In February 1835, the Portland (Maine) Courier published an invitation to Col. David Crockett from "Major Jack Downing," a fictional letter-writing confidant of Andrew Jackson's, to put their heads together and straighten out the government in a series of letters about contemporary politics for the Downing Gazette. In accepting--and thus inaugurating a newspaper correspondence between two of America's most important early comic characters which extended from February to June of 1835--Crockett responded with admiring references to President Jackson's "glorification spectacles" and to Vice-President Van Buren's teaching Deacon Willoby's "darter" to "shuffle." Seba Smith, an essentially nonpartisan Down East journalist who had created the widely admired and imitated Jack Downing, had issued that invitation to Davy Crockett; but Crockett's response, almost certainly emanating from one of the Whig journalists who used the popular Crockett's name for their pro-pagandizing, made direct reference to the letters of "J. Downing, Major," the creation...