Biography Page 2
In 1846, she began to work as a journalist for the New York Sun, and its editor, Moses Yale Beach. She wrote about expansion and annexation, and became a confidant of Beach. The Mexican-American War broke out that same year. Because she could speak Spanish, and as a result of her relationship with Beach, she joined him as part of a secret mission, authorized by President Polk, to negotiate peace terms with the Mexican government. Although the negotiations failed, she was able to procure vital information for the American General Winfield Scott, and in so doing, became the first female war correspondent, and the only person, during the war, to write about events while behind enemy lines. [8]
Cazneau returned to New York and began writing for the United States Magazine and Democratic Review, and its editor John L. O’Sullivan. He was also an advocate for expansion and annexation, and is the person credited with first using the phrase “Manifest Destiny.” In an article entitled Annexation, O’Sullivan, supposedly, wrote the fateful lines where the country first heard the words used together, that it was “our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.”{9]
In 2001, historian Linda S. Hudson disputed the claim that O’Sullivan coined the phrase “Manifest Destiny”, and credited Cazneau with being the true author. Since Cazneau did not always sign her name to her work, Hudson argued that the article was assumed to be O’Sullivan’s, as he was the editor of the paper. Hudson used a grammar-check computer program to create her argument. [10]
When the war ended, in 1848, the United States gained a huge portion of land, but Cazneau wanted to annex the entire country of Mexico, and supported the All-Mexico movement. Thus, the outcome was somewhat of a failure to her. She continued to lobby for the annexation of Cuba, and its liberation from Spain, as well as the annexation of the Caribbean island Santo Domingo (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic).
She became the editor for an underground newspaper in New York, called La Verdad. The paper supported Narciso Lopez and his quest to liberate Cuba from Spain.[11] She advocated the filibustering campaigns of William Walker in Nicaragua.[12] She continued to write during this time, with expansion and annexation as her themes, and wrote The Queen of Islands and the King of Rivers in 1850, urging annexation of Cuba and a defense of the institution of slavery in America. In 1852, after living in Texas, she wrote Eagle Pass; or, Life on the Border, where she continued to expand on the ideas that had been her passion, such as Texas, Mexico, and Cuba.