Today in History: August 25
The Pinkertons
The Late Allan Pinkerton,
Wood Engraving,
Illustration from Harper's Weekly,
July 12, 1884.
Prints and Photographs Division
Allan Pinkerton, founder of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, was born in Glasgow, Scotland on August 25, 1819. Pinkerton emigrated to the United States in 1842 and eventually established a barrelmaking shop in a small town outside of Chicago. He was an ardent abolitionist, and his shop functioned as a "station" for escaped slaves traveling the Underground Railroad to freedom in the North.
Pinkerton's career as a detective began by chance when he discovered a gang of counterfeiters making coins in an area where he was gathering wood. His assistance in arresting these men and another gang led first to his appointment as deputy sheriff of Kane County and, later, as Chicago's first full-time detective.
" It Looks Like a Plot on Our Telegraph Lines!"
Secret Service,
A Play by William Gillette,
1896.
Theatrical Poster Collection.
Prints and Photographs Division
In 1850, Pinkerton left his job with the Chicago police force to start his own detective agency. One of the first of its kind, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency provided a wide array of private detective services and specialized in the capture of train robbers and counterfeiters. By the 1870s, the agency had the world's largest collection of mug shots and an extensive criminal database. The agency's logo, "the All-Seeing Eye," inspired the phrase "Private Eye."
In 1861, while investigating a railway case, Pinkerton uncovered an assassination plot against Abraham Lincoln. The conspirators intended to kill Lincoln in Baltimore during a stop along the way to his inauguration. Pinkerton warned Lincoln of the threat, and the president-elect's itinerary was changed so that he passed through the city secretly at night.
Lincoln later hired Pinkerton to organize a "secret service" to obtain military information in the Southern states during the Civil War. Pinkerton sent agents into Kentucky and West Virginia, and, traveling under the pseudonym "Major E.J. Allen," performed his own investigative work in Tennessee, Georgia, and Mississippi.
After the war, Pinkerton resumed the management of his detective agency. By this time, the U.S. Secret Service had been established to prevent counterfeiting, and, by 1901, its mission had been expanded to include protecting the president.
President and Mrs. Coolidge Leaving First Congregational Church,
November 26, 1925.
Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy, 1921-1929
The man descending the steps behind the Coolidges, drawing on a glove, is James Haley, the Secret Service agent assigned to Mrs. Coolidge.
Allan Pinkerton on Horseback,
Alexander Gardner,
photographer,
September 1862.
Allan Pinkerton, President Lincoln, and Maj. Gen. John A. McClernand,
Antietam, Maryland,
Alexander Gardner, photographer,
October 3, 1862.
Secret Service Men
at Foller's House,
Cumberland Landing, Virginia,
James F. Gibson,
photographer,
May 1862.
Civil War Photographs, 1861-1865
In the late 1800s, Pinkerton guards and agents gained notoriety as strike breakers. During his lifetime, Pinkerton expressed his opposition to labor unions, which he thought were against the interests of the workers. Confrontations between Pinkertons and laborers include the 1886 Haymarket Riot and the 1892 Homestead Strike, both of which occurred after Pinkerton's death in 1884.
The Anarchist-Labor Troubles in Chicago.
Explosion of Bomb May 4th, in Haymarket Square, Chicago, and Priest Giving Last Rites to Policeman.
From a sketch by C. Bunnell
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper
May 15, 1886.
The Labor Troubles at Homestead, Pennsylvania,
Attack of the Strikers and Their Sympathizers on the Surrendered Pinkerton Men,
Drawn by Miss G.A. Davis from a sketch by Charles Upham.
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper
July 14, 1892.
Prints and Photographs Division
- Search on Pinkerton or secret service in Civil War Photographs, 1861-1865 to see more photographs of Pinkerton and his secret service agents.
- Search the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog on secret service to view more theatrical posters advertising the performance of Secret Service, William Gillette's historical drama about the Civil War-era secret service.
- See images of a broadside announcing the 1886 mass meeting which turned into the Haymarket Square Riot. It's just one treasure in the rich repository of Americana found in An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera .
- Search on keywords such as Pinkerton, police, or evidence in Chicago Anarchists on Trial: 1886-1887, which documents a violent confrontation between Chicago police and labor protesters in 1886. See, for example, the July 26, 1886, Testimony of William A. Pinkerton.
- Images of the Haymarket Riot and the Homestead Riot such as those above appeared in nineteenth-century publications. View some of these drawings and engraving available through the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog:
- "The Anarchist-Labor Troubles in Chicago. The Police Charging the Murderous Rioters in Old Haymarket Square on the Night of May 4th," wood engraving from a drawing by Charles Upham in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, May 15, 1886.
- "The Homestead Riot. The Mob Assailing the Pinkerton Men on Their Way to the Temporary Prison" and "The Burning Barges," drawn by Charles Mente after a photograph by B. L. H. Dabbs of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, in an 1892 Harper's Weekly.
- Search the collection American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 - 1940 to find accounts of the policing of the Wild West by the "Pinkertons."
- Search the collection Theodore Roosevelt: His Life and Times on Film on secret service to see film clips of secret service agents guarding the president at his inauguration.
- Search the following collections on Underground Railroad or abolition to find more information about those who, like Pinkerton, aided slaves in their fight for freedom:
