Blues, Grays, and Pinkertons
- Paul Campbell
- Apr 2
- 10 min read
Updated: Apr 3
While Sherlock Holmes is by far the world's most famous detective in literature, the world's most famous detective agency is without doubt that founded by Allan Pinkerton. Even today, the name Pinkerton is often synonymous with the profession of the detective. The Pinkerton Detective Agency was founded in Chicago around 1850 and reached the height of its fame around the same time as that of the Wild West. Bank-robbers, train heists, and Pinkerton detectives seem to go hand-in-hand(-in-hand), but the Pinkerton Agency is also responsible for the modern Secret Service, the government agency responsible for protecting the president.
Where did it all begin? Well, Scotland, of course!
The Man in Pink
Allan Pinkerton was born in Scotland to a retired policeman and his wife in 1819. After his father's death just ten years later, Pinkerton began work as a cooper, or barrel maker. At the age of twenty-three, he immigrated to the United States and settled outside Chicago, Illinois. Having been fascinated with police work from an early age, he became the first official police detective for Chicago in 1849 at thirty years old. Just one year later, he partnered with an attorney, Edward Rucker, to form what would later be called the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. It was the first agency of its kind. While other private consulting firms existed, Pinkerton's was the first to expand its reach nationwide.
His timing could not have been better.
Railroads were expanding westward, and with them, the money to fund such enterprises. As the railroads grew beyond the reach of ordinary law and order, it became more difficult for owners to protect their investments and payrolls. Pinkerton offered his agency's services in defense of the railroads. His success in solving a series of train robberies proved the prowess of his agency. It was here that he met the Vice President of the Illinois Central Railroad, one George McClellan, and a lanky lawyer who represented the railroad on occasion, Abraham Lincoln, both of whom Pinkerton would have further dealings with years later.
The Woman in Pink
Pinkerton's fame was pushed to greater heights in 1861, during his successful foiling of the Baltimore Plot, thanks in part to a woman named Kate Warne, who Pinkerton had hired five years earlier.
Though Pinkerton was initially hesitant to hire Warne, he decided to give her a chance. Women have had a long history of working as spies during times of war, but these were rarely paid positions, and it was unheard of for a woman to be a paid detective. For comparison, Kate Warne was hired in 1856, and It was not until 1891 that women were even allowed to be part of the police force, and not until 1908 that they could be actual police officers—over fifty years after Allan Pinkerton hired Kate Warne. Pinkerton, as a private employer, chose to break these rules, and gave Warne a chance. By 1861, she was one of his top five agents.
When Pinkerton heard of a plot to assassinate then president-elect Lincoln, he sent her, along with a team of other detectives, to Baltimore, Maryland to investigate. Warne confirmed the plot and took action to protect the president-elect, disguising him as an invalid and switching trains. Pinkerton also interrupted telegraph communications between stations so the assassins would have no warning as to the change in the president's schedule.
Lincoln traveled to the White House in anonymity, changing trains several times over the course of the night. After arranging the schedule, Kate Warne remained on guard the entire night, and Pinkerton adopted the slogan “We Never Sleep” for his agency in part due to her vigilance.
Kate Warne continued with the agency until her death, just seven years later, in her mid-thirties. By then, she had become head of her own department within the Pinkerton Agency, known as the Female Detective Bureau. By the time of her death, she had helped solve dozens of cases and established herself as a capable and talented spy.
Black and Pink
Pinkerton quickly began to recognize the value in employing spies that were unexpected. Many men of the time could not imagine women to be employed in such espionage. Pinkerton continued to employ women as spies, often to great success. There was another group of people who fit the category of the unexpected: African Americans. Pinkerton was an abolitionist, and would occasionally employ black men to be spies as well—or so we are told.
When the War Between the States broke out, Pinkerton offered his services. As an old friend of both Abraham Lincoln and now General George McClellan, his offer was readily accepted. Pinkerton himself, along with other men and women, worked as spies within the Confederacy, gathering intelligence. One remarkable man employed in this venture was John Scobell—or was he? A quick online search will reveal ample sources referring to John Scobell, an ex-slave who joined the Pinkertons as a spy for the Union, but questions remain. As we learned during our search for Robert Ledru, online sources are not always reliable.
The Pinkerton website (The Pinkerton Agency still exists, though it is now a subsidiary of a Swedish-based security company) even has an article up about the famous black Pinkerton, but apart from Allan Pinkerton's own memoirs about the war, The Spy of the Rebellion, factual confirmation is difficult to pin down.
Doug Peterson, author of The Lincoln League, claims that his novel was inspired by the true story of John Scobell, but how true is it?
Corey Recko, also an author and a historian, claims to have found no supporting evidence from the memoirs of the very real Timothy Webster, nor from his search of the Pinkerton Agency's files—those files that survived the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, that is. By the time of his search for John Scobell, Recko had already written a book about Timothy Webster, but could find nothing about the existence of the famous black spy, John Scobell, who had supposedly worked alongside Webster on several occasions. Failing to find any proof of Scobell's existence, he turned to the papers of General George McClellan, who oversaw the work which Pinkerton contracted to do. Recko states:
“My search for Scobell was less satisfying [than the search for Webster]. He wasn’t there. I don’t just mean there wasn’t an operative named John Scobell, but there wasn’t an operative that did anything he was claimed to have done in The Spy of the Rebellion. There wasn’t a record of anyone going on the missions he was said to have undertaken, nor was there a record of anyone ever posing undercover as a servant for Timothy Webster or Hattie Lewis, as he was said to have done—not here or in any other account of Webster’s activities. Of those who recorded their contact with Timothy Webster, no mention was made of anyone who could have been John Scobell. It was true: John Scobell never existed.”
Did Black Pinkertons Exist?
What are we to believe? While Allan Pinkerton's memoirs were known to be somewhat fictionalized, are we to believe that John Scobell was entirely fictional? A few possibilities arise:
It is possible that Pinkerton invented the character as a means of normalizing the idea of black men being equals with white men. Published after the war, it would have been circulated during the height of Reconstruction, when the nation struggled with both the effects of the war and the social shift of former slaves entering society en masse.
With the modern concept of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) attempting to shoehorn minorities into every movie, TV show, and story they possibly can—whether it makes historical sense or not—we might assume that Pinkerton invented Scobell to reinforce his own identity as an abolitionist. But employing black men would not have gained him any social credit in the late nineteenth century, like it would today.
It is also quite plausible that Pinkerton invented the character of John Scobell to represent a wider group of black men who worked for his agency as a way to honor their contributions, even if no single person or event was particularly noteworthy.
There remains another possibility: Segregation was common in the north as much or more than it was in the south. It is possible that Pinkerton chose not to directly employ black men through the usual means, either from personal bias or social discretion among his peers. While many white men were against slavery, equality was another matter. Images do exist of Pinkerton scouts during the war. The image below was borrowed from the Pinkerton website, but the black man in this image is identified as the group's cook. An important role, to be sure, but it would not have qualified him to be a spy, in the usual sense.
Scobell, by all accounts, seems larger-than-life. While it is theoretically possible that such a man existed, the lack of any historical documents confirming his role in the agency cast significant doubt on the narrative. While Scobell himself may be partly or wholly fictional, it is fairly safe to say that black men and former slaves were part of the network which Pinkerton used to gather information during the war, even if they were paid informants rather than employed spies. Black men were employed by the Pinkerton Detective Agency, but the specific roles they played are more difficult to pin down, and how—or if—they were formally employed as detectives during the 19th century remains difficult to say with any certainty.
It is likely, given Allan Pinkerton's penchant for hiring women, that he likely employed black men and women for the same reason; they could infiltrate circles which their peers could not. Pinkerton understood the value of information and was willing to employ anyone who could gain it, so whether John Scobell existed or not, I believe he represents a wider group who have, sadly, been lost to history. My own fictional character from my newest novel, Gray Matter, is also a black man and former Pinkerton spy, who has since lost faith in the agency. He is known only as 'Pinkerton' and, as a fictional character, it is possible that he has more in common with John Scobell than many people assume.
Pink is the new Black
During the latter half of the 19th century, the Pinkerton Detective Agency was the largest private police force in the world. It was Pinkerton's detectives who were first assigned to protecting the president—a role which later shifted to an official government service, known as the Secret Service. While his role in governmental protection is important to history, Pinkerton is perhaps most famous for his work in the west. Sheriffs and police officers were often few and far between, and railroad companies recognized the importance of hiring men to protect and defend their investments from outlaws like Jesse James. Much good can be ascribed to Allan Pinkerton and his private detective agency, but as the agency truly grew nationwide, things took a downward turn. War was no longer on the horizon, and the Pinkerton spy network was forced to find other employment from companies who could afford them. Many of those companies used the private police force for less-than-scrupulous purposes. While they began by investigating labor unions and providing early warning of any plans to strike, they ultimately became the means of preventing or stopping the strikes as well—often by force.
In 1871, Congress began hiring the Pinkertons to help quell strikes. By the time of Pinkerton's death in 1884, the Pinkerton agency was beginning to shift from a private investigative force to more of a rich man's army, specializing in strikebreaking. They were, after all, agents for hire in the largest private police force in the world, and their services could be purchased by anyone who could afford them. Several confrontations with striking workers left a bad taste in the public's mouth for the agency, culminating in the Homestead Steel Strike. Three-hundred Pinkerton agents were hired to regain access to the local steel mill, which had been blockaded by striking workmen. The Pinkertons attempted to reach the mill by barges, but became pinned down by rifle shots, killing several and wounding more. The Pinkertons returned fire.
In hindsight, I do not think much blame can be placed on the Pinkerton agents, who appeared to conduct themselves admirably, based on historical reports. A negotiation was made for the Pinkertons' surrender, who were trapped on the barges, surrounded by some five thousand armed steel workers, and they were eager to surrender. They were taken prisoner, and were released the following day.
The Homestead Massacre, as it was sometimes called, left a bad taste in the public's mouth for the agency, and the following year, 1893, Congress passed the Anti-Pinkerton Act, which limited the Federal Government's ability to hire private investigators or mercenaries. Though the Pinkerton Agency still exists today, 1893 was the turning point from the height of their success to a downward direction.
With the bad taste in the public's mouth, especially after the Homestead Strike in 1892, it is easy to understand why an agent might have chosen to leave behind such a profession. The populace began to increasingly view them as nothing more than thugs for hire. As always, history is not so black and white. There were likely some cruel and unscrupulous agents, just as there were honest and sincere ones. With a network of two-thousand active agents and thirty-thousand reserves by the 1890's (more than the United States Army at the time), it is unsurprising that they often took jobs which put them at odds with the working man.
Pinkertons Today
At the time of his death, Allan Pinkerton was working to create an international database for criminal identification records, much like Alphonse Bertillon began in France (read my blog on Alphonse Bertillon here), and which the Federal Bureau of Investigation uses today. As police departments modernized, and the FBI overtook the investigation of international crimes, the Pinkerton agency became less necessary. Today, they are primarily a private security company.
Allan Pinkerton is possibly the most famous real detective of all time. His agency is even recognized in Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes novel, The Valley of Fear, which was largely based on the Pinkertons' breakup of the Molly Maguires. So many other fascinating cases exist which involved either Pinkerton himself or one of his agents that it is impossible to cover them all. Although Allan Pinkerton's legacy is not perfect (and whose is, besides Jesus Christ?), his life is one that is well-worth studying.
These blogs are designed to give you a brief look at the true history which plays a part in my novels, The Callahan Chronicles. For more information about Allan Pinkerton, his agency, or Kate Warne, the world's first female detective, (or to read my novels), please check out the links below:
The Callahan Chronicles - by Paul Campbell
Gray Matter - Buy on Amazon
Kate Warne - Wikipedia entry
Kate Warne, Private Detective - from the National Park Service website
Allan Pinkerton's Spies and Covert Operations in the Civil War - from the Pinkerton website
Allan Pinkerton - Encyclopedia Britannica
The Myth of John Scobell - by Corey Recko
John Scobell - from the Pinkerton website
The Homestead Steel Strike - from the Heinz History Center
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