I just read this book the other day, and it was a fantastic read. The author is a gifted writer, and presented this history about Allan Pinkerton more like a movie script than a plain jane biography. The cool thing about this book though is that it is all true, and it is heavily sourced from of all the books written by Allan Pinkerton and from all the other biographers that have written about this man.
The other reason why I like this book is because it highlights the achievements of private industry during war time. Pinkerton and his private detective agency was the best and most innovative private detective agency in the country at the time, and his services became crucial to not only other companies, but to government and military leaders. This company was also crucial to the expansion out west, and so the Pinkerton Detective Agency is a very important part of US history.
How important? Let me put it too you this way. If it wasn’t for Allan Pinkerton and his crew of agents finding and stopping the assassins that wanted to kill Lincoln during his inaugural post election train ride to Washington DC, then the Civil War probably would have turned out a lot different. Or maybe it would have never have happened at all? That is how important these guys were, and they accomplished this as a private company and not as a branch of government.
So some of the details in this book that intrigued me was how much of an innovator Pinkerton was. He was the first to use women agents for solving cases. His women agents did some serious kick ass work during the war, and certainly were the unsung heroes during the war.
He also used pictures for detective work, which you might think sounds inconsequential right now. But back then, identifying folks across the country was a difficult task. If a detective had a photo of the person they were looking for, it made it easier to ask around about them, and easier to pick out if that individual was close by. More accurate files could be created using photos as well.
Pinkerton was also a big fan of Lincoln, and had actually met Lincoln before he was president. He was also an abolitionist back then, and a pretty compassionate man according to the author.
As for a trivia deal, I learned in the book that Pinkerton’s son William was the first aerial balloon observer in the history of warfare. The kid was in his teens at the time and was working as a scout and messenger in the war. They put him in a balloon because he was light and small. I thought that was cool, and quite the innovation back in the day.
Finally, the one part that I really liked about the book, was the author’s defense of Pinkerton over the whole debate about McClellan getting fired by Lincoln. Historians and General McClellan fans have bashed Pinkerton in the past over supplying McClellan faulty intelligence during the Battle of Antietam. They claim that because of this bad intel, that McClellan was not able to destroy Lee and his army during that battle. (Lee did a tactical withdrawal) The author said that McClellan had plenty of intelligence that he drew from during the war, and Pinkerton’s was not the only source. That McClellan failed to completely defeat Lee, not because of a lack of good intel, but because he was not aggressive enough to seal the deal. Lincoln wanted the war over, and he wanted Lee’s head on a pike, and McClellan just wasn’t producing the results Lincoln wanted.
But of course I am not going to get into that debate because there are folks out there that are big fans of McClellan, and there are others that think otherwise. My intent with this book review is to discuss Allan Pinkerton’s place in that history, and I certainly recommend this book for doing just that. Perhaps with the author’s film background, this will be made into a movie?
Also, the book will be in the Jundi Gear locker if anyone wants to find it again in the future. Check it out. –Matt
Pinkerton’s War: The Civil War’s Greatest Spy and the Birth of the U.S. Secret Service
By Jay BonansingaA thrilling historical account of Allan Pinkerton’s pivotal role in the Civil War and the birth of the Secret Service
Scottish immigrant Allan Pinkerton is best known for creating the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, which gained renown for solving train robberies in the 1850s and battling the labor movement in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. But the central drama of his career, and the focus of this book, was his work as protector of President Abraham Lincoln and head of a network of Union spies (including himself!) who posed as Confederate soldiers and sympathizers in a deadly cat-and-mouse game.
As here told in riveting prose by author Jay Bonansinga, Pinkerton’s politics and abolitionist sympathies drew the attention of supporters of presidential incumbent Abraham Lincoln—and Pinkerton was hired to act as his bodyguard. Pinkerton was asked to organize the U.S. government’s first “Secret Service,” and during the Civil War he managed a network of spies who worked behind confederate lines and tackled espionage at the highest levels in Washington. By war’s end, the agency’s reputation was so well established that it was often hired by the government to perform many of the same duties today assigned to the Secret Service, the FBI, the CIA, and, most recently, the Department of Homeland Security.Jay Bonansinga is the national bestselling author of The Sinking of the Eastland, a Chicago Reader Critics Choice Book, and eleven novels. His latest novel, Perfect Victim, was a Book of the Month Club Alternate. He is also an award-winning indie filmmaker.
Find the book here.(Jundi Gear)