Allan Pinkerton | |
|---|---|
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| Born | (1819-08-21)August 21, 1819 Glasgow, Scotland |
| Died | July 1, 1884(1884-07-01) (aged 64) Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Resting place | Graceland Cemetery, Chicago, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Cooper, abolitionist, detective, spy |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 6 |
Allan Pinkerton (August 21, 1819[1] – July 1, 1884) was a Scottish-American detective, spy,abolitionist, andcooper best known for creating thePinkerton National Detective Agency in the United States and his claim to have obstructed theplot in 1861 to assassinate then president-electAbraham Lincoln. During theCivil War, he provided theUnion Army – specifically GeneralGeorge B. McClellan of theArmy of the Potomac – with military intelligence, including extremely inaccurate enemy troop strength numbers.[2] After the war, his agents played a significant role asstrikebreakers – in particular during theGreat Railroad Strike of 1877 – a role that Pinkerton men would continue to play after the death of their founder.
Allan Pinkerton was born in theGorbals, a working-class area ofGlasgow, on August 21, 1819,[3] the second surviving son[1] of William Pinkerton, a retired policeman, and Isobel McQueen;[4] he was baptized on August 25, 1819, which many sources incorrectly give as his birthdate.[1] He left school at the age of 10 after his father's death. Pinkerton read voraciously and was largely self-educated.[5] Acooper by trade,[6] he was active in the ScottishChartist movement as a young man.[7] He was not raised in a religious upbringing, and was a lifelongatheist.[8]
Pinkerton and his wife moved overseas to escape either arrest for his involvement in the Chartist movement, or the ire of the Chartists having turned informer.[9] While sailing toward Canada, their ship accidentally ran aground onSable Island. They eventually secured passage on a schooner and continued their journey to Detroit, Michigan. Unable to find work there, Pinkerton used the last of his money to buy a horse and wagon. He and his wife then traveled west to Chicago, where he found work as a cooper for a brewery and began to establish a new life. In 1843, he heard ofDundee Township, Illinois, fifty miles northwest of Chicago on theFox River.[10] He built a cabin and started acooperage, sending for his wife in Chicago when their cabin was complete.[10] As early as 1844, Pinkerton worked for the Chicago abolitionist leaders, and his Dundee home was a stop on theUnderground Railroad.[11]
Pinkerton first became interested in criminal detective work while wandering through the wooded groves around Dundee, looking for trees to makebarrel staves, when he came across a band ofcounterfeiters,[12] who may have been affiliated with the notoriousBanditti of the Prairie. After observing their movements for some time he informed the local sheriff, who arrested them. This later led to Pinkerton being appointed, in 1849, as the first police detective inChicago,Cook County, Illinois. In 1850, he partnered with Chicago attorney Edward Rucker in forming the North-Western Police Agency, which later became Pinkerton & Co, and finallyPinkerton National Detective Agency, still in existence today as Pinkerton Consulting and Investigations, a subsidiary ofSecuritas AB. Pinkerton's business insignia was a wide open eye with the caption "We never sleep." Allan Pinkerton gained public attention when he and his detectives successfully solved a vandalism case at the Old French Cemetery near Lake Michigan. There, they apprehended three medical students who admitted to committing the crime of grave robbing for medical research purposes. When the story was reported in the news, highlighting Pinkerton’s role in the arrest, it brought widespread attention to his agency. The following morning, the Pinkerton office was flooded with new clients seeking his services. As the USexpanded in territory, rail transport increased. Pinkerton's agency solved a series oftrain robberies during the 1850s, first bringing Pinkerton into contact withGeorge B. McClellan, then Chief Engineer and Vice President of theIllinois Central Railroad, andAbraham Lincoln, a lawyer who sometimes represented the company. In 1857, theChicago Tribune urged the city to dismiss its police chief and hire Allan Pinkerton in response to a surge in thefts throughout the city. In 1866, Allan Pinkerton achieved major success by capturing a group of thieves who had stolen $700,000 from a train safe. Through his investigation, he was able to recover $688,000 of the stolen funds. Pinkerton founded an organization that was revolutionary for its time. He hired the first female detective,Kate Warne, and established core investigative principles that continue to influence modern detective work to this day.
Pinkerton was known to be a friend of abolitionistJohn Brown. On March 11, 1859, he supported Brown by giving him $500 and a ticket on the Michigan Central Railroad to Detroit. He also attended the secret meetings held by John Brown andFrederick Douglass in Chicago along with abolitionistsJohn Jones andHenry O. Wagoner. At those meetings, Jones, Wagoner, and Pinkerton helped purchase clothes and supplies for Brown. Jones' wife, Mary, guessed that the supplies included the suit Brown was hanged in after the failure ofJohn Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in November 1859.[13]
When theCivil War began, Pinkerton served as head of the Union Intelligence Service during the first two years, heading off an allegedassassination plot inBaltimore, Maryland while guardingAbraham Lincoln on his way to Washington, D.C., as well as providing estimates ofConfederate troop numbers to GeneralGeorge B. McClellan when he commanded theArmy of the Potomac. His agents often worked undercover as Confederate soldiers and sympathizers to gather military intelligence. Pinkerton himself served on several undercover missions as a Confederate soldier using the alias Major E.J. Allen. He worked across the Deep South in the summer of 1861, focusing on fortifications and Confederate plans. He was found out in Memphis and barely escaped with his life. This counterintelligence work done by Pinkerton and his agents is comparable to the work done by today'sU.S. Army Counterintelligence Special Agents in which Pinkerton's agency is considered an early predecessor.[14] He was succeeded as Intelligence Service chief byLafayette Baker; the Intelligence Service was the predecessor of theU.S. Secret Service. His work led to the establishment of the Federal secret service.[15]
Military historians have been strongly critical of the intelligence Pinkerton provided for the Union Army, which for the most part was undigested raw data.[2] In the view ofT. Harry Williams, Pinkerton's work was "the poorest intelligence service any general ever had."[16] Pinkerton's estimates of Rebel troop numbers, derived from his credulous interrogations of Confederate prisoners, deserters, refugees, escaped slaves ("contrabands"), and civilians unused to counting large bodies of men, badly exaggerated the size of those formations, sometimes almost doubling their actual strength. Pinkerton's numbers caused McClellan to consistently believe that he was drastically outnumbered by the Confederate forces he faced. McClellan's action in the face of what he believed were overwhelming odds were unduly cautious, causing him to avoid offensive actions almost completely in favor ofsiege warfare and taking a defensive posture. This led to his retreat in thePeninsula Campaign, his failure to crushRobert E. Lee'sArmy of Northern Virginia at theBattle of Antietam, and his unnecessary delay in carrying out his orders to pursue Lee's army as they retreated from their invasion of Maryland back into Virginia. These actions were all based on McClellan's firm trust in Pinkerton's reports, although the problem was compounded by the intelligence-gathering ineptitude of Brigadier GeneralAlfred Pleasonton, McClellan's head cavalryman and his alternate source of enemy troop information when Pinkerton did not have agents in place.[17][18][a]
On the other hand, Edwin C. Fishel inThe Secret War for the Union and James Mackay inAllan Pinkerton: The First Private Eye argue that the troop strength figures which Pinkerton passed on to McClellan were relatively accurate, and that McClellan himself held primary responsibility for inflating those numbers to wildly unrealistic levels.[19][20]
Following Pinkerton's services for theUnion Army, he continued his pursuit of train robbers, including theReno Gang. He was hired by the railroad express companies to track outlawJesse James, but after Pinkerton failed to capture him, the railroad withdrew their financial support and Pinkerton continued to track James at his own expense. After James allegedly captured and killed one of Pinkerton's undercover agents (who was working undercover at the farm neighboring the James family's farmstead), he abandoned the chase. Some consider this failure Pinkerton's biggest defeat.[21] In 1872, theSpanish Government hired Pinkerton to help suppress arevolution in Cuba which intended to endslavery and give citizens the right to vote.[22] If Pinkerton knew this, then it directly contradicts statements in his 1883 bookThe Spy of the Rebellion, where he professes to be an ardent abolitionist and hater of slavery. The Spanish governmentabolished slavery in 1880 and a Royal Decree abolished the last vestiges of it in 1886.
Pinkerton married Joan Carfrae (1822–1887), a singer fromDuddingston, in Edinburgh on March 13, 1842.[23] They remained married until his death. They had six children: Isabella, William, Joan, Robert, Mary, and Joan.
Pinkerton died inChicago on July 1, 1884. It is usually said that Pinkerton slipped on the pavement and bit his tongue, resulting ingangrene.[24] Contemporary reports give conflicting causes, such as that he succumbed to a stroke – he had a year earlier – or tomalaria, which he had contracted during a trip to theSouthern United States.[25] At the time of his death, he was working on a system to centralize all criminal identification records; such adatabase is now maintained by theFederal Bureau of Investigation.
Pinkerton is buried between his wife and Kate Warne in the family plot inGraceland Cemetery, Chicago.[26] He is a member of theMilitary Intelligence Hall of Fame.[27]
After his death, the agency continued to operate and soon became a major force against thelabor movement developing in the US andCanada. This effort changed the image of the Pinkertons for years. They were involved in numerous activities against labor during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including:
Despite his agency's later reputation for anti-labor activities, Pinkerton himself was heavily involved in pro-labor politics as a young man.[28] Though Pinkerton considered himself pro-labor, he opposed strikes and distrusted labor unions.[29]
Allan Pinkerton was so famous that for decades after his death, his surname was aslang term for aprivate eye, whether they were agents of the Pinkerton Agency or not. The "Mr. Pinkerton" novels, by American mystery writerZenith Jones Brown (under the pseudonym David Frome), were about Welsh-born amateur detective Evan Pinkerton and may have been inspired by the slang term.
Pinkerton produced numerous populardetective books, ostensibly based on his own exploits and those of his agents. Some were published after his death, and they are considered to have been more motivated by a desire to promote his detective agency than a literary endeavor. Most historians believe that Allan Pinkerton hiredghostwriters, but the books nonetheless bear his name and no doubt reflect his views.[30]
Informational notes
Citations
Although christened by a Baptist minister in the Gorbals (August 25, 1819), he had a churchless upbringing and was a lifelong atheist(Subscription,Wikipedia Library access orUK public library membership required.)
[3]Bibliography
Further reading
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