Back of Colonel Mann as a leader writer on the States was a remarkable
woman. She was Mrs. Jane Casneau, the wife of Gen. George Casneau, of
Texas, who had a claim before Congress. Though she was unknown to fame,
Thomas A. Benton used to say that she had more to do with making and ending
the Mexican War than anybody else.

Somewhere in the early thirties she had gone with her newly wedded husband,
an adventurous Yankee by the name of Storm, to the Rio Grande and started
a settlement they called Eagle Pass. Storm died, the Texas outbreak began,
and the young widow was driven back to San Antonio, where she met and
married Casneau, one of Houston's lieutenants, like herself a New Yorker.
She was sent by Polk with Pillow and Trist to the City of Mexico and
actually wrote the final treaty. It was she who dubbed William Walker
"the little gray-eyed man of destiny," and put the nickname "Old Fuss and
Feathers" on General Scott, whom she heartily disliked.

[Illustration: Henry Clay--Painted at Ashland by Dodge for the Hon. Andrew
Ewing of Tennessee--The Original Hangs in Mr. Watterson's Library at
"Mansfield"]

A braver, more intellectual woman never lived. She must have been a beauty
in her youth; was still very comely at fifty; but a born insurrecto and
a terror with her pen. God made and equipped her for a filibuster. She
possessed infinite knowledge of Spanish-American affairs, looked like a
Spanish woman, and wrote and spoke the Spanish language fluently. Her
obsession was the bringing of Central America into the Federal Union. But
she was not without literary aspirations and had some literary friends.
Among these was Mrs. Southworth, the novelist, who had a lovely home in
Georgetown, and, whatever may be said of her works and articles, was a
lovely woman. She used to take me to visit this lady. With Major Heiss she