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.
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