EATON, ‘VILL1AII ( 1764-181 ) . An Ameri can adventurer, prominent in the war between the tinted States and Tripoli. Ile was born in Woodstock. Conn.: ran away from home at six teen; joined the army and served until 17S3: and graduated at Dartmouth in 1790. In 1792 he rejoined the army as a captain, and served suc cessivel• against the Shawnees in Ithio and the Seminoles in Georgia until 179S, when he was appointed American consul in Tunis. On the outbreak of the Tripolitan War in ISOI he ar ranged with Hamet, the rightful Pa-ha of Trip oli. for a combined land and naval attack upon Tripoli; hut he was unable to secure the coop eration of the American naval officers. He then returned to the United States, in 1803, and in April. 1804. was appointed Naval Agent of the United States for the Barbary Powers. Late in the same year he returned to northern Africa. and raised a force of five hundred men, with which in March, I505. he set nut across the Libyan Desert for Derne. the second city in importance in the Tripnlitan Regency. This
place was captured by storm on April 27. and was held against three subsequent attacks on the part of the Arahs. Soon afterwards. how ever, Tobias Lear, the United States Consul General at Algiers, and Commodore Rodgers, commander of the United States fleet before Tripoli, concluded with the usurping Pasha, Jussuf, a treaty which provided, among other things, for the immediate evacuation of Derne, and Eaton was thus forced to give up his cher ished scheme of restoring Unmet and obtaining more favorable terms for the United States Gov ernment. He accordingly returned to America in the fall of 1505. Consult: The Life of the Late General William Eaton (Brookfield. Mass., 1S13) ; Felton. "Life of William Eaton." in Sparks. Library of American Biography, vol. ix. Boston. 1835) ; and the brief sketch in Adams's History of the United ,?tates from 1801 to 1817, ii. (New York, 1889-91).