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Allan Pinkerton and his Secret Role in the Underground Railroad

© John L. Hoh, Jr.

In writing about the Underground Railroad one runs into frustration. Very little was documented by contemporaries since the movement basically violated federal law (the Fugitive Slave Act). One finds bits and pieces of information here and there, but trails go cold. Sometimes the facts available are abundant, such as in Ripley, Ohio, where the majority of the populace was of one mind that slavery was immoral and banded together in a common goal. But for the most part information is often scant and sketchy.

On the other hand one finds some really unique and interesting information. This article explores one such figure who is interesting, but whose role in the Underground Railroad is sketchy. Allan Pinkerton, known for his use of the eye logo that stated "We never sleep" and gave us the term "private eye" was also a part of Underground Railroad lore.

Allan Pinkerton was born in Glasgow, Scotland, on 25 August 1819 to a police sergeant. Pinkerton is known for founding the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, but his career as a detective began by chance.

Pinkerton emigrated to the United States in 1842. He originally established a barrel-making shop in a small town outside of Chicago. Pinkerton was an abolitionist and soon his shop functioned as a "station" for escaped slaves traveling the Underground Railroad to freedom in the North.

One day Pinkerton was gathering wood when he discovered a gang of counterfeiters making coins in the area. Allan assisted not only in the arrest of these men but also in nabbing another gang. Despite little, if any, training in detective work, Pinkerton was appointed as deputy sheriff of Kane County. He would soon establish himself and become Chicago's first full-time detective.

In 1850, Pinkerton left this post to start his own detective agency-the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. He selected as his logo an open eye with the tagline, "We Never Sleep." It was this logo that lead to Pinkerton's men, and soon private detectives in general, to be called "private eyes." Pinkerton provided a wide array of private detective services and specialized in the capture of train robbers and counterfeiters. No doubt the clients included banks, railroads, and the government and provided stable business for the firm. By the 1870s, the agency had acquired the world's largest collection of mug shots and a criminal database.

In 1861, Pinkerton was investigating a railway case when he uncovered an assassination plot against Abraham Lincoln. The conspirators intended to kill Lincoln in Baltimore during a stop on his 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 soon hired Pinkerton to organize a "secret service" to obtain military information in the Southern states during the Civil War. In Tennessee, Georgia and Mississippi, he performed his own investigative work and traveled under the pseudonym "Major E.J. Allen." Pinkerton recruited escaped slaves recruited to spy on the Confederares. One ex-slave, John Scobell, became chief of General George McClellan's intellegent sources. These spies were aided by an organization known as the "Legal League," an organization that served as spies in place gathering data from other League members and local sources.

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