EATON, WILLIAM (1764-1811), American soldier, was born in Woodstock, Conn., on Feb. 23, 1764. He was a school teacher for several years, graduated at Dartmouth college in 179o, and in 1792 entered the army as a captain, later serving against the Indians in Ohio and Georgia. In 1797 he was appointed con sul to Tunis, where he arrived in Feb. 1799. In March 1799, with the consuls to Tripoli and Algiers, he negotiated alterations in the treaty of 1797 with Tunis. He rendered great service to Danish merchantmen by buying on credit several Danish prizes in Tunis and turning them over to their original owners for the redemption of his notes. In 1803 he quarrelled with the bey, was ordered from the country, and returned to the United States. In 1804 he returned to the Mediterranean as United States naval agent to the Barbary States with Barron's fleet. On Feb. 23, 1805, he agreed with Ahmet that the United States should undertake to re-establish him in Tripoli, that the expenses of the expedition should be repaid to the United States by Ahmet, and that Eaton should be general and commander-in-chief of the land forces in Ahmet's campaign. In making the arrangement Eaton far exceeded his authority. On March 8 he started for Derna across the Libyan desert from the Arab's Tower, 4o m. west of Alexan dria, with a force of about 50o men, including a few Americans, about 4o Greeks and some Arab cavalry. In the march of nearly 600 m. the camel-drivers and the Arab chiefs repeatedly mutinied, and Ahmet Pasha once put himself at the head of the Arabs and ordered them to attack Eaton. Ahmet more than once wished to give up the expedition. But on April 27, with the assistance of three bombarding cruisers, Eaton captured Derna—an exploit commemorated by Whittier's poem Derne. In May and again in June he successfully withstood the attacks of Tripolitan forces sent to dislodge him. On June 12 he abandoned the town upon orders from Commodore Rodgers, for peace had already been made (June 4) with Yussuf, the de facto pasha of Tripoli. Eaton returned to the United States, and received a grant of io,000 ac. in Maine from the Massachusetts legislature. According to a deposition which he made in 1807 he was approached by Aaron Burr (q.v.), who attempted to enlist him in his "conspiracy." As he received from the Government, soon after making this depo sition, about $1o,000 to liquidate claims for his expense in Tripoli, which he had long pressed in vain, his good faith has been doubted. At Burr's trial at Richmond in i 807 Eaton was one of the wit nesses, but his testimony was unimportant. He died on June 1, 181 i, in Brimfield, Mass.
See the anonymously published Life of the Late Gen. William Eaton (Brookfield, Mass., 1813) by Charles Prentiss; C. C. Felton, "Life of William Eaton" in Sparks's Library of American Biography, vol. ix. (Boston, 1838) ; Gardner W. Allen's Our Navy and the Barbary Corsairs (Boston, 19o5) ; and William Abbott, "A Forgotten Hero, William Eaton," Mag. of Hist., vol. vi., pp. i.-ii. (19o7). See also E. A. Powell, Gentlemen Rovers (1913) ; and M. Minnigerode, Lives and Times (1925) .