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Defiant Peacemaker: Nicholas Trist in the Mexican War. By Wallace Ohrt. (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1998. Pp, xi, 190. $29.95)
Wallace Ohrt's Defiant Peacemaker: Nicholas Trist in the Mexican War seeks to elevate the reputation of the controversial American author of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Through an examination of Trist's correspondence, Ohrt takes an intimate look at the recalcitrant diplomat from his formative years at the feet of Thomas Jefferson to his career in public service. Ohrt hopes to reveal a more sympathetic Trist who, by working through adversity that threatened his own career, provided Americans a less onerous take on the Mexican War.
Ohrt's book is really two separate and distinctive works. The first chronicles Trist's development as a young man from rather dysfunctional circumstances in Louisiana to an opportune residency at Monticello, where he was mentored by the venerable sage and ultimately joined the family as husband to Jefferson's granddaughter Virginia. Ohrt describes how Trist's character was honed by a life that vacillated between struggle and comfort and that brought him into contact with some of the most significant luminaries of the day. Ohrt offers interesting accounts of Trist's matriculation at the fledgling young military academy at West Point, his legal efforts to liquidate Jefferson's estate, and his ascension to public service with a clerkship at the Department of State.
This section of the book, although rich in the language and imagery of Trist and his correspondents, is one-dimensional, relying almost solely on the participant's own version of events. Thus, the reader must take care to consider many of...