fear" Nat looked over the crowd. What followed, as Jaquess reported it, was a misunderstanding: the sheriff "told him [Nat] if he had any thing to say to speak" and Nat replied with a question of his own. He asked if the sheriff would give him time to speak, something that Jaquess reports had already been granted. The sheriff then either willfully disregarded Nat's request or took the prisoner's hesitation as a sign that he had uttered his last words. Either might have misunderstood the other, revealing a potentially profound difference in the inflection of their speech. In any case, the sheriff let the trapdoor down and Nat was dead in a few minutes. |
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