{{Short description|American diplomat (1800–1874)}} {{Use American English|date=April 2026}} {{Use mdy dates|date=April 2026}} {{Infobox officeholder | order = 16th | office = Chief Clerk of the Department of State | term_start = August 28, 1845 | term_end = April 14, 1847 | predecessor = William S. Derrick | successor = William S. Derrick | president = James K. Polk | name = Nicholas Trist | image = Portrait of Nicholas Philip Trist, 1835.jpg | alt = | caption = Portrait by John Neagle, in 1835 | birth_name = Nicholas Trist | birth_date = June 2, 1800 | birth_place = Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S. | death_date = February 11, 1874 (aged 73) | death_place = Alexandria, Virginia, U.S. | resting_place = Ivy Hill Cemetery (Alexandria, Virginia)<ref>{{cite book |last=Wilson |first=Scott |title=Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons |url=https://www.amazon.com/Resting-Places-Burial-Famous-Persons-ebook/dp/B01M0TN508/ref=mt_kindle?_encoding=UTF8&me= |access-date=April 25, 2017 |publisher=McFarland & Company, Inc. |date=August 17, 2016}}</ref> | other_names = | occupation = | years_active = | known_for = Negotiations for the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo | notable_works = | education = United States Military Academy (did not graduate) | signature = Signature of Nicholas Philip Trist.png }} [[File:Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, last page.jpg|thumb|Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo signed by Trist]] '''Nicholas Philip Trist''' (June 2, 1800 – February 11, 1874) was an American lawyer, diplomat, planter, and businessman. Even though he had been dismissed by President James K. Polk as the negotiator with the Mexican government, he negotiated the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, which ended the Mexican–American War. The U.S. conquered Mexican territory and vastly expanded the United States. All or part of ten current states were carved out of former Mexican territory.
==Early years== Trist was born in Charlottesville, Virginia. He was the son of Hore Browse Trist, a lawyer, and Mary Brown. His grandfather was from England, while his grandmother, Elizabeth House Trist, was an acquaintance of Thomas Jefferson.<ref>{{cite book |last=Breslin |first=Thomas A. |date=October 5, 2011 |title=The Great Anglo-Celtic Divide in the History of American Foreign Relations |location= |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |page= |isbn=}}</ref><ref name=":0">[https://doi.org/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.0300500 Trist, Nicholas Philip], ''American National Biography''</ref> Trist attended West Point but did not graduate and then studied law under Thomas Jefferson. Trist served as Jefferson's personal secretary in the 1820s and became an executor of his estate.<ref name="Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia">[https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/nicholas-philip-trist Nicholas Philip Trist], ''Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia''</ref>
Trist married Virginia Jefferson Randolph, Thomas Jefferson's granddaughter, on September 11, 1824. They had three children, Martha Jefferson Trist Burke (1826–1915), Thomas Jefferson Trist (1828–1890), and Hore Browse Trist (1832–1896).<ref name="Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia" />
He served as a clerk in the U.S. State Department in 1828–1832, including a one-year assignment in 1831 as private secretary to Andrew Jackson, whom he greatly admired.<ref name="wicked" />{{rp|92–93}} Trist provided a conduit of communication for James Madison to President Jackson.<ref name="JM241" />
==Consul in Havana== Trist was appointed U.S. consul in Havana, Cuba, a Spanish territory at the time, by President Jackson, in which capacity he served from 1833 to 1841. Members of a British commission sent to Cuba to investigate violations of the treaty ending the African slave trade claimed that Trist was involved in the creation of false documents designed to mask illegal sales of Africans into bondage. For a time Trist also served as the consul in Cuba for Portugal.<ref name="scholarworks.boisestate.edu">https://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1679&context=td</ref> As U.S. consul, Trist became unpopular with New England ship captains who believed he was more interested in maintaining good relations with Cuban officials than defending their interests. Captains and merchants pressed members of Congress for Trist's removal. In late 1838 or early 1839, the British commissioner Dr. Richard Robert Madden wrote U.S. abolitionists about Trist's misuse of his post to promote slavery and earn fees from the fraudulent document schemes. A pamphlet detailing Madden's charges was published shortly before the beginning of the sensational ''Amistad'' affair, when Africans sold into slavery in Cuba managed to seize control of the schooner in which they were being transported from Havana to provincial plantations. Madden travelled to the United States, where he gave expert testimony in the trial of the ''Amistad'' Africans, explaining how false documents were used to make it appear the Africans were Cuban-born slaves.<ref name="The Island of Cuba">Madden, Richard Robert. [https://archive.org/details/islandcubaitsre00maddgoog/page/n117 <!-- pg=86 quote=richard robert madden. --> ''The Island of Cuba: Its Resources, Progress, and Prospects, Considered in Relation Especially to the Influence of Its Prosperity on the Interests of the British West India Colonies'']. London: C. Gilpin, 1849.</ref>
This exposure of the activities of the U.S. Consul General, coupled with the complaints of ship captains, caused a Congressional investigation and eventual recall of Trist in 1841 and his actions in Cuba were investigated by the House Commerce Committee which concluded there was no wrongdoing and the state department which concluded that while he could've taken more action in preventing the use of ships with the American flag participating in the illegal slave trade but that his "omission to do so has not been the result of indifference or any more corrupt motive; but of a settled conviction that any measures which he could take for the purposes alluded to would be entirely ineffectual from the impossibility of procuring such evidence as would be available in a court of justice."<ref name="scholarworks.boisestate.edu"/> and he was not charged for his inaction.
==Mexican–American War negotiator== thumb|right|300px|Map of negotiation of the border between Mexico and the United States (1845-1848) as part of the American intervention in México. Trist remained in Cuba until 1845, when President James K. Polk appointed him as a chief clerk in the State Department.<ref>[http://www.sonofthesouth.net/mexican-war/nicholas-trist.htm Nicholas Trist (biography and picture)], ''The Civil War''</ref> In 1847, during the Mexican–American War, President Polk sent Trist to negotiate with the government of Mexico. He was ordered to arrange an armistice with Mexico wherein the U.S. would offer a restitution up to $30 million U.S. dollars, depending on whether he could obtain Baja California and additional southern territory along with the already planned acquisitions of Alta California, the Nueces Strip, and New Mexico. If he could not obtain Baja California and additional territory to the south, then he was instructed to offer $20 million.<ref name=wicked/>{{rp|175}} President Polk was unhappy with his envoy's conduct which prompted him to order Trist to return to the United States. General Winfield Scott was also unhappy with Trist's presence in Mexico, although he and Scott quickly reconciled and began a lifelong friendship.<ref name=wicked>Greenberg, Amy. ''A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico''. Vintage Books, 2012.</ref>{{rp|91}}<ref name=JM241>{{cite book |last=Brookhiser |first=Richard |title=James Madison |year=2011 |publisher=Basic Book |location=New York, NY |isbn=9780465063802 |oclc=855545032 }}</ref>
Trist ignored the order to leave Mexico, and wrote a 65-page letter back to Washington, D.C. explaining his reasons for staying.<ref>Potter, David, Don E. Fehrenbacher. ''The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861''. Harper Perennial, 1976, p. 3.</ref> He capitalized on the opportunity to continue bargaining with Santa Anna offering $15 million. Trist successfully negotiated the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on February 2, 1848.<ref>Richard M. Ketchum. [https://www.americanheritage.com/thankless-task-nicholas-trist The Thankless Task Of Nicholas Trist], ''American Heritage'', August 1970, Volume 21, Issue 5.</ref> Trist's negotiation was controversial as although he acquired the territory that was required per his orders, a considerable amount of expansionist Democrats felt that more land should have been annexed, including Polk himself. While Trist was in Mexico, Polk started believing he should have demanded more territory from Mexico than what he had ordered. After receiving the treaty, Polk wrote in his diary "if the treaty was now to be made, I should demand more territory, perhaps to make the Sierra Madra the line".<ref name="archive.org">https://archive.org/details/diaryofjameskpol0003milo</ref>
Polk was furious with Trist's conduct in Mexico and promptly fired him, but decided to approve the treaty Trist had negotiated since it still included all of the territory that he found essential; he also believed that if he rejected the treaty, Congress would not approve any further aid for the military occupation of Mexico. Trist’s treaty still followed Polk’s initial orders that Congress had approved. Polk also feared, with the upcoming 1848 election, the potential of a Whig Administration coming into power before a treaty was approved; the Whigs overwhelmingly disapproved of the war and the Polk Administration, and thus may have rejected any annexation at all.<ref name="archive.org"/>
Trist later commented on the treaty, saying:
{{blockquote|"My feeling of shame as an American was far stronger than the Mexicans' could be."<ref>Dale L. Walker. [https://www.dallasnews.com/arts-entertainment/books/2011/10/23/book-review-lions-of-the-west-heroes-and-villains-of-the-westward-expansion-by-robert-morgan/ Book review: “Lions of the West: Heroes and Villains of the Westward Expansion,”] by Robert Morgan, ''The Dallas Morning News'', October 22, 2011</ref>}}
==Later years== thumb|right|Trist in his later years Upon return to Washington, Trist was immediately fired for his insubordination, and his expenses since the time of the recall order were not paid. After his dismissal, Trist moved to West Chester, Pennsylvania, and then to Philadelphia, where he worked as a railroad clerk and paymaster. Trist finally recovered his expenses in 1871, at the urging of Senator Charles Sumner.<ref name=":0" />
Trist supported Republican Abraham Lincoln for U.S. president in 1860. While the Lincoln administration did not offer Trist any patronage, he did serve as postmaster of Alexandria, Virginia, during the Grant administration.<ref name=":0" />
He died in Alexandria on February 11, 1874, aged 73.<ref name=":0" />
==References== {{Reflist}}
==Further reading== *Castel, Albert. "The Clerk Who Defied a President: Nicholas Trist's Treaty with Mexico." ''Virginia Cavalcade'' 34 (1985): 136–143. *Drexler, Robert W. ''Guilty of Making Peace: A Biography of Nicholas P. Trist''. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1991. * Nortrup, Jack. "Nicholas Trist's Mission to Mexico: A Reinterpretation." ''The Southwestern Historical Quarterly,'' Vol. 71, No. 3 (Jan., 1968), pp. 321–346. *Ohrt, Wallace. ''Defiant Peacemaker: Nicholas Trist in the Mexican War''. College Station: Texas A&M Press, 1997. * Sears, Louis Martin. "Nicholas P. Trist, A Diplomat with Ideals." ''Mississippi Valley Historical Review''11#1 (1924): 85–98. [https://doi.org/10.2307/1891928 online]
== External links == {{Commons category|Nicholas Philip Trist}} * {{Find a Grave|25310474}} * [https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/people/trist-nicholas-philip Nicholas Philip Trist (1800–1874)], ''U.S. State Department'' * {{Internet Archive author |sname=Nicholas Trist}} * [http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/inv/t/Trist,Nicholas_Philip.html Inventory of the Nicholas Philip Trist Papers, 1765-1903], in the Southern Historical Collection, UNC-Chapel Hill * [https://gw.geneanet.org/tdowling?lang=en&n=trist&oc=0&p=nicholas+philip "Nicholas Philip Browse Family Tree"]
{{s-start}}{{s-gov}} {{succession box | title=Chief Clerk of the United States State Department | before =William S. Derrick | after=William S. Derrick | years=August 28, 1845 – April 14, 1847 }} {{s-end}} {{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Trist, Nicholas}} Category:1800 births Category:1874 deaths Category:19th-century American diplomats Category:Lawyers from Alexandria, Virginia Category:Businesspeople from Charlottesville, Virginia Category:Polk administration personnel Category:Personal secretaries to the president of the United States Category:History of the Southwestern United States Category:19th-century American politicians Category:Chief Clerks of the United States Department of State Category:American people of English descent