“I waited on the President and the Attorney-General. One of them was civil, and the other grave.... I endeavored to enforce conviction on the mind of Mr. Lincoln of the necessity of meeting the aggressions of Barbary by retaliation. He waived the subject, and amused me with predictions of a political millennium which was about to happen in the United States. The millennium was to usher in upon us as the irresistible consequence of the goodness of heart, integrity of mind, and correctness of disposition of Mr. Jefferson. All nations, even pirates and savages, were to be moved by the influence of his persuasive virtue and masterly skill in diplomacy.” Eaton’s interviews probably took place at the moment when the Louisiana treaty confirmed the Cabinet in its peace policy and in reliance on diplomacy. In March, 1804, Eaton succeeded in returning to the Mediterranean as naval agent, but without special powers for the purpose he had in mind. “The President becomes reserved; the Secretary of War ‘believes we had better pay tribute,’--he said this to me in his own office. Gallatin, like a cowardly Jew, shrinks behind the counter. Mr. Madison ‘leaves everything to the Secretary of the Navy Department.’ And I am ordered on the expedition by Secretary Smith,--who, by the by, is as much of a gentleman and a soldier as his relation with the Administration will suffer,--without any special instructions to regulate my conduct.” With no other authority to act as a military officer than a vague recommendation from the President as a man who was likely to be extremely useful to Barron, Eaton returned with Barron’s large squadron. He felt himself ill-treated, for he was irritable and self-asserting by nature, and was haunted by a fixed idea too unreasonable for the President to adopt; but he chose to act without authority rather than not act at all, for he was born an adventurer, and difficulties which seemed to cooler heads insurmountable were nothing in his eyes. Sept. 5, 1804, he arrived at Malta, and thence sailed to Alexandria; for in the meanwhile Hamet had been driven to take refuge in Egypt, and Eaton on reaching Cairo, Dec. 8, 1804, found that the object of his search was shut up in Minyeh on the Nile with some rebellious Mamelukes, besieged by the viceroy’s troops. After infinite exertions and at no little personal danger, Eaton brought Hamet to Alexandria, where they collected some five hundred men, of whom one hundred were Christians recruited on the spot. Eaton made a convention with Hamet, arranged a plan of joint operations with Barron, and then at about the time when President Jefferson was delivering his second Inaugural Address, the navy agent led his little army into the desert with the courage of Alexander the Great, to conquer an African kingdom.