Politics & Power Quote by Davy Crockett

Crockett’s line is a frontier gut-check aimed at a temptation as old as politics: confusing generosity with governance. He grants private charity its full moral glow, then snaps the door shut on public spending that tries to borrow that glow for itself. The contrast is doing the work. “Right as individuals” feels intimate and voluntary; “members of Congress” is institutional, bound, and therefore suspect. He’s not arguing that charity is bad. He’s arguing that virtue doesn’t transfer automatically when you swap your wallet for the Treasury.

The specific intent is disciplinary: to remind lawmakers that they are stewards, not patrons. Crockett is drawing a bright line between compassion and authority, because that line is where corruption, vanity, and vote-buying often hide. Appropriations for “charitable” causes can be politically irresistible: you get to look humane using money that isn’t yours, and you can aim it at constituents who will remember. His phrasing preemptively strips away that halo. If you want to be charitable, do it on your own dime.

Context sharpens the edge. In the early 19th century, the federal government was smaller, Americans were wary of centralized power, and “internal improvements” and relief spending were flashpoints in the ongoing fight over what Washington was for. Crockett, the self-styled plainspoken representative, leans into a populist ethic of accountability: public funds are not a communal tip jar for good intentions. It’s a warning that moral theater becomes policy fast, and once it does, it stops being charity and starts being coercion with nicer branding.