Tuesday, March 18.
Thanks to General Eaton, and his Companions.
Mr. Bradley submitted the following resolutions for consideration, which were read:
“Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That Congress entertain a high sense of the patriotism, intrepidity, and valor, of William Eaton, late General-in-chief of the army of the ex-Bashaw of Tripoli, and of Priestly N. O’Bannon, and George Washington Mann, three American officers, who, with a small number of American marines and the forces of the ex-Bashaw, composed of Greeks and Arabs, courageously marched through the Libyan desert, defeated the Tripolitan army near Derne, and took that city on the twenty-seventh day of April, eighteen hundred and five, and for the first time spread the American eagle in Africa, on the ramparts of a Tripolitan fort, and thereby contributed to release three hundred American prisoners from bondage in Tripoli.
“Resolved, As a further testimony of the gratitude of their country, that the President of the United States be requested to cause to be surveyed, within the limits of the public lands of the United States now open for sale, as the said William Eaton shall elect, a township of six miles square, to be called Derne, as a memorial of the conquest of that city, for ever; and to cause to be laid out, surveyed, and granted, to the said William Eaton, in one entire tract, within the said township, —— thousand acres; and to Priestly N. O’Bannon and George Washington Mann, each —— thousand acres; and to Arthur Campbell, Bernard O’Brian, David Thomas, and James Owen, the only surviving marines who served as volunteers in that expedition, three hundred and twenty acres each; to be granted to them, respectively, their heirs, and assigns, for ever.”