Manning, Thomas Courtland (1825–1887)

Thomas Courtland Manning (b. 14 September 1825; d. 11 October 1887), Louisiana lawyer, public official, and U.S. minister to Mexico. Manning was educated at the University of North Carolina before reading law. On 18 January 1848, he married Mary Blair. Before moving to Louisiana in 1855, he taught school and practiced law in North Carolina. During the Civil War he was a brigadier general in the Confederate army. He served as an associate justice of Louisiana's Supreme Court in 1864–1865 and 1882–1886, and as chief justice from 1877 to 1880.

He was envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to Mexico from 30 August 1886 until 21 September 1887. In December 1886, he filed a claim against Mexico for the killing of Captain Emmet Crawford, a U.S. citizen, by Mexican rural volunteers. During his short service he intervened on behalf of various U.S. entrepreneurs, especially in mining, railroads, and real estate.

See alsoUnited States-Latin American Relations .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

James Morton Callahan, American Foreign Policy in Mexican Relations (1932); Dictionary of American Biography, vol. 6 (1961), p. 253.

National Cyclopedia of American Biography, vol. 4 (1892), p. 344; Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Louisiana, vol. 1 (1892), pp. 93, 97, 112.

Luis G. Zorrilla, Historia de las relaciones entre México y los Estados Unidos de América, 1800–1958, 2 vols. (1965–1966).

Additional Bibliography

Duarte Espinosa, María de Jesús. Frontera y diplomacia: Las relaciones México-Estados Unidos durante el porfiriato. México: Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, 2001.

Johnson, Richard L. Manning: The Life & Times of Thomas Courtland Manning (1825–1887). Baltimore, MD: Gateway Press, 2005.

                                  Thomas Schoonover