The Pinkertons: The Detective Dynasty That Made History (review)

OOCIVIL WAR HISTORY assaulted! The social historian interested in medicine and public health, on the other hand, may also find something of interest here. For the simple fact is that this is a narrative in medical history which is not a panegyric to famous doctors—the usual fare for that field. Instead, the author is concerned with the distribution of health services, an approach broad enough to include other forms of health care in addition to those administered by the conventional physician. J. Thomas May University of Oklahoma Medical Center The Pinkertons: The Detective Dynasty That Made History. By James D. Horan. (New York: Crown Publishers, 1967. Pp. xii, 564. $7.95.) Civil War History's Intelligence issue ( Dec, 1964 ) was a sufficiently imposing a production to justify the hope that it would take root in the literature. What has come if it? Of a positive kind, very little; we certainly do not see its contents cited on every hand. On the negative side, the results may be a little happier. For example, the late Allen W. Dulles, in his collection published under the title Great True Spy Stories, omitted Civil War stories with the explanation that Civil War History's revelations of their lack of authenticity had warned him away. Another example may be James D. Horan's The Pinkertons, whose 97page Civil War section omits the wildest of the stretchers from Allan Pinkerton's war memoirs—those memoirs that have been a rich quarry of Civil War intelligence myths for these many decades. That said, one looks about for other favorable things to note about Mr. Horan's treatment of Pinkerton in the Civil War, but finds nothing. It is run-of-the-mill, "popular" espionage history, compounded of error, flatulence, and rehash in approximately equal parts. Mr. Horan has again gone the merry way he traveled in his error-ridden—and highly successful—Confederate Agent ( 1954 ) . The two main questions concerning Pinkerton's Civil War role are how his intelligence reports to McClellan could have overstated Confederate strength so badly and whether the assassination plot that caused Lincoln to travel incognito through Baltimore in the dead of night (on his way to Washington in February, 1861) was a real threat. Mr. Horan does not make a new and stronger case for the seriousness of the Baltimore plot, though he appears to be trying mightily to do so. All, or virtually all, of the pertinent material he uses appears in Norma B. Cuthbert's 1949 Lincoln and the Baltimore Plot, which is based largely on a copy of parts of Pinkerton's 1861 record book. Mr. Horan implies that the record book has just been discovered, presumably by himself, and glosses over the important fact that the historian of this affair is at the mercy of the person who in 1866 copied from the original book (destroyed in the Chicago fire of 1871)—omitting items that would reveal goodness knows what. BOOK REVIEWS89 On Pinkerton's intelligence reporting, Mr. Horan makes a stab at objectivity , admitting that the detective's estimates of enemy strength were vastly exaggerated and ascribing this to two causes. One is the theory that the information-gathering methods that had worked in the detective business did not work in a military situation. Mr. Horan does not explain this theory and appears to believe there is sometbing mystical in prisoner interrogation and other age-old military intelligence activities that a mere civilian could not be expected to comprehend. His second theory is that Pinkerton exaggerated because he had absorbed McClellan's point of view, but there Mr. Horan stops, neglecting to explain how, with all the successful espionage and other information-gathering facilities with which he credits Pinkerton, the incoming information could have been translated into such fantasies. Here the present reviewer begins to trespass on the findings of his own researches and is happy to leave the question where Mr. Horan does. (McClellan was also happy to stay away from it; his Own Story contains no mention of Pinkerton— a fact that Mr. Horan does not note.) Mr. Horan's best inflationary efforts (and his greatest indulgence in name-dropping, always a must in...