However, Pinkertonâ€™s overestimation of Confederate Army strength caused him to fall out of favor as General George McClellanâ€™s spymaster, and Pinkerton was succeeded by George Sharpe. â€œTwo of my spies were heroes in this war, one was a failure, and the other was a scoundrel, so I had a pretty good mix of characters here to deal with.â€Īllen Pinkerton, Waller said, was a famous private detective who â€œhoned a sixth sense to anticipate criminal activity before it happened.â€ In February 1861, Pinkerton won Lincolnâ€™s favor when he uncovered evidence that Secessionists wanted to assassinate the new president-elect at a stopover in Baltimore to keep him from being inaugurated in Washington. â€œI found Union operatives to be far more interesting than their Confederate counterparts,â€ he said. In his book, Waller chose to focus on Union spies. Since many of the commanding officers in both the Union Army and Confederate Army shared a formal education through West Point before the Civil War, accurate and timely intelligence provided a battlefield advantage in spite of the opposing side knowing every tactic. He thanked Trevor Plante, Chief of the Reference Services Branch, for his help, jesting, â€œI donâ€™t think could get from one part of the building to the other without me tackling him at some point, begging him for information.â€

Waller spent â€œcountless hoursâ€ performing research at the National Archives. At a public program at the National Archives in Washington, DC, Waller discussed the â€œsecret battlesâ€ undertaken by Union agents, focusing on four individuals from among the countless operatives whose cloak-and-dagger exploits yielded vital information to President Abraham Lincoln: Allan Pinkerton, Lafayette Baker, George Sharpe, and Elizabeth Van Lew. Leeâ€™s surrender on April 9, 1865, the Civil War is famous for having pitted brother against brother in mortal combat.Īccording to Douglas Waller, author of Lincolnâ€™s Spies: Their Secret War to Save a Nation, secrets written with quill and ink served as much purpose in the Civil War as musket and cannon. Begun in earnest with the Battle of Fort Sumter on April 12-13, 1861, and ended with Confederate General Robert E. WASHINGTON, Augâ€” The worldâ€™s â€œsecond oldest profession,â€ as it is known in the parlance of spycraft, found a home in both the Union and the Confederacy in the bloody years of the Civil War. Douglas Waller discusses the â€œsecret battlesâ€ undertaken by Union agents in his book Lincolnâ€™s Spies: Their Secret War to Save a Nation.

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