In the army he acquired boundless popularity from his fun-making qualities.  In these days he was always merry.  Bursts of laughter generally greeted Crockett’s approach and followed his departure.  He was blessed with a memory which seemed absolutely never to have forgotten anything.  His mind was an inexhaustable store-house of anecdote.  These he had ever at command.  Though they were not always, indeed were seldom, of the most refined nature, they were none the less adapted to raise shouts of merriment in cabin and camp.  What Sydney Smith was at the banqueting board in the palatial saloon, such was David Crockett at the campfire and in the log hut.  If ever in want of an illustrative anecdote he found no difficulty in manufacturing one.

His thoughtless kindness of heart and good nature were inexhaustible.  Those in want never appealed to him in vain.  He would even go hungry himself that he might feed others who were more hungry.  He would, without a moment’s consideration, spend his last dollar to buy a blanket for a shivering soldier, and, without taking any merit for the deed, would never think of it again.  He did it without reflection, as he breathed.

Such was the David Crockett who, from the mere love of adventure, left wife and children, in the awful solitude of the wilderness, to follow General Jackson in a march to Pensacola.  He seems fully to have understood the character of the General, his merits and his defects.  The main body of the army, consisting of a little more than two thousand men, had already commenced its march, when Crockett repaired to a rendezvous, in the northern frontiers of Alabama, where another company was being formed, under Major Russel, soon to follow.  The company numbered one hundred and thirty men, and commenced its march.

They forded the Tennessee River at Muscle Shoals, and marched south unmolested, through the heart of the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations, and pressed rapidly forward two or three hundred miles, until they reached the junction of the Tombeckbee and Alabama rivers, in the southern section of the State.  The main army was now but two days’ march before them.  The troops, thus far, had been mounted, finding sufficient grazing for their horses by the way.  But learning that there was no forage to be found between there and Pensacola, they left their animals behind them, under a sufficient guard, at a place called Cut-off, and set out for the rest of the march, a distance of about eighty miles, on foot.  The slight protective works they threw up here, they called Fort Stoddart.

These light troops, hardy men of iron nerves, accomplished the distance in about two days.  On the evening of the second day, they reached an eminence but a short distance out from Pensacola, where they found the army encamped.  Not a little to Crockett’s disappointment, he learned that Pensacola was already captured.  Thus he lost his chance of having “a small taste of British fighting.”