Any regular reader of this blog will realize that I have read a great deal about the Mexican-American War. One thing that has repeatedly puzzled me was the treatment of Nicholas Trist, the man who negotiated the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo. Here was a man who had been a personal secretary for Thomas Jefferson, a private secretary for Andrew Jackson, and the number two man at the State Department. Nonetheless, President Polk excoriated the man. Why? Trist comes across as such a reasonable fellow and yet so many figures of the time hated him. What gives?
Recently, I started reading some primary documents, notably the correspondence between General Winfield Scott and Nicholas Trist. When Trist arrived in Vera Cruz, General Scott was already in Jalapa in the wake of his victory at Cerro Gordo, so Trist was forced to correspond with general until he could tag along with a supply train to the Mexican interior. It is hard to describe just how full of himself Trist is when reading his letters. In one particular letter, his average sentence was 57 words long. The average sentence. The longest proved to be 224 words. One sentence. Here it is:
Now, sir, in reply to this, all I have to do is to deliver to you— as I hereby do in writing—(and this for the second time, unless my first letter was far more enigmatical than I believe it could seem to any honest men, who, upon their conscience and honor, should be called to respond to the questions, whether you had or had not, in this instance, been guilty of a wanton contempt of orders; and whether this offence had or had not been aggravated by the character of the pretenses under which the contempt was indulged in, and the contumacy sought to be covered up)—I have, I say, sir, to deliver you this message from your commander-in-chief, the President to of the United States, to wit: “When the communication, bearing the seal of the Department of State, and addressed ‘to his excellency the minister of foreign relations of the Mexican republic,’ shall be placed in the hands of the general-in-chief of the United States army in Mexico, it is the will, order, and command of the President of the United States, that the said communication shall forthwith be transmitted to its destination under flag of truce; which flag of truce is to proceed from the head-quarters of the army, and is to be a flag of truce from the general-in-chief.
This one sentence is more than a fifth of the entire letter. The tone is consistent throughout. Trist berates General Scott like one might a willful child. This is the sort of letter that could convince the recipient to challenge the writer to a duel. After reading the letter, I had a strong dislike for Trist. Trist's correspondence with Secretary of State James Buchanan contains similarly overlong sentence, though not the insults. Ah, now I see.
