The Administration steadily upheld Lear; and good Democrats, who saw every measure refracted through the dense medium of party-spirit, of course defended their leaders, and took fire at Eaton’s overbearing manner and insulting intolerance of their opinions.  Thus, although the general sentiment of the country was strongly in his favor, at Washington he made many enemies.  A resolution was introduced into the House of Representatives to present him with a medal, or with a sword; it was violently opposed by John Randolph and others, postponed from time to time, and never passed.  Eaton received neither promotion, nor pecuniary compensation, nor an empty vote of thanks.  He had even great delay and difficulty in obtaining the settlement of his accounts[4] and the repayment of the money advanced by him.

Disappointment, debt, and hard drinking soon brought Eaton’s life to a close.  He died in obscurity in 1811.  Among his papers was found a list of officers who composed a Court Martial held in Ohio by General St. Clair in 1793.  As time passed, he had noted in the margin of the paper the fate of each man.  All were either “Dead” or “Damned by brandy.”  His friends might have completed the melancholy roll by writing under his name the same epitaph.

However wrong Eaton may have been in manners and in morals, he seems to have been right in complaining of the treatment he received from the Administration.  The organs of the Government asserted that Eaton had exceeded his instructions, and had undertaken projects the end of which could not be foreseen,—­that the Administration had never authorized any specific engagement with Hamet, an inefficient person, and not at all the man he was supposed to be,—­and that the alliance with him was much too expensive and dangerous to justify its further prosecution.  Unfortunately for this view of the case, the dealings of the United States with Hamet dated back to the beginning of the war with Tripoli.  A diversion in his favor was no new project, but had been considered for more than three years.  Eaton and Cathcart had recommended it in 1801, and Government approved of the plan.  In 1802, when Jusuf Pacha offered Hamet the Beyship of Benghazi and Derne, to break up these negotiations, the United States Consuls promised him Jusuf’s throne, if he would refuse the offer, and threatened, if he accepted it, to treat him as an enemy, and to send a frigate to prevent him from landing at Derne.  Later, when the Bey of Tunis showed some inclination to surrender Hamet to his brother, the Consuls furnished him with the means of escape to Malta.  In 1803, he crossed over to Derne in an English brig, hoping to receive assistance from the American fleet; but Commodore Morris left him to his own resources; he was unable to hold his ground, and fled to Egypt.  All this was so well known at home, that members of the Opposition in Congress jokingly accused the Administration of undertaking to decide constitutional questions for the people of Tripoli.