the roll of daring and skilful officers the memory of whose gallantry
pervades the service and renders it more effective than its ships
and its guns.

The Administration yielded to the popular feeling, and attempted to
claim for themselves the credit of these feats of arms, which they had
neither expected nor desired. A new fleet was fitted out, comprising our
whole navy except five ships. Here again the cloven foot became visible.
Preble, who had proved himself a captain of whom any nation might be
proud, was superseded by Commodore Barron, on a question of seniority
etiquette, which might have been easily settled, had the Government so
wished it.

Eaton had spent a year at home, urging upon the authorities, whenever
the settlement of his accounts took him to Washington, more effective
measures against Tripoli,--and particularly an alliance with Hamet
Caramanli, the Ex-Pacha, who had been driven from his throne by his
brother Jusuf, a much more able man. In spite of his bitter flings at
their do-nothing policy, the Administration sent him out in the fleet,
commissioned as General Agent for the Barbary Regencies, with the
understanding that he was to join Hamet and assist him in an attack upon
Derne. His instructions were vague and verbal; he had not even a letter
to our proposed ally. Eaton was aware of his precarious position; but
the hazardous adventure suited his enterprising spirit, and he
determined to proceed in it. "If successful, for the public,--if
unsuccessful, for myself," he wrote to a friend, quoting from his
classical reminiscences; "but any personal risk," he added, with a
rhetorical flourish, "is better than the humiliation of treating with a
wretched pirate for the ransom of men who are the rightful heirs
of freedom."