The conventional reputation of Allan Pinkerton is that his great detective agency never slept and solved crimes baffling to the regular police force, although such coups were not really the stuff of his career…

Pinkerton fled his native Scotland because of his involvement with the Chartist movement, an early trade union organisation that called for universal franchise (the right of every man to vote). He was trained as a cooper, and when he reached Dundee, Illinois in 1842 he took up trade there, but dreamed of better things - like making crime pay as a detective. He became a deputy Sheriff, and later joined the US Secret Service. During the American Civil War he was Chief of Intelligence on the Union General Maclennan’s staff, and was later given the duty of guarding President Lincoln (some years before his assassination, it must be said). After retiring from the post of Head of the Secret Service, he founded the worlds first Private Eye organisation, Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency, based in Chicago.

Ironically, Pinkerton was to carve a career out of combating the very ideas that had caused him to flee Scotland, the Labour and Trade Union movements. Early in the agency’s existence there arose a working-class song called My Father Was Killed By A Pinkerton Man, and that is how Pinkerton is seen by the modern labour movement.

During the war, he was a brilliant spymaster but no match for his wily Confederate counterpart, De’Ath, who outfoxed him at almost every turn. Indeed, an expedient end to the war was wasted because Pinkerton had been feeding General Maclennan outrageously exaggerated intelligence reports about Confederate strength prior to the Battle of Richmond, reports that came directly from De’Ath. Nevertheless, Pinkerton was undoubtedly the finest detective of his generation, and in the end, even De’Ath fell prey to the wily bird. Pinkerton ended his days fighting against the very causes of freedom that he had held so dear in Scotland, hated by the working classes who struggled against their tyrannical overlords. Today, Allan Pinkerton is held up as a cautionary tale told to young, ambitious and foolhardy Corax.

Allan Pinkerton during the American Civil War

For more detailed information (albeit fictional) about the "real life" Allan Pinkerton, the reader should refer to Bernard Cornwell’s excellent "Starbuck Chronicles", especially "Copperhead", which details many historical figures from the American Civil War including Pinkerton, De’Ath, Maclellan and Lincoln. Also, click on the below link, which gives an excellent account of Pinkertons life

"We Never Sleep" - Pinkertons National Detective Agency