of suspension not confirmed by the Secretary of War. In 1797 he was sent as consul to Tunis, where he remained until the outbreak of the war with Tripoli in 1801. Tunis was the nearest neighbor to Tripoli, about four hundred miles away; and the consul held a position of much delicacy and importance. In the year 1801 an elder brother of the reigning Pacha of Tripoli resided in Tunis, and to him Eaton turned in the hope of using his services. This man, Hamet Caramelli, the rightful Pacha of Tripoli, had been driven into exile some eight or nine years before by a rebellion which placed his younger brother Yusuf on the throne. Eaton conceived the idea of restoring Hamet, and by this act of strength impressing all the Mahometan Powers with terror of the United States. In pursuit of this plan he spent more than twenty thousand dollars, embroiled himself with the Bey of Tunis, quarrelled with the naval commanders, and in 1803 returned to America to lay his case before the President and Congress.
Although no one could be surprised that the President and his Cabinet hesitated to put themselves without reserve in the hands of an adventurer, Eaton's anger was extreme at finding the Government earnest for peace rather than war. Himself a Connecticut Federalist, a close friend of Timothy Pickering, he expressed his feelings in his private letters with the bitterness as well as with the humor of his class.[1]
- ↑ Life of General William Eaton, Brookfield, 1813, p. 262.
