Allan Pinkerton's Civil War Legacy: Justified or Overblown? by Michael G. Stroud

Scottish-born Allan Pinkerton certainly played a role in the arena of military and counter-intelligence during the Civil War. This role however must be carefully measured as to its impact upon the war while keeping in the context as to the kind of man that Pinkerton was. By all accounts, Pinkerton was a very principled man who railed against the injustices of slavery upon his emigration to the U.S. in 1842 which soon found him involved in the abolitionist movement. It was during this Antebellum period that saw Pinkerton develop the skills for acquiring intelligence and moving about without being seen that would figure so prominently in his career. By the time that the Civil War had begun, Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency had already been in business for roughly eleven years, setting a standard of professionalism that had not existed up until then. These standards, which could be called Pinkerton’s codes stated that his operatives could have no 'addition to drink, smoking, card playing, low dives or …slang.' These standards of conduct would play a powerful part in his lasting legacy in the realm of detective and intelligence work.

In February 1861, a female agent by the name of Kate Warne (a very progressive move by Pinkerton employing female agents) had learned of a plot to assassination President-Elect Abraham Lincoln as he traveled by train to Washington D.C. The attack was supposed to occur at the last stop before D.C., which was in Baltimore, but through the use of information control (by cutting the telegraph lines so the assailants could not communicate with one another) and deception (Lincoln actually boarded an alternate train at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania), Pinkerton was able to relay in code that the 'Plums delivered the nuts safely.' This perfectly positioned Pinkerton and his company to be of use once the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter on 12 April. Initially offering his services to the President directly, Pinkerton was asked and then tasked by Maj. Gen. George McClellan to effectively be his personal intelligence officer (the fact that they were established friends from when McClellan was a railroad executive is important to note). Serving as civilian contractors with McClellan’s army, Pinkerton and his agents engaged in active military intelligence gathering or positive intelligence, utilizing agents to conduct surveillance, gathering information on Confederate positions and troop strengths, as well as counterintelligence efforts to root out Confederate spies and conspirators utilizing undercover work(mainly in Washington). Pinkerton’s largest success in the realm of counterintelligence was the uncovering the Confederate spy network run by Rosa Greenhow and her subsequent apprehension and arrest on 23 August 1861. Greenhow’s activities had provided Confederate General Beauregard several warnings as to the Union troop activity and advance around Manassas.

Pinkerton’s reputation took a major hit at the time with erroneous Confederate troop numbers (exaggerating them greatly, well over a 100,000 if not 200,000) that were deployed in and around Richmond. This bad intelligence, which was not verified or vetted by McClellan, influenced the general’s prosecution of the war, which would result in his firing by President Lincoln and Pinkerton’s resignation in 1862. History’s treatment of Pinkerton and his legacy is fair in both his successes and failures. His saving of newly elected President Lincoln (which there is a fair amount of contestation that the entire affair was a hoax to garner national attention) and its direct impact on the course of the nation cannot understated, nor can the methods put into play to have made this happen. Some of these methods were undercover agents including female agents to blend in, information gathering, deception and hosts of others that easily made his work in counterintelligence their strongest contribution to the Union. These methods, along with strict codes of professionalism, reporting, and the like have served as the bedrock for professional detective agencies ever since, lasting far beyond the Civil War. His failures though showcase a man not attuned or properly skilled for military intelligence as his consistently inaccurate enemy troop counts and vague field reports did nothing to further the Union cause and only hurt it (especially in the case of McClellan, who was already too methodical to begin). The criticism of Pinkerton’s contributions is fair and valid, as he and his agents were tasked with securing information that was accurate and timely to the Union war effort and when they failed to do so (and on more than one occasion), they rightly reaped the lament and criticism of history.