Authoring, Researching, Reporting and other Work

 

	The Union Spies, during the Civil War A Learning On-Line Learning Activity Page by Howard Taylor
Allan Pinkerton, President Abraham Lincoln and General John McClernand, October 3, 1852 Allan Pinkerton was instrumental in organizing the first Secret Service of the United States and had an assumed name of Major E. J. Allen (as suggested by Gen. McClellan)	"Mission Impossible" Click the Eye

    B iographer Sigmund A. Lavine writes about Allan Pinkerton, "(Allan Pinkerton was) . . . 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."

. . . was the motto of United States' first private detective.  Allan Pinkerton (1819-84) was a Scottish-born American detective. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, Pinkerton came to the United States and settled near Chicago in 1842. While engaged in business as a barrel maker in 1846, he captured a gang of counterfeiters and was consequently elected county sheriff. In 1850 he organized Pinkerton's National Detective Agency and was appointed the first city detective in Chicago.     During that time period he would have contact with railroad lawyer, Abraham Lincoln.
    The recovery of a large sum of money stolen from the Adams Express Company and the discovery of a plot to murder Abraham Lincoln in 1861 made his reputation. During the American Civil War he organized the secret service of the U.S. Army. This same secret service is now the U.S. Secret Service that guards the President, among other duties.  It is a branch of the Department of the Treasury.
    During the railroad strikes of 1877, his agency provide strikebreakers.  Allan Pinkerton was an author with more than one book.  He has become a legend in our country and a rough and tough detective who could go after the meanest of meanest gunfighters and train robbers of our Old West.
    Pinkerton was known by the nickname "The Eye," which today has become to mean all detectives as "private eyes."
    Allan Pinkerton died in 1884, and was buried in a Chicago cemetery.