The Pinkerton Detective Agency

 

Pinkerton's history dates back to 1850 in Chicago, when Allan Pinkerton, the original "private eye", founded Pinkerton's National Detective Agency. Pinkerton achieved national renown in 1861 when he uncovered and foiled an assassination plot on the life of Abraham Lincoln. During the Civil War, Pinkerton organized America?s first secret service. His pursuits of Jesse James, the Younger, the Dalton gangs and his longstanding pursuit of the Wild Bunch brought extraordinary visibility to his agency.

Allan Pinkerton, Scots born, is nevertheless a man of America, one of the USA's greatest historical assets. Of his contributions, biographer Sigmund A. Lavine writes, "A man of great power of observation and courage, (Pinkerton) prevented an assassination attempt on Abraham Lincoln; organized the first official Secret Service for duty behind Confederate lines during the War Between the States; and rode with lawmen along the Old Frontier, hunting down members of Jesse James' gang, the Reno brothers and other desperadoes."

Studying Allan Pinkerton's achievements and those of the organization he shaped from its birth, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, is actually studying the history of the growth of America during its last century and a half. The man himself crossed paths with many of the greatest figures this nation has known; he made an impression on each of their lives and, without a doubt, changed the course of American History as we know it.

At a time when the nation's towns and cities ? even the largest ones ? possessed unqualified law enforcement bureaus, Pinkerton's agents took on the most difficult assignments; cases ranged from financial and property thefts to government overthrows to murder. And the agents always got their man (and woman).

Of the subject, James Horan in Desperate Men records, "Allan Pinkerton was well known to the members of the 19th Century underworld. They knew he was incorruptible and so was his agency. They were also well acquainted with Pinkerton's tenacity; if necessary he would chase you to the end of the earth."

Adds Time-Life Books' anthological The Wild West, "So effective were agents' methods that when the government formed the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1908, it used Pinkerton's agency as its model."

This year, 2000, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, still thriving, celebrates its 150 years of service. In May, to commemorate the occasion, it donated a vast archive of material to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C.

"Among the archive's contents," reads a press release, "are rare and once-secret files, photographs, drawings and documents on Jesse James, the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang, the Missouri Kid and Butch Cassidy. The archives document the history of the nation's early law enforcement. They also document the history of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, founded in 1850."

*****

It isn't surprising that the man who was to become America's greatest detective and one of the world's most notable sleuths was born to a family whose patriarch was a policeman. William Pinkerton, a police sergeant in Glasgow, Scotland, first heard the squeals on his newborn son on August 25, 1819.

At an early age, the boy Allan Pinkerton showed a thirst for adventure that didn?t always sit well with his father or his mother, Isabell. Bright and energetic, he often avoided his schoolwork to wander off for days hunting in the forests north of Glasgow or fishing in the Clyde River. During a political riot, which broke out in a city square, the elder Pinkerton was killed, leaving the family fatherless. Young Allan left school and went to work, first as a runner for a pattern maker, then as an apprentice in the McCauley Cooperage Works, barrelmakers. He became one of their sharpest craftsmen, often making suggestions to improve both the quality and delivery of the stock.

Restless, Pinkerton joined a revolutionary group known as the Chartists, demanding bottom-up voice in the government. The United Kingdom, however, chagrined at this rabble that dared suggest changes in the Peoples Charter. The constabulary's underground sources quickly identified some of the more vocal and active participants, including one carrot-topped 22-year-old cooper named Allan Pinkerton.

Having been promoted to supervisor at the works, and now earning a salary to afford a wife, Pinkerton wed Edinburgh native Joan Carfrae on March 13, 1842. But, their plans to spend a romantic honeymoon in a country inn were dashed when a friend of the groom rushed in immediately after the religious nuptials to warn of a company of soldiers marching that way to arrest Allan. The next morning the new Mr. & Mrs. Pinkerton were on board a sailing vessel headed for the English-speaking New World.

For the most part, the voyage was pleasant ? that is, until the ship encountered high gales as it neared its destination, Halifax, Canada. The steersmen were unable to keep their course against the turbulence and rocked off course nearly two hundred miles, still caught in the whirlpool of a coastal storm. Lost from direction and bounced atop the waves like a feather, the ship at last floundered, rammed on a reef beyond the beaches of Nova Scotia. Pinkerton and his wife, as did most of the other seaward passengers, lost everything they had in the submerged hold. All that the newlyweds owned were the clothes on their backs and a few pieces of silver in Allan's vest pocket.

There was one possession, however, that Joan cherished most of all, her wedding ring. But, that too was quickly removed from her person when the survivors of the shipwreck finally made their way to shore. Wet, tired, black-and-blue from the pounding they took on the surf, they collapsed on the beachhead only to be immediately surrounded by Indians who demanded their trinkets. One savage spotted the gleaming silver band on Mrs. Pinkerton's finger and insisted that she hand it over. Even though outflanked, her husband wanted to fight until a more practical-minded sea captain convinced him that it was better to lose the ring than his life.

It was aboard a rescue ship that retrieved the stranded passengers that Pinkerton resolved to settle in the United States, instead of where he originally intended, Quebec. Passing down the St. Lawrence Seaway, which separated the Dominion of Canada from the U.S., he heard marvels of a town called Chicago that sat on the western edge of Lake Michigan and on the eastern fringe of the frontier. Spreading out by leaps and bounds, the settlement there was quickly becoming a city that, in its sudden growth, yearned for craftsmen of all kinds; Pinkerton believed that a barrelmaker might do just fine in a city at a time when most [everything] ? from tools to clothing to food to medicinals -- was transported by barrels.


The couple disembarked above Detroit, Michigan. There, they bought a wagon and horse, some cooking utensils, dried meats and headed west in an arc above Lake Michigan to Chicago. For shelter, they stayed in kind farmers' barns ? they had no money for lodging ? and, when their food had dissipated, lived off the fat of the land. Reaching Chicago, Pinkerton sold the horse and wagon for lodging in a hotel near the lakefront, not far from the walls of the stockade of Fort Dearborn, where Chicago had begun.

Chicago proved to be exactly what rumors had claimed ? not a pretty place of rutted streets and many quickly-jacked storefronts of unmatching lumber, but bustling nonetheless. From the lake, the town was reaching west into the prairie where, less than a decade ago, only wild-grass grew and skunks roamed. Falling in with a group of fellow Scotsmen, Pinkerton learned that Lill's Brewery in the downtown area was hiring barrelmakers. Pinkerton went to work and soon received his first American paycheck.

Lill's provided the Pinkertons with a stability that they hoped for, enough money to live decently and have a little left over for recreation on the side. The winters were harsh, what with snowfalls unlike anything they had ever encountered in Scotland, but life overall was fine. However, Allan Pinkerton, with a mind that worked like a machine driven by an endless generator, once again grew restless. He wanted to own his own shop.

He had heard that a small Scots-heavy town called Dundee, forty miles from Chicago, served the mercantile needs of the vast farming community there ? but it lacked a cooperage. And the local growers were complaining of paying high shipping prices for barrels out of Chicago. Envisioning the possibilities of monopolizing barrel manufacturing for the entire region while giving the people what they required, he once again packed part and parcel and opened a small shop on the banks of the Fox River, one of the portage waterways that led to Chicago. His shingle boasted, but honestly, the name: Pinkerton's One and Original Cooperage of Dundee.

Little did he know he was about to change careers and set the pace for the remainder of his life.

Business prospered. From a one-man workroom it enlarged to a large spacious plant in no time; within short term, he had ten craftsmen working for him twelve hours six days a week. Demand for barrels was more than even Pinkerton had anticipated, but he kept pace. In their new neighborhood the county farmers found an honest man who delivered what he promised on time, produced top-rate products and charged them much lower per-barrel than the Chicago firms. As well, he would never press them for payment at low-crop seasons. Often, he would accept produce in exchange, figuring that it saved him and his wife a trip to the general markets for sustenance.

Pinkerton soon found himself a father. A son, William, named after his father, was born in 1846. Two others followed soon after, twins, Robert and Joan.

Wanting to keep costs at minimum, Pinkerton devised cheaper ways to move the assembly line without cutting quality. "Thrifty by nature, (Pinkerton) saw no reason to buy poles to make barrel hoops when they could be had for nothing," explains Sigmund A. Lavine's Allan Pinkerton ? America's First Private Eye. "So one day he left the shop in charge of his foreman and rowed out to an island in the middle of the river to cut down a supply of his own. It was commonly supposed in Dundee that the island was uninhabited, but Pinkerton, a most observant individual, noticed that the grass and bushes were bent back, making a path from the shore. Curious, he followed it, and in a thick stand of trees found a campsite that appeared to be used quite frequently."

When he returned, he told Sheriff Yates of his discovery. He knew that the lawmen in the county had been unable to pinpoint a band of roving counterfeiters who had been spreading reproduced bills of note throughout northern Illinois. While the bills were most likely made elsewhere, the sheriff had believed a cache of the fakes was hidden in the vicinity of Dundee. Several men were suspected of the forgeries, but as the counterfeit money had not been found on them or in their residences, an arrest was impossible. Pinkerton deduced the island was an ideal place to hide the money ? so obvious that it was overlooked.

For nearly a week, Pinkerton and Yates paddled to the island to crouch in the flora, waiting to see what monkey business transpired, and with whom. The wait was not long. On the fifth evening, a splash of torchlight pricked the darkness coming from a path deep-set into the island, followed by a low murmur, then a brush of movement that rippled the bushes. A parade of men emerged, nigh a dozen, filthy as if they had been digging; some carried spades, others full, bulging flour sacks.

Thrusting their shotguns before them, Sheriff Yates and the deputized Pinkerton appeared from their concealment to arrest the stunned brigade.

The town council was so impressed with businessman Pinkerton's reasoning ? and with his coolness in the face of danger (as Yates had related to them) ? that it asked him to help them uncover the leader of the local counterfeit ring; they suspected it was shady landowner Crane. Yates told Pinkerton that a dapper, elderly man would occasionally ride into town from parts unknown and meet with certain suspects at Crane's home at the edge of town. Since that man had again come to Dundee, the council wondered: Could the discreet Pinkerton follow this man to see where he goes, to whom he talks? And possibly, if the situation presented itself, offer to buy some of his bills as proof?

Pinkerton, unsure of his own investigative ability at that point, hesitated. He eventually agreed. The council handed him $125 with which to purchase some of the bad bonds ? it was a huge sum for that time ? upon assurance that Pinkerton would notify Yates immediately.

Once he took the assignment, Pinkerton decided to carry it a step further. Striking up communication in a saloon, Pinkerton learned the visitor's name was John Craig, from Vermont. After a round of rum, he drew the man aside. "Crane's slipping up," he told Craig, watching his reaction, "He's getting too old for this job, his men having been arrested and all. I'm taking over."

"I don?t know you ? who are you?"

"I'm good for my money," said Pinkerton, flashing a wad of money in his hand.

"You're willing to start off with a $1,000 at 25 cents on the dollar?" Craig asked.

"Actually, I want $4,000 worth," Pinkerton tempted. "Ask any one in town and they'll vouch for me. Here's $125 up front to demonstrate my sincerity. Consider it down payment."

"Why not just pay it all now, I can give you what you need right away."

"I need time to raise capital from my...er, investors. Besides," Pinkerton quietly glanced all whichways, "could be I'm being watched. Let me come to your place to transact business."

Craig deliberated, then announced, "All right. You bring the rest to the Sauganash Hotel in Chicago next Thursday noon, and it?s a deal."

The men shook hands and parted.

Council members were furious that Pinkerton had turned over their $125 to a man he let ride out of town. But, Pinkerton hushed them explaining he had good motive: "Since we've already surfaced Crane as the local forger, I figured why not discover at the same time where his Midwest headquarters were. And when he's arrested there, you can be sure his friends will be watching. Seeing him taken, I am sure, will send his accomplices in Chicago running for the hills."

Aligned with Chicago authorities, Pinkerton set up the sting. While two plainclothesmen watched from the side, Pinkerton entered the dingily lit hotel bar, taking a seat at Craig's table. As the deal was being cut, the police swung out to grab Craig by his shoulders. "You're under arrest!" one shouted. The barroom fell silent and many patrons' faces glared guilty, Pinkerton thought. He was certain that counterfeit money would disappear in the Midwest, at least for a season. He was correct.

The Cook County Sheriff was so impressed with this quick-thinking barrelmaker (who seemed to be in the wrong business) that he offered Pinkerton a full-time job on his staff as investigator. Having felt good about what he'd done, enjoying the glow it gave him, Pinkerton accepted.

With his family, he relocated back to Chicago, no longer to produce barrels but to defend the law of his new country that so far had treated the Pinkertons damned well. Before the year 1848 would end, he would accrue the highest number of arrests for burglaries and murders than any of the other more experienced police on Chicago's squad roll.



Allan Pinkerton noted that in the few short years he and his family were away, Chicago had continued to grow outwards and upwards; many elegant facades of brick had replaced the one-dimension ramshackle frames. Along the lakefront, its ports boomed with a cacophony of the loading and unloading of cargo freights that had brought their potpourri of goods from New York City, Philadelphia and other cities beyond the Great Lakes. Locomotives criss-crossed each other on a roundabout network of rails that cut through the city; transport houses stuffed their boxcars with merchandise heading west where men and women were shaping new destinies on a fertile soil. Scythes, plows, seeds and linens crammed the freight cars destined for the territories beyond Great Father Mississippi.

With industry came people and with the people came bright, novel ideas and visions. But, crime came, too, fed by those whose ambitions leaned on the get-rich-quick view of life ? or simply just to live, the easy way. Throughout the city at any hour of the day, one might discover his pockets picked, his store broken into, his horse stolen or his belly tapped by a plug-ugly behind it, demanding his billfold. In many sections of the city, a decent woman couldn't walk evenings without fear of rape. Swollen bodies turned up habitually in the marsh grass where the Chicago River flooded during the spring.

In the late 1840s, Chicago claimed less than a dozen policemen to protect a population of 30,000 ? and because those policemen avoided the worst neighborhoods and the worst people, hopes for civic safety refused to improve.

Investigator Pinkerton found his job cut out for him. Facing the near calamity he saw before him, he shoved forward on his beat, taking no guff, no sass, and no bribery. And those who were ready to ridicule the new Scotty in navy blue stood up to take note that this bright boy meant business. Plus, he'd as soon swing a club than tolerate a sneer. Suddenly, Chicago had itself an authentic policeman.

He was soon asked to become the city's first detective. In this job he again succeeded, for his integrity was unbendable; he possessed an uncanny ability to read people; he could discern a suspicious party on a busy street; glib and mentally quick, he tricked the guilty into confessing before they realized that they had. But, the catalyst of all this was his bravery. He feared no one.

He loved his work, devotedly, but there was such a thing as practicality. With a growing family, the meager pay simply did not suffice. As far as he saw it, he had two roads to take: to return to barrel making or to effect something he had been considering for some time: to open his own private investigation business. There was no such business of this type in the city, and only a few in the entire country. Before deciding, he sought out possible clients who knew him from his detective's work and who might consider hiring him on a freelance basis.
 

Lawyer Lincoln
Among these were the railroad companies headquartered in the Midwest, including one of the leading pioneers in the industry, the Rock Island and Illinois Central Railroad, a firm for which he had successfully investigated many shipping thefts. Its president, George B. McClellan, and its attorney, a man named Abraham Lincoln, had great respect for Pinkerton and it wasn't rare that the three would dine together.

Assured of support from satisfied clients such as these, Pinkerton resigned from the city, hung a shingle over the door at 151 Fifth Avenue in the heart of Chicago's market district and advertised his services in newspapers across the country. Curious citizens read that this enterprise calling itself Pinkerton's National Detective Agency promised not only results, but also hard-core ethics. Pinkerton biographer Sigmund A. Lavine says, "In a day when many law enforcement officers openly associated with criminals and shared their illegal profits, (Pinkerton's code) reflected the honesty and integrity of the man." Allan Pinkerton promised to:

Accept no bribes;

never compromise with criminals;

partner with local law enforcement agencies, when necessary;

refuse divorce cases or cases that initiated scandals of clients;

turn down reward money (his agents were paid well);

never raise fees without the client's pre-knowledge; and

apprise clients on an ongoing basis.

Pinkerton became a one-man promotional blitz. As his organization nabbed crooks, murderers and embezzlers, he was sure that news of those "pinches" would storm the local papers. Not shy about telling the press about his excellent record, he also platformed his devotion to duty and his obsessive pursuit of any criminal he was paid to apprehend ? whether the flight led him or his agents from sea to sea.

Those who hired Pinkerton found these boasts not idle.

Feeling that he needed something focal, in time he created a logo to convey just what the Pinkerton National Detective Agency was all about. Americans soon became familiar with its motto, "We Never Sleep," accompanied by a graphic of an open, alert eye studying them from the pages of magazines, circulars, newspapers, and from billboards and wanted posters. The trademark spawned the term "private eye" and went on to become as prominent a peacekeeping tool as the Winchester repeating rifle and the Colt .45.

America began referring to Pinkerton himself as "The Eye."

A legend was born -- and a tradition.



The Pinkerton logo
(Pinkerton's, Inc.)

Pinkerton insisted on high decorum. According to his code, his agents were to have no "addiction to drink, smoking, card playing, low dives or...slang." For that matter, Pinkerton handpicked his staff. Two of his first agents were George H. Bangs and Francis Warner, detectives with big city savvy, experience and unblotched reputations. Both would remain with him for years and eventually serve as supervisors, running the day-to-day operations while he was out of town directing particular assignments.

In his memoirs, Pinkerton was to credit two specific agents ? one female ? for doing more in the early days than anyone else to establish the firm's reputation for efficiency and honor. They were Timothy Webster and Kate Warne.

Webster, at age twelve, migrated with his parents from England to the United States. A machinist by trade, he moonlighted as policeman in New York City until he realized he enjoyed enforcing the law more than wrenching a bolt. He joined New York's city force, quickly displaying himself as a man of intelligence, guts and skill. The captain of the police department at the time and a friend of Pinkerton, James Leonard, noted that Webster's intuitive skills were being wasted as beatwalker; he suggested that Allan Pinkerton consider him.

The Scotsman liked the tall, amiable Webster from the start; one to discern a personality at a glance, Pinkerton observed self-assurance in his smile, aggressiveness in his handshake and loyalty in his pupils. Webster would go on to lead many of the most dangerous assignments in the tumultuous years ahead.

If Pinkerton initially hesitated at the idea of a woman joining his corps, consider the strict sex-defining era of the mid-1850s, not the man. But, consider the man when it came to his observing almost immediately that Kate Warne was a very special human being. She was determination itself, and brilliant.

According to the Pinkerton Corporation's website, Kate walked into the agency's quarters in Chicago in 1856, seeking employment. Pinkerton was surprised that the slender, brown-haired young lady was not interested in clerical work but in becoming an agent! Repressing a laugh, he told her that it was not the agency's custom to employ women operatives.

"Kate argued her point of view eloquently," reads the website, "pointing out that women could be 'most useful in worming out secrets in many places which would be impossible for a male detective'. A woman would be able to befriend the wives and girlfriends of suspected criminals and gain their confidence. Men become braggarts when they are around women who encourage them to boast. Kate also noted that women have an eye for detail and are excellent observers. Her arguments swayed Pinkerton, who hired her the next day and never regretted the decision."

Thus, Kate became the first female detective in the United States. Moreover, Pinkerton soon hired other females based on Kate's suggestion, appointing her Supervisor of Women Agents. Their ranks grew, Kate having shown Pinkerton their intrinsic value to his organization.

By hiring Kate, Pinkerton showed his foresightedness. City enforcement bureaus would have ridiculed the idea of women in that industry at that time. "Women were not allowed to join police departments until 1891 (almost forty years after Pinkerton hired them)," asserts the Pinkerton Website, "and did not become investigators until 1903. The term policewoman was not used until 1920."

As his muster of agents increased, Pinkerton devoted more time to the administration of his business, making sure his agents were well equipped and properly trained. He worked with telegraphers, government technicians and arms experts to see that his agency understood and could use the most updated technology and armament.

That is not to say, however, that The Eye didn't participate in cases. He did, many of them. Sometimes, impromptu. Take the case of the slippery-looking cad he spotted leaving the Waverly Hotel one morning. Following him around corners, in and out of doorways, the fellow eventually led him to the city train station where he deposited into a suitcase a great number of things that he drew from his coat ? pocketwatches and necklaces and earrings and pendants and letter openers. Arresting him on the spot, Pinkerton brought the character back to the hotel on a hunch and, sure enough, the lobby was crammed with angry guests giving the day-clerk one hell of a time because someone had broken into their rooms pre-dawn to pirate their belongings.

In the first few years of the agency's history, many of its cases were local. But, as the reputation of Pinkerton spread, the cases took on a more interstate rhythm, involving the tracking of a criminal's activities through many states and over many months before being solved. Such was the Adams Express job.

Adams, which operated an expedient rail-and-coach mail-delivery service cross-country, lost almost $50,000 in a series of strange heists on its Columbus, Georgia-to-Montgomery, Alabama route in the fall of 1858. The firm could not understand how strongboxes, containing large shipments of money sent special rail from Columbus, could turn up empty in Montgomery with no visible tampering to the locks or hinges. Their only supposition was that someone had gotten ahold of a key. Unable to lay the blame on anyone in particular, the company fired the two men most responsible for the security of the shipments, John Maroney, the sending agent in Columbus, and Leonard Chase, the messenger whose job it was to guard the money en route. Neither man had been able to reasonably explain how the cash turned up missing; Maroney claimed he deposited the money in the strongboxes and sealed them adequately, while Chase vowed he hadn't left the shipments from his sight the whole time he was paid to guard them.

Pinkerton called together his best agents, including Kate Warne. Winning the approval of such a national concern as Adams was crucial, for it would mean a boon to his own organization in terms of national notoriety and the respect of other major corporations.

Experience told Pinkerton that thefts of this nature were inside jobs. He believed that the money was removed before the packages were sent. Surveying Maroney's and Chase's movements, agents confirmed that neither man attempted to contact the other, nor had had any visible communication prior to the heists; they didn't seem to be working in cahoots. Chase, the messenger, exhibited no suspicious activity, but John Maroney's actions reeked of suspicion.

Pinkerton operatives went to work.

They followed Maroney and his wife when they vacationed in Virginia, reporting that the couple spent more money than their station in life allowed. When Maroney by himself traveled to New Orleans he again tossed bills around flippantly. When Mrs. Maroney went to visit a relative in Pennsylvania, Kate Warne pursued, taking board in the same hotel where her mark lodged. Posing as a Mrs. Imbert, wife of a convict, she soon ingratiated herself with the lady and the two shared many a conversation.

Pinkerton had Maroney arrested in New Orleans on suspicion and placed in the same cell with one of his agents, Frank White. White, adapting the character of a corralled thief, spouted injustice and hatred for lawmen until he won the confidence of Maroney. One evening, while they chatted, Maroney confessed that he was the perpetrator of the Adams Express robberies. He had taken the money prior to shipment, he admitted to White, hoping the blame would be laid on the messenger.

Nevertheless, Pinkerton knew that to charge Maroney with the crime at this point would be futile ? not until he could directly link the stolen cash with the suspect. That stolen currency needed to be resurfaced from wherever Maroney had hidden it -- and that is when White introduced his cellmate to his crooked lawyer, actually Pinkerton Special Assistant George Bangs, who promised to have Maroney exonerated for a fee of $4,000.

"Done!" cried Maroney.

Suddenly, Mrs. Maroney decided to take a quick trip back to Montgomery, Alabama, confiding in "Mrs. Imbert" that she needed to help her husband who was imprisoned. Kate wired her boss: "She is planning a trip to Montgomery ? be sure she is shadowed."

The detectives closed in. Operative White, who had gained Maroney's trust, promised to meet his friend's wife once his lawyer sprung him in a day or two. That done, arrangements were made for White to act as go-between for the Maroneys and "crooked lawyer" Bangs. Showing up at the lady's doorstep, he followed her to the cellar where, from within a hollow wall, she unearthed a steamer trunk loaded with federal greenbacks.

The Maroneys were promptly arrested and Pinkerton personally returned what was left of the $50,000 booty ? exactly $39,515 ? to E.S. Sanford, vice president of Adams Express. Their guilty clerk was tried and handed a 10-year prison term; the courts did not go after his wife.

Adams Express was delighted. The story of Pinkerton's handling of the case became headline news across the nation; Allan Pinkerton and his detective agency were now household names. For days, Americans read installment after installment of the true mystery and its solution by the country's newest hero.

The stories were so popular that they overrode those of another sort emerging from another arena: the expected nomination of anti-slaver Abraham Lincoln as 16th President of the United States and the South's promise to break from the Union if that happened.

Throughout the presidential campaign of 1860, analysts worried what might happen if Abraham Lincoln was elected President ? that is, if the southern states' boast that they would secede from the Union would manifest. Lincoln, a known antagonist of slavery, had taken a strong stand on the issue, leaving the South, where slavery was a practiced tradition, insulted and resentful.

For decades, and slowly growing, the North and South had conflicted; above Mason-Dixon's Line the populace cringed at the idea of slavery, below it, a more old-kingdom mindset regarded slavery as an economic necessity to preserve a plantation way of life they saw as idyllic. To the industrial-minded, future-eyeing North, there was no excuse for any human to possess another; the South did not see such as a moral paradigm but as an issue that should be left to each individual state.

Congress battered the issue for years, but only as Americans began moving westward did it rile to breaking point. During the 1850s, Kansas and Missouri turned bloody as pioneers from both halves of the nation settled within their borders; when Southerners maintained the life they knew, northern consciences were piqued. Violence erupted. Subduing it seemed impossible. The nation waited for the outcome of the Presidential Elections of 1860 before making a decision either way. Lincoln's election was a hurrah for anti-slavers, but a poisonous dart to the other faction.

Southerners, affronted, proclaimed the election as a threat to their liberty; they cried independence; in Congress, Southern legislators took the vote as a nuzzle to their voice and walked out in a body.

Now, with Lincoln about to leave his hometown of Springfield, Illinois, for Washington, the South promised repercussions. Pinkerton, like the rest of the civilian country, felt the soil of the union begin to tremor underfoot. Days brought anxiety while the world seemed to pause before a bang. To what extent the South would carry through its threats no one knew for sure. But, Pinkerton did believe action would come ? but he did not know when or in what form.


Campaign poster: Abraham Lincoln & VP Hannibal Hamlin, 1860


In January, 1861, Samuel Felton, president of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad, sought immediate audience with Pinkerton. He told the detective that he feared subversives might attack his train line, the major rail route in the East. Pinkerton responded by placing agents in towns along the route, from New York to Washington; he even moved to Baltimore, the major city north of Washington, to be near at hand in the event of trouble; but his agents could not detect a plot of any kind.

A plot to harm the railroad, that is. Instead, agents began to pick up dribs and drabs from here and there that, when pieced together, hinted at a plot to assassinate the new Chief Executive on his way to his Inauguration. Initial details were sketchy, but resourceful Pinkerton agent Timothy Webster, working in Baltimore, had managed to charm his way into a group of hot-headed young secessionists calling themselves the Knights of the Golden Circle; from these men he learned that assassins had already been chosen to shoot the President-elect at Baltimore's Calvert Rail Station as he passed through town on February 23. Because the newspapers printed the complete schedule of Lincoln's trip east, the would-be killers were able to surmise his exact arrival and departure times through Baltimore.

It was imperative that Pinkerton reach Lincoln, already in transit, to alter the rest of his agenda. Luckily, Pinkerton knew one of the Illinois members of the Lincoln staff accompanying him, a press secretary named Norman Judd, and he believed that through Judd's intervention he might gain dialogue with Lincoln directly. Glancing at the newspaper on his desk, he saw that the incoming President was slated to arrive the next morning in Philadelphia for a parade. Pinkerton grabbed the first train out ? but not to see the parade.

His hunch was right. Contacting Judd in the City of Brotherly Love, Pinkerton relayed what he had heard. Judd, in turn, sought a brief conference with Lincoln, bringing Pinkerton with him to the hotel suite where the Chief Executive was lodging. When Pinkerton saw his old attorney friend from the railroad days, he noted that the 6'4" gaunt-framed "Abe" had changed very little, except for the stubble of a beard that he had begun growing in the style of the day. Until then, Lincoln had always been smooth faced.

Lincoln cheered so to see his old friend Allan Pinkerton that the detective cringed at the thought of giving him the bad news. But, after a moment's greetings, he passed on to why he was there. "...They want to stop you from taking office, sir."

"So what do we do?" Abe asked. "It's too late to cancel tomorrow's functions. I'm raising the flag over Independence Hall in the morning, then addressing the legislature in Harrisburg in the afternoon."

"Keep those appointments," Pinkerton replied. "But, we must make changes thereafter. You are scheduled to attend a dinner and ball tomorrow evening and stay the night at Governor Curtin's mansion in Harrisburg. Then, according to the current schedule it's on to Baltimore the following morning, correct?"

"Correct," Lincoln answered.

"Instead of attending the ball, we get you out of Harrisburg expediently on a chartered train to Baltimore. The tracks are to be kept clear so that we can move full-throttle the whole way. At Baltimore, we move you through the station ? it will be after midnight and hours ahead of your anticipated arrival -- where an express will be waiting ? I've already made arrangements for that ? which will break all speed records to get you to Washington City before sunrise."

"What do I tell Governor Curtin for my sudden departure?"

"That's already taken care of," Pinkerton winked. "So that no one knows you left Harrisburg early, he will tell his guests that you had taken suddenly ill and retired to your chambers. While he's informing his guests of that particular piece of news, we slip you out the carriage entrance.

"Abe, as far as anyone knows -- the papers, the Baltimore representatives, etcetera -- you are remaining on schedule. We can't tell too many people, especially the Baltimore authorities. My agent there, Tim Webster, tells me that even the chief of police is part of the conspiracy; that is why he has scheduled minimal police protection ? so that you can be gotten to by the assassins."

Lincoln paled. "I hadn't realized the depth of?" He paused. His expression said the rest.

The following evening, Lincoln eluded the ball, as worked out, through a side door. Waiting in the port-cochere was a blackened carriage containing a fully armed Allan Pinkerton and another agent. Throwing a scarf over Lincoln, they hustled him onto the seat between them, at the same moment signaling the driver (also an agent) to whip the team into action. The carriage clattered over the empty, cobblestone streets until they came to a specially prepared locomotive with one passenger car awaiting them at a small countryside depot on the outskirts of town. From the door of the depot, another agent saluted Pinkerton a "Good Luck!" watched the unlit express chug off, then hastily climbed the nearest telegraph pole to sever the line. This was done to prevent anyone from wiring ahead to Baltimore just in case they had been tailed and their plan discovered.

Aboard the train were Kate Warne and a small army of Pinkertons, loaded for bear. Kate and several of the crew circled the President-elect in his car; Pinkerton, cradling a shotgun, stood on the rear platform from where his eyes peeled the nocturnal gloom of the landscape. He also watched for the signal lights he had requested to be given along the way.

"A Pinkerton operative stood watch at every switch, bridge and crossing," explains the book Allan Pinkerton ? America's First Private Eye, by Sigmund A. Lavine. "They had orders to signal with their bull's-eye ? two flashes, a short pause, then two more flashes ? (indicating that) all was well as Lincoln's train passed...Those signals continued to gleam throughout the night (until) the train rolled safely into the station in Baltimore at half-past three in the morning."

At the station, more Pinkerton detectives converged upon the party already guarding Lincoln. They joined the others, forming a barrier around their charge that was being led by the elbow to the connecting track. There was a moment's concern when the relay train was late, but soon it arrived, was checked out through, up and under, and Lincoln was placed within it. Following the same protective measurements for the last 50 miles, the train belted southwards to Washington City.

About 6:10 a.m., the express reached the well-posted Union Station. Among the ranks of detectives awaiting its precious cargo were General Winfield Scott and Secretary of State Seward to whom Lincoln was heard to respond in their grasp, "I was never so glad to see anyone in my life!"

Over the coming weeks, Lincoln was sworn in as President of the United States, but the states proved not to be fully united. On April 13, 1861, the provisional Confederate States of America fired upon the Union's Fort Sumter in Carolina Harbor.

War began.
With the first sound of the guns, a civil war split the nation in two. The United States, less than a hundred years old, faced destruction. Lincoln refused to believe, however, that the house would divide against itself, a fate that he feared could happen even when he was a Springfield legislature several years back. Now, as its Chief Executive, he felt it was his responsibility to keep the threads of the Union sewn ? even if it meant marching into the South with muskets, cannons and bayonets to kill the dissention. The Southern brethren, he said, needed to see the futility of the insurrection. "The Union must be preserved!" he exclaimed.


General McClellan

One of his first deeds as President was to call to Washington two men whom he believed could help preserve it. One was George Brinton McClellan, West Point graduate, Mexican War hero and peacetime executive of the Illinois Central Railroad. Of McClellan, Lincoln asked him to lead the Army of the Potomac, the guard dogs of the capital city. The other fellow he summoned was a Scottish detective from Chicago who proved his loyalty, bravery and genius by saving him from an assassin's bullet before he even took office. That man was Allan Pinkerton.

It was the President's wish for Pinkerton to organize a secret service in Washington City. Everyone knew, top down, that the town crawled with spies working for the Confederacy's central espionage unit, the Signal Bureau. "Washington, D.C., more a southern than a northern city, was virtually brimming over with Confederate sympathizers willing to supply intelligence to the South," reports Alan Axelrod in The War Between the Spies. "At the outbreak of the war, (Signal Bureau Chief) Thomas Jordan took it upon himself to harvest the bumper crop of spies Washington yielded."

When Lincoln brought the detective before his Cabinet for approval, however, the two men encountered dawdling; General Winfield Scott, who currently served as Commander in Chief of the Army was already considering another man to head up the secret police, an ex-lawyer from Ohio named Lafayette C. Baker. Still, Lincoln insisted that Pinkerton, to whom he felt he owed a favor as well whom he considered very capable, should be considered. While Pinkerton and Lincoln awaited a decision, McClellan, forming his strategy to combat the rebels in and around Washington, decided that, in the meantime, Pinkerton would prove valuable as his personal spy.

Accepting the General's offer, Pinkerton brought with him a number of operatives such as Timothy Webster and Kate Warne, whom he placed in and around the South to pick up information that the Northern armies could use. Kate, for instance, shared her time between Virginia and Tennessee posing as a Southern belle, familiarizing herself with other ladies of the South who spoke freely about their husbands' and boyfriends' regiments. Webster, in Southern Maryland, continued his association with the Knights of the Golden Circle who, because they took part in many undercover assignments for the South, provided a conduit of information about espionage activities in Northern cities. Through charade, these and other Pinkerton agents found that data was not hard to come by. Loitering in camp towns and ingratiating themselves with the local soldiery in the hotbed of the South, they were able to pick up such vital information as what army corps was stationed where; who commanded; who were the Confederate operatives and mail runners; where fortifications existed; and what was the strength of artillery emplacements.

Pinkerton himself partook in special assignments. To ascertain the strength of Memphis' defenses, he disguised himself as a rich Southern gentleman about town who wined and dined local commander, General Pillow. Over bottles of burgundy, Pillow divulged the size of his regiment, the location of breastworks, even the names of his underground contacts from Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederate States.

Like any successful agent, Pinkerton's safety teetered at any given time; an operative never knew who might recognize him, who might be a counterspy and know him at a glance. He had a couple of very close shaves ? literally.

One came in Memphis. Whether or not General Pillow caught on, no one knows, but one warm morning while Pinkerton was in the act of shaving, his face full of lather, a Negro porter burst into his room crying, "If you want to keep your head, mister, you'd better flee, now. They're coming up the stairs with a rope!" Pinkerton tossed him a silver dollar, didn't bother to wipe off the shaving soap, and high-tailed it down the gutter spout to his horse.

Another time, while receiving a shave in a barber's chair in Jackson, Mississippi, the German barber, who had been eyeing him curiously from the start, asked, "Aren't you Mishter Pingerdon, ze detective vrom Zicago?"

Others in the shop, waiting for a trim, suddenly looked up from their seats with ice-cold stares. Pinkerton chuckled. "Of course not! Don't know the man."

"Vell, zat ish ze shtranchest ting! I shaved Pingerdon once in ze Hotel Sherman in Zicago, und you not only looks like him, but you talks chust likes him, too!" the barber replied, shaking an incredulous head.

Needless to say, Pinkerton darted for the nearest train station the moment he left the barbershop and grabbed the next train to Cincinnati.


Pinkerton (seated right) with some of his operatives in the field

General McClellan, after a succession of rather small but victorious engagements in Virginia, was appointed Commander in Chief of the Union Army in 1861 with the retirement of the aged Winfield Scott. McClellan ceremoniously credited his battlefield wins half to Pinkerton agents who supplied necessary information beforehand on enemy movements and strength. Taking the military reins, he hoped that Pinkerton would continue to support him undercover, but Lincoln had other plans for The Eye: to root out traitors and spies from their nests in Washington City itself. Simply, too much important information had been leaking to the Southern Legislature, as well as to General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.

Pinkerton promised McClellan the use of his operatives, but he remained in the city, quartering in offices on I Street. Doing so, he organized the first government-approved spy ring in American history.

During the Civil War years, Pinkerton took on a new but very special recruit. Even though he was quite young, only 16-years old, he found in him a willingness to learn and a high intelligence to grasp the complex nature of the job. As well, he proved a trusting confidante. His name was William Pinkerton.

With his boyish face and still-gangly manner, he could wander through Washington and hang out for hours on a street corner surveying anyone or anything his father told him to survey without suspicion. And at the end of the day, he would report to his father his findings, written out in well-detailed terms, indicating a highly observant pair of eyes as good as many of the agency's best spies.

As William's experience grew, so did his responsibilities with his father's agency. "William Pinkerton not only ran agents across the border into Confederate territory, but he was also present at the first flight of an observation hot-air balloon," historical writer Ben Macintyre tells us. While accompanying the Army south on a scouting mission, William "was wounded in the knee by an exploding shell at the Battle of Antietam," Macintyre adds.

The author also touches upon the intimate side of the relationship between father and son. While Macintyre admits Allan was a "superb detective," he attests he could also be "a fantastic prig who hammered the virtues of honesty, integrity and raw courage into his children."

True, Pinkerton demanded the best people and their best work. His obsession with achieving it speaks well for the agents he trusted with difficult obligations, especially when faced with the heavy responsibility given him in the defense of America.

One agent who never failed him was Kate Warne. Gliding through capital city society with ease -- under assumed name and created background, that of a transplanted Southerner come northward -- she used her acquired knowledge of Southern tradition and etiquette to grace the calling rooms of many Southern-minded families in Washington and suburban Georgetown. It didn't take long before the lovely new belle with whimsical giggle, flashing eyes and a flip-flap of a wrist fan found herself doted on by some of the district's most eligible gentlemen with secessionist secrets. At balls, she sometimes spotted famous faces that, she learned surprisingly, were suspected members of Southern-sympathy groups. One was the handsome Shakespearean play actor John Wilkes Booth. The information she acquired, the whispers she heard, she fed everything to her boss on I Street.

Another agent who made a particularly important impact on the war years was a recent addition to the Pinkerton corps of spies, a young flower named Elizabeth Baker. Albeit from Richmond, Virginia, her principles were steadfastly Unionist. She believed in the Federal cause and pleaded with Pinkerton to assist it wherever she could. Recommended by Kate, Pinkerton assigned her to a special project.

Rumors insisted that the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond was building a new kind of ship that could float underwater; they called it a submarine. Its purpose was to blow up the Union gunboats blocking the mouth of the James River, preventing commercial trade from leaving or entering the city, thus starving the town of supplies and food. Since this "submarine" could prove lethal to the Federal blockade, the North needed: 1) confirmation of such a vessel, and 2) a sketch of it. As the Confederacy was certainly to be keeping the existence of such a device under wrap ? that is, if it existed ? acquiring what Washington wanted would be a precarious task.

Elizabeth Baker firmly believed she was the only agent who could pull off that task. Pretending to be "coming home" to Richmond to see old friends, she resided at the home of an upscale couple, the Captain and Mrs. Atwater. Steeped in Southern elegance and charm, she finagled information from many a love-struck Confederate beau in Atwater's command, affirming what Pinkerton suspected: the submarine was no myth. While she secretly plotted her next move ? getting inside the walls of the factory to make a quick sketch of the miracle machine ? Captain Atwater surprised her one morning at breakfast by announcing he was taking his wife and boarder on an interesting visit.

"Today I am going to show you something, ladies, that might very well change the course of the war!" They piled into the family carriage and, much to Elizabeth's delight, they soon passed under the immense tunnel-like entrance of the vast Tredegar plant.

Following the captain and his wife into a warehouse on the grounds, her attention was drawn to the din of mallet upon iron and the screech of iron sheeting being laid in place. She watched in awe as dozens of men swarmed across the outer shell of what looked like a huge dark bumblebee set on a framework of heavy timber.

"Will something like that really float?" Elizabeth played the wide-eyed innocent.

Atwater grinned. "Not only float, ma'am, but creep below the sterns of Yankee ships so that our divers can attach special timed explosives to them. By lighting self-contained fuses, Elizabeth, that thing you see there can make a round of a dozen ships in no time while above them we blow the enemy to Hades, you pardon the expression, my dear."

She nodded, faked a blush, then, when they arrived home, she illustrated in pencil what she had seen that morning. One aspect of the submarine, she noted, made it highly vulnerable ? in order to breath, the submerged operating crew would have to depend on a series of air hoses, devices that protruded above water. Someone on the surface, knowing what to look for, could spot them quite easily.

Once back in Washington, she presented her findings to a gleeful Naval Secretary, Gideon Welles.

The South never did break the Union blockade.

As quickly as agents arrested informers, however, the leak of important information continued to flow southward. Somewhere, Pinkerton knew, was a dripping faucet untapped, well concealed and, he believed, coming from on high. No low rank in the armed forces would be privy to the kind of data that, counterspies warned, was being divulged. Not discouraged, he plunged his agents into the recesses of the city to unearth the leaking drainpipe.

They found it ? or, rather, her. Attractive Rose O'Neal Greenhow, widow of a popular editor whose paper upheld the doctrine of slavery, had, despite her political beliefs, become an intimate with many of Washington's corps d'elite. Through her sister's marriage to the nephew of Dolly Madison (widow of the late President James Madison), she met and partied with high-level political figures and Union officers, some of the latter who wooed her. According to the concise Civil War Dictionary by Mark M. Boatner III, Greenhow "knew everybody who counted." Invitees to her constant dinners, which she held at her fashionable home on 16th Street near the White House, were Lincoln's predecessor James Buchanan, Secretary of State William H. Seward, Senator Henry Wilson and many more.

Employing the cipher code of the Confederate Signal Corps, she passed vital Federal military plans, of which she had access to through her friendships, to Thomas Jordan, head of Southern underground in Richmond.


Greenhow & daughter

"No spy ever worked with more enthusiasm than Mrs. Greenhow...having set up a tightly knit espionage unit that worked remarkably well," writes author Sigmund A. Lavine in Allan Pinkerton ? America's First Private Eye. "After (the battle of) Bull Run ? she had sent the Confederacy all the details of the North's battle plans by a young woman courier who carried the message in her hair ? (Southern General) Beauregard wrote a letter to Mrs. Greenhow, expressing his appreciation for 'the most accurate information.'"

Greenhow was arrested on August 23, 1861, by Pinkertons while strolling with her daughter near her home. She was placed under house arrest. In her home detectives uncovered much evidence, letters in code, diagrams, names and addresses of Southern legislatures, as well as a journal of her dealings with other Confederate agents.

Greenhow's arrest led to the apprehension of other Washington-area spies, mostly women, whose comings-and-goings were traced to her. As they were taken, the females were incarcerated along with Greenhow at the latter's residence, which was kept under heavy guard 'round the clock. Washingtonians, noting the surplus of sentries parading in and out of, and around, the house on 16th Street, jokingly referred to the spy's home-now-jail as "Fort Greenhow". Because of her sex and her child, Greenhow was not hanged. She and her sister agents were held in custody until a time deemed appropriate to escort them back to Richmond where they could no longer do damage to the Union.

This act of charity boomeranged, and spelled doom to Pinkerton Special Agent Timothy Webster.


Timothy Webster

Since the outbreak of the war, Webster had racked up one notch after another on The Eye's spy-catching list. In Baltimore, he had served as double agent, supplying the Knights of the Golden Circle with useless information while relaying important research to the federal government through Pinkerton. Going south, he joined another couple of crack detectives, John Scully and Pryce Lewis, to infiltrate the inner workings of the rebel's secret service. Because of the high esteem he had gained with the Knights in Baltimore, Webster was welcomed to Richmond personally by Judah P. Benjamin, the Confederacy's Secretary of War, who hired him as advisor to the underground.

However, the U.S. War Department accidentally released Rose O'Neal Greenhow earlier than had been agreed upon and while Webster and company were still focally active in the Confederate seat. The usually cool Pinkerton panicked. He hastened a scout to Richmond, but by the time the scout arrived, the trio had already been arrested. The deported spies had spotted them in their hotel, and knew them by sight.
Edwin McMasters Stanton
Despite protestations from the North's Secretary of War, Edwin McMasters Stanton, the Confederate legislature voted to hang the spies as enemies to the South.

This terrible mishap foreshadowed the end of Allan Pinkerton's contributions as the government's wartime spy catcher. Colonel Lafayette C. Baker, a spy apart from the Pinkertons, and a near paranoid who saw Confederate spies hidden in every bush, wormed his way into Pinkerton's position. He won the trust of the Secretary of War by convincing him that Pinkerton's methods were too vague and that Pinkerton himself too lenient. Stanton, who shared Baker's loathing for anything Southern, to the point of obsession, finagled to have Baker's snarling group of operatives appointed the official espionage unit in Washington.

At the same time, a dissatisfied Lincoln replaced George McClellan as Commander in Chief of the Union Army. McClellan, more of a strategist than a fighter, didn't push the South fast enough nor win enough battles to convince the President that he had the right man leading his forces.

His potential gone and his best ally fired, Pinkerton withdrew from the capital in 1862 and spent the remaining two-and-a-half war years serving the government in a number of other ways. Among these was tracking down crooked suppliers who were taking advantage of its client in turmoil by overcharging for equipment and deliveries.

To his death, Allan Pinkerton rued the fact that he wasn't in charge of Washington City's security measures on the evening of April 14, 1865, when actor John Wilkes Booth fired a bullet into Lincoln's head. He believed that had Pinkerton detectives been in charge Booth would have never gotten near the President.
 

After the Civil War ended, Pinkerton returned to Chicago to resume direction of his agency. Superintendents George Bangs and Francis Warner had managed the day-to-day enterprise of the business during the war years; in that time, they had overseen the opening of a second and third Pinkerton office in, respectively. New York City and Philadelphia. The Confederacy snuffed, Allan Pinkerton could now again concentrate on an assortment of swindlers, cheats, confidence men and other no-gooders plaguing the big cities and little towns of America.

William came with him, joined now by second son, Robert. The two assisted their father by researching the habits and experiences of not only specific criminals on the lam, but of the criminal mind, in general. William loved the chase ? he was happiest when in the saddle riding down some outlaw across Boston or across the Midwest wheat fields; location didn't matter, he enjoyed being detective. And he did it well. Robert was equally driven in another vein. He preferred to be the administrator. He helped his father create and establish a card-file system that has been the role model for those of other law enforcement entities ever since, including the FBI.

"The offices of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency became a database of criminal activity," declares Pinkerton's Website. "A Pinkerton innovation, the mug shot, soon spread to use among police and other detective organizations. By the 1870s, Pinkerton's had the largest collection of mug shots in the world. As criminals and crimes made the newspapers, field agents diligently clipped and sent in every story with added notations that went into each group's growing file." Folders on criminals would remain in the central files until that person was dead.

The "Pinks," as the nation took to calling the famous lawmen, were everywhere. So fastidious were they in monitoring trends of criminality ? even the possible outlet of criminality ? the procedures sometimes crinkled the faces of many innocent parties, but frowned the faces of those related to the duplicity. For instance, because the underworld was personally involved in or actually ran illegal horseracing in the latter half of the 1800s, agents made it a habit to check on the certification of every track across America, and the people behind the grandstands. Every racehorse in the country, as it entered the professional circuit, was photographed and described down to its hoof prints so that, if the animal ran a suspect race, Pinkerton could trace it to its owners. Whatever snobbish complaints the turf clubs may have insinuated against what they saw as such insulting behavior, they could not say the sport was entirely clean; bank robbers Jesse and Frank James were known "breeders" of thoroughbreds.


"The Eye"

Over the years, The Eye himself was often credited with having a third sense, an ability to identify guilty parties of crimes long before police investigators were able to come up with alleged names. He laughed at the notion he had mystic powers, but explained his talent on a simple thing: experience. Each criminal, he told an audience in 1880, has his or her marked, personal technique that gives them away every time: "On reading a telegraphic newspaper report of a large or small robbery, with the aid of my vast records and great personal experience and familiarity with these matters, I can at once tell the character of the work, and then, knowing the names, history, habits, and quite frequently, the rendezvous of men doing that type of work, am able to determine, with almost unerring certainty, not only the very parties who committed the robberies, but also what disposition they are likely to make of their plunder, and at what points they may be hiding."

Pinkerton and his sons, having made the pursuit of criminals a professional business, took their results directly to the business public, educating them on the types of foe they faced. In the 1870s, 80s and 90s, Pinkerton spokespeople, usually William or Robert, offered advice and preventive measures to banks, shipping offices, mail services and other enterprises that dealt with the handling and movement of money. The Pinkerton National Detective Agency became, in sort, a teaching tool for many large city law bureaus who looked upon them as the idyllic tone of law enforcement.

Both police and business kept in touch with Pinkerton for consultation. The communication was a two-way street, for Pinkerton effected a continual flow of information to these entities in forms of wanted posters, mug shots, felons' identification cards and pamphlets for securing such and such a business against break-ins, hold-ups and confidence games.

A Pinkerton-compiled glossary, created in the 1880s, lists terms used by bank and train robbers and their gangs. Reading it, it gives one a colorful ingress into the colloquialism of that seedy inner-society. Following is a partial list of that glossary from the Pinkerton Website:

Bull an officer (of the law)
Cannon (or Rod) revolver
Chip money drawer (in a bank)
Dangler express train
Ditched arrested
Dump jail (or boarding house)
Gay Cat one who cases banks and towns for future jobs
Jimmying a bull shooting an officer
Mouthpiece lawyer
Oil (or Soup) nitroglycerine (used to open many a bank vault)
Rattler freight train
Settled sentenced to prison
White Liner alcoholic
Yegg (or John Yegg) bandit chief
*****

In the period following the war, America moved westward.

And so did the criminals.

And so did Pinkerton, to hunt them down.

Remote agency offices opened across the sagebrush trails, from Kansas to California, from Texas to the Canadian border, so that wherever hold-up men tipped a bank, paused a money train or removed an express box from a stagecoach, Pinkerton detectives were a spur-dig away. By this time, Allan Pinkerton had begun to slow with age ? physically, not mentally ? and William took up much of the frontier legwork. He often conducted posses of agents in search of some of the West's landmark names, Jesse James, Cole Younger, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, "Black Jack" Tom Ketcham, the Burrow Gang, Hillary Farrington, the Reno brothers and William Randolph.

Between 1865 and the first decade of the 1900s, the Pinkertons directly or indirectly brought to justice every one of them. It was Pinkerton strategy to form an ever-constant, ever widening network of man hunters that could close in, like a noose, on the bad men as they moved through the territory, taunting their every movement, taking away their leisure until, harassed, they panicked and did something stupid under duress to get themselves caught. The wide-open territory the lawbreakers thought they had to hide in became, due to the Pinkertons, a corner in which they found themselves wedged. Even the mention of the name Pinkerton perspired many a desperado's brow.

One of the first to go were the train-robbing Reno clan of six brothers who, after striking an Adams Express car in 1867, never saw a day's rest. More than once they tried to kill William Pinkerton to get his men off their backs. By the end of 1868, all the Renos were dispatched to their graves or in captivity.

William escaped another intent to kill by thief Hillary Farrington. Despite his effeminate name, Hillary was a brute of a thing, a towering, ugly, sadistic gorilla that shot William in the side when cornered on a Kentucky farm. William managed to subdue him, despite his wound, and cuff his wrists. On a paddlewheel boat the following morning en route to Columbus, Kentucky, where the Pinkerton planned to deposit his prisoner, Hillary broke loose from his manacles. Grabbing for the other's shotgun, William managed to hold onto it, but a struggle for the weapon ensued. As they bounced across the deck, knocking over anything or anyone who stood innocently by, the grappling men found themselves in a death fight that led them to the hind-deck of the ship. When the gun inadvertently discharged, a bullet grazed William's skull. In shock, he teetered back, long enough for the killer to wrench it free. But, before Hillary could aim, William recovered long enough to deliver an angry upper-cut that sent the foe spinning backwards over the rail, gun and all, onto the swiftly stirring paddle wheel. Hillary Farrington was chopped to pieces.

Former Civil War guerillas-turned-gunmen Jesse and Frank James found the Pinkertons especially vexing. Their gang's greatest strength was the backing they received by their own southern Missouri populace. Well into the 1870s, many still rankled that the North had won the war and saw their Jesse as a modern-day Robin Hood fighting the wealthy Yankee bankers and rail men tooth and nail. The "Pinks" were considered the tools of the tycoons and met with closed mouths and voodoo eyes when on the trail in those parts. Despite day-to-night manhunts -- rides in which "Old Man Allan" Pinkerton himself often took part -- they continued to lose the James boys in the maze of Smoky Mountain foothills.

The Pinkerton National Detectives, who had a reputation for fair play that even some outlaws admired, rarely faced negative press. But, a scandal erupted that for a short time vilified the agency when, on a warm evening in 1875, two members of the James family were innocently attacked by a Pinkerton-led posse. Believing Jesse was inside, the men surrounded the small cabin near Kearney, Missouri, and demanded that the bandit surrender. When no one answered, someone tossed an explosive through an open window. Zerelda James, Jesse's mother, was maimed and a retarded stepbrother was killed.

Back in Chicago, Allan expressed his deep regrets, but staunchly denied that any of his men had thrown a bomb. His boys were there, he admitted, but had done no more than lay in the underbrush surrounding the cabin and wait in silence for the inhabitants to come out, hands up. That an explosion occurred was doubtless ? some historians claim the arsonist had been one of the hired-on deputies ? some say that a warning shot from a detective's gun had inadvertently pierced a kerosene lamp inside the house; nevertheless, no one ever accepted the blame, but the agency took it on the chin for some time to come. Jesse later claimed that he had gone to Chicago to kill the Pinkerton chief, but that tale has never been substantiated and scholars have called it hogwash.

When the James' dared to venture from their beloved south to hit a bank as far as Northfield, Minnesota, however, they found a less sympathetic public; in fact, they met with savage resistance. Because the Pinkertons had sent information in advance that the James gang ? which also included three of the renegade Younger brothers ? was heading north, the town's citizens were ready. Caught in hellish gunfire, the outlaw band withered under tremendous gunfire. Wounded and bloody, Jesse and Frank escaped, but it was the beginning of their end. They had shown vulnerability.

Jesse James died at the hands of one of his own reward-hungry men in April, 1882. Frank, after serving time, lived peaceably thereafter on his farm in Missouri.

Wyoming's Hole-in-the-Wall-Gang had been robbing stagecoach lines and banks for some time when the Pinkertons decided to step in, urged by desperate rail men who were tired of having their boxcar safes blown asunder. One of the reasons for the gang's elusiveness was that after every job they retreated into a mountain fortress whose location still escapes detection by historians. Pinkertons promised quick action ? and the public got it.


Butch Cassidy

"The gang consisted of (Butch) Cassidy, George 'Flatnose' Curry, Harvey Logan, Lonny Logan, Ben Kilpatrick, the Sundance Kid (Harry Longbaugh or Longabaugh), and Ben Beeson," explains Jay Robert Nash in Western Lawmen & Outlaws. "(In Wyoming) the bandits stopped the Union Pacific's Overland Flyer (and stole) $30,000 in bank notes and securities...This spectacular raid caused the Union Pacific to bring in the Pinkerton Detective Agency, which sent scores of agents after the outlaws."

Pinkerton's men, among them top guns Joe Lefors and Charles Siringo, gave chase. After the wild bunch held up the Great Northern Express near Wagner, Montana, detectives bottlenecked their escape route and cut them off from their familiar Wyoming digs. The gang was forced roundabout south to Fort Worth, where many of them and their accomplices either died fighting or surrendered. Among the bandits' fatalities were the Logans, Harvey and Lonny, Bill Carver, Tom Ketcham, "Flatnose" Curry, "Deaf Charlie" Hanks and Ben Kilpatrick. Self-defined leaders Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid made it across the border, from whence they escaped to Bolivia. The South American government refused to extradite the pair back to America but, when the duo began plying their trade of bank robbery there, sent a detachment of its own soldados to gun them down. The troops caught them hiding in the small villa of San Vicente and filled their bodies full of lead.

Before the end of the 19th Century, the Pinkerton agency realized it had survived a chaotic time and had been, in fact, a better part of that bloody era. In demanding the law and in obsessively going after those who didn't, they proved their longevity in the face of death threats and intimidation. Moreover, they proved that they practiced what they preached. And this, their ability to remain honest but tough, had been their most lethal tool.

When reformed safecracker George White wrote a book, From Boniface to Bank Robber, in 1895, he attributed glowing testimony to an old adversary, the Pinkertons. In his pages, he writes: "Strictly speaking, I hated (them) as thoroughly as the corrupt police did because of their interference with my professional duties. Many a time I had been enraged and beaten out of thousands by the popping up of one or more of the agency's men.

"Nevertheless, I had to acknowledge that they were honest and it was dangerous for a crook when a Pinkerton was on his trail."


Allan Pinkerton died July 1, 1884, a month and a half short of his 65th birthday. A freak accident really, the otherwise hale Pinkerton had slipped on a Chicago street, biting his tongue when his chin hit the pavement. Not tending to the rather nasty cut, it turned gangrenous. He was put to rest with much fanfare in Chicago's famous Graceland Cemetery, where he rests today near his wife and the remains of other pioneers who put Illinois on the map.

Pinkerton Plots in the Graceland Cemetery.

As a tribute to their services, Allan Pinkerton had allowed two of his favorite agents gone-before-him to be buried in his family's private plot -- Timothy Webster, who was hanged by order of the Confederate legislature, and Kate Warne, who had succumbed to pneumonia on New Year's Day, 1868.
 

The ethics Pinkerton left behind ? and which were faithfully practiced by his sons, William and Robert, who ran the agency after their father's death ? are best described in a letter he wrote to Superintendent George H. Bangs on December 21, 1868, describing his war on criminals. The language, says James Horan's Desperate Men, clearly illustrates "a man equipped with an indomitable and enormous tenacity. A man, too, who once he has begun to fight will never yield and though beaten to his knees will continue to bring the war to his enemy."

Excerpted, the letter reads, "I shall not give up the fight with those parties until the bitter end and the last die is cast whatever that may prove to be; life or death, prosperity or adversity, the present life or the eternity of darkness...It must be war to the knife and the knife to the hilt...Delay no fight one moment; make all the attacks you can; keep yourself right upon the attack and with hands clean and with clear conscience you are sure to win...I don't know the meaning of the word 'fail' (and) no power in heaven or hell can influence me when I know that I am right. Remember, sir, that the right is mighty and must prevail and all we have to do is to manage our affairs with discretion, with honor, with integrity and we must and we shall win..."


William Pinkerton

Upon taking ownership of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, William and Robert worked as a single mind. Their decisions kept the best interests of their father at heart, but looked further beyond the shores of America in pursuing criminals. A new era deemed it so, for the "modern" crime-doer, especially those from the big cities, were beginning to find that there was one way ? and only one way ? to escape the footfall of the Pinkerton tail: to go overseas. Steamships had replaced the masted schooners; ocean liners could transport a person from New York to Ireland or England in a week; and men like Adam Worth and Maximilian Shinburn were taking advantage of that technology.

Shinburn, a swindler and bank robber had scooted the U.S. after a spree in the States; William Pinkerton chased him through Europe, unable to capture him directly because of foreign relation laws, but working with the countries' authorities to track him down for extradition. When Shinburn returned to the U.S., he was arrested in the midst of a robbery.

Worth, however, proved more elusive, keeping ahead of William's never-idling grasp for 30 years. After robbing the Boylston Bank in Boston of $1 million dollars in 1869, Worth fled to Liverpool, thence to Paris, then to London where he lived in Mayfair regally, funding his lifestyle by acting as broker for and often director of a number of illegal money-taking enterprises in England and across the Continent. Worth, says a Pinkerton report, "perpetrated every form of theft - check forging, swindling, larceny, safe cracking, diamond robbery, mail robbery, burglary...(and) became a clearing house or receiver for most of the big crimes perpetrated in Europe." In 1876, he masterminded a plot to steal the celebrated Thomas Gainsborough painting ]Duchess of Devonshire] from a London art gallery.


Adam Worth

And yet, William Pinkerton liked and admired Worth who, albeit a thief, hated guns and never harmed anyone throughout his career. The detective saw Worth as a man of intellect and bearing, which he was, and always believed Worth represented that certain class of criminal that, given a different start, might have been a successful businessman.

"William Pinkerton had a strangely subtle view of the criminal mind," Ben Macintyre attests in his biography of Worth, The Napoleon of Crime. "He harried his quarry with the perseverance of a monomaniacal bloodhound, but he brought to his work an unlikely admiration, even affection, for the criminal classes."

Linking with the Paris Suret頡nd with London's Scotland Yard, Pinkerton kept abreast of Worth's movements; he visited his foreign compatriots on occasion to update the agency's dossiers on Worth and others and, while there, tracked down Worth's hangouts. Knowing that the fugitive knew him by sight, he would show up at the latter's American Bar in Paris and at the Criterion Restaurant in London ? just to psychologically harass him. Sitting at his table, chatting about this and that but always avoiding the obvious, the obvious message was there very strongly: The Eye is on you, Worth.

Their chats were agreeable and Worth, always the gentleman, never tempered nor fused. In fact, as their last t괥-୴괥 ended at the Criterion, where they shared porter, Worth stopped the lawman as he was about to leave. "I have always respected you Pinkertons," he said, and shook the other's hand. "May the best man win."

Pinkerton knew he meant it.


Robert Pinkerton

In 1891, Worth was arrested in Belgium on charges of mail theft. While under interrogation, the Belgian police wired for background information on their captive in hopes that they could drop a long-term sentence on him. Scotland Yard responded and so did the Suret鮠The Pinkerton brothers, who had the largest and most incriminating file, and which could have hanged Worth, ignored the telegram. As William told Robert, "The old man's going to suffer enough. Let's leave him be."

After nearly a decade behind bars, a broken Adam Worth returned to America and paid a surprise visit to William Pinkerton at the Chicago office. He had heard of the benevolence extended him and now wanted to return the favor.

The Pinkerton National Detective Agency had fallen on bad press after it had unwisely agreed to help the Carnegie Company squelch a disturbance of labor at its Homestead, Pennsylvania, steel plant in 1892. What the agency figured would be a small affair turned bloody when the picketing laborers, armed with handguns and a small cannon, opened fire on the Pinkerton strikebreakers. Men on both sides of the fray were killed, but the newspapers used the episode to illustrate the plight of the common man under the weight of unscrupulous corporations using bulldogs to get what they wanted. The Pinkertons were blasted by the media and by all organized labor as turncoats from the people. After so many decades of maintaining a high esteem from the public, their reputation soured.

Worth figured it was time for the world to remember what the Pinkertons were really all about. "I want to return the Duchess of Devonshire to its rightful owners," he told William, "but only if you mediate. You have solved this case as sure as if you caught me stealing her, sir, for you always knew I was the thief and you were always that one twinge in my conscience. For your professionalism and kindness, permit me to be your servant."

The story of the agency's successful handling of the case, its diplomatic efforts to return the painting to Agnew's of London, reached the newspapers. But this time the newspapers didn't balk. They praised the brilliance, the determination and the ethics of the oldest American detective agency in America.

And America remembered what Allan Pinkerton's brainchild was all about.

*****

Robert died in 1907, William in 1923. Following in their footsteps was Robert's son, Allan, a World War I veteran, who led the agency onward until he passed on in 1930. The last of the Pinkerton family to direct the firm was Robert II, great-grandson of the man who founded it. Upon his death, the agency became a corporation.

Throughout the last 75 years, with the creation of the FBI and the maturity of local law enforcement agencies, Pinkerton found its role as a man-hunter less needed, but its specialization in security a demand. By mid-century, agents were spending less time chasing criminals cross-country and more time investigating insurance frauds and providing round-the-clock security for large corporations. Today, the majority of Pinkerton clients are Fortune 500 companies.

At the recent millennium, Pinkerton Investigative Services is, to quote its profile, "a leading provider of world-class, global security solutions, including uniformed security officers, investigations, consulting, business, intelligence, security systems integration and employee selection services." The overseas relationships that Allan Pinkerton's sons began has flowered and peaked with the March, 1999, merger with Securitas AB, of Stockholm. High-tech, fully state-of-the-art, Pinkerton is a senior partner of the world's largest security company with offices in more than 32 countries.

Nor bad for a company started by a barrelmaker 150 years ago, based on elements as intangible as human responsibility and ethics.
 

The author of this article, Joseph Geringer

Information for the biography of Allan Pinkerton and the Pinkerton Detective Agency has been derived from many excellent sources.

Bibliography

Pinkerton National Archives

Books:

Axelrod, Alan The War Between the Spies NY: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1992.

Boatner III, Mark M. Civil War Dictionary NY: Vintage Books/Random House, Inc., 1991.

Doran, James D. Desperate Men NY: Doubleday & Co., 1962.

Lavine , Sigmund A. Allan Pinkerton ? America's First Private Eye NY: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1963.

Macintyre, Ben The Napoleon of Crime NY: Delta Books, 1997.

Nash, Jay Robert Western Lawmen & Outlaws NY: Da Capo Press, 1994.

Time-Life Books, editors of The Wild West Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books,

Book (companion to TV miniseries of same name) distributed by Warner Bros.

Internet

Pinkerton Corporate Website

The author of this article, Joseph Geringer, a Chicagoan, has worked full-time or on a freelance basis as writer and editor for AT&T, the American Hospital Association, Macmillan and other corporations. He currently manages his own corporate support and design business, specializing in helping small business owners conduct a successful communications program. A history enthusiast, his areas of concentration are the American Civil War and the Prohibition Era. He is the author of several feature articles and dramatic works on the Lincoln assassination, including a play about John Wilkes Booth entitled Drown the Stage with Tears. As well, he wrote and produced Near To Me, a three-act play that faithfully recreates three days in Chicago's Irish bungalow belt in 1928.
 

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The Legacy Continues...

Now operating as Pinkerton Consulting & Investigations, the legacy of these two great men continues to this day with a force of investigators and security specialists that retain the same reputable dedication and commitment to protecting clients and their assets worldwide.


Experience. Integrity. Trust.

Pinkerton's tradition of excellence continues with the experience you can trust, and the integrity you can rely on as a respected leader in the security consulting and investigation industry. Pinkerton offers corporations comprehensive security services, a consultative approach to identifying risks and the professional expertise to partner in effective solutions. With offices located in North America, Central America, South America, Europe, and Asia, you can depend on an organization with a rich history and a dynamic future.

Parent Company

Securitas Group has operations in more than 30 countries, primarily in Europe and North America. They are a world leader in security, with annual sales of approximately $7 billion. Every day, more than 200,000 employees work to carry out their mission of protecting homes, work places, and community. They provide security services in close cooperation with customers. To this end, business areas have been added and the service content has been specialized and developed. Their business areas are: Guard Services, Alarm Systems, and Cash Handling.

Origin of the Surname

From The Surnames of Scotland, by George F. Black Ph.D, 1946
 

PINKERTON. From the old barony of the same name near Dunbar, East Lothian. Nicol de Pynkertone of Haddingtonshire rendered homage in 1296 (Bain, II, p. 210). His seal shows a mastiff barking, a rose above, S' Nicolai de Pincriton (ibid., p. 544). Patrick de Penkerton had protection for a year in England in 1396 (ibid., IV, 484). The name was not uncommon on the West Coast in the sixteenth century and earlier. The tenement of John Pinkerton in Glasgow is mentioned in 1494 (REG., 469), and a resignation of property in favor of Felicia Pyncartoun in Glasgow is recorded in 1552 (Protocols, I). John Pynkertoun rendered to Exchequer the accounts of the bailies of Rutherglen, 1559, and Malcolm Pincartoun rendered the accounts of the same burgh in 1566 (ER., XIX, p. 89, 325). The barony of Pinkerton was granted to the first earl of Argyll in 1483 on the forfeiture of Albany. John Pinkerton (1758-1826), the historian, is the best known of the name. Allan Pinkerton (1819-1884), the famous American detective, was born in Glasgow. Pincartone 1707, Pincartoune 1540, Pinkartoun 1677, Pinkcartoune 1648, Pinkertoune 1668, Pyncartoune 1533.