9. Allan Pinkerton was a spy during the American Civil War
Allan Pinkerton is famous for creating the Pinkerton Detective Agency, with its memorable motto, “We Never Sleep”. After the Civil War, the agency was heavily involved in chasing down railroad bandits and in providing strikebreakers to industry. In 1862 Pinkerton served as the head of what became the Union Intelligence Service. In that role, Pinkerton worked in the field as a counter-intelligence officer, under the alias E.J. Allen, with the rank of a Confederate Major. Pinkerton traveled across the South in the first year of the war, estimating the strength of the developing Confederate armies. He mapped fortifications, counted artillery and other arms, and reported on supply chains and major supply depots.
Pinkerton barely escaped with his life after his cover was blown while in Memphis, and he returned to Washington. He was relieved as the head of Union Intelligence by Lafayette Baker. After the war, the Pinkerton Detective Agency he founded became internationally famous, and Pinkerton himself was a major American celebrity. He made sure he remained one with numerous self-serving books and newspaper articles. Pinkerton’s work as a Union spy was mostly documented by his own hand, in several “true” accounts as well as novels and fictional short stories, which he claimed to have been based on actual events in the American South.