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Historical person
Allan Pinkerton was a Scottish-born American detective who founded the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in Chicago in 1850. The agency became known for railway investigations, private security and the pursuit of criminals across state lines.
During the secession crisis Pinkerton helped protect Abraham Lincoln on his journey to Washington and later organised intelligence work for Union general George B. McClellan. His agency subsequently became a major national institution, although its role in labour disputes made the Pinkerton name increasingly controversial.
John Jakes’ On Secret Service follows intelligence work from the early war through Richmond prisons, covert networks and the creation of federal secret services. Allan Pinkerton, Lafayette C. Baker and other historical figures appear as the story moves towards John Wilkes Booth’s conspiracy and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Espionage is presented as an improvised and often lawless struggle rather than a controlled contest of codes and disguises. In Doug Peterson’s The Lincoln League, John Scobell, a formerly enslaved man recruited by Allan Pinkerton, enters Confederate territory as a Union intelligence operative. Allan Pinkerton is treated fictionally in Gilbert Morris’ Stars in Their Courses.
Series
The North-South Series is a five-volume sequence of biographical historical novels about Black resistance to slavery and service during the American Civil War. Its first three books reconstruct the escapes of Ellen and William Craft, Henry “Box” Brown and Harriet Tubman; the final two turn to John Scobell’s…
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The Appomattox Saga follows the Rocklin family from the secession crisis through the final campaigns of the American Civil War. Cousins, spouses and younger descendants serve on opposing sides, work as nurses or spies, and confront battles that progressively destroy the security of their Virginia world. The ten…
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Standalone books
