Allan Pinkerton (August 21, 1819 – July 1, 1884) was a Scottish-American detective, spy, abolitionist, and cooper best known for creating the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in the United States and his claim to have obstructed the Baltimore Plot in 1861, preventing the assassination of then president-elect Abraham Lincoln. During the Civil War, he provided the Union Army – specifically General George B. McClellan of the Army of the Potomac – with military intelligence, including extremely inaccurate enemy troop strength numbers. After the war, his agents played a significant role as strikebreakers – in particular during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 – a role that Pinkerton men would continue to play after the death of their founder.
Early life
Allan Pinkerton was born in the Gorbals, a working-class area of Glasgow, on August 21, 1819, the second surviving son of William Pinkerton, a retired policeman, and Isobel McQueen; he was baptized on August 25, 1819, which many sources incorrectly give as his birthdate. He left school at the age of 10 after his father's death. Pinkerton read voraciously and was largely self-educated. A cooper by trade, he was active in the Scottish Chartist movement as a young man. He was not raised in a religious upbringing, and was a lifelong atheist.
Pinkerton and his wife moved overseas to escape either arrest for his involvement in the Chartist movement, or the ire of the Chartists having turned informer. While sailing toward Canada, their ship accidentally ran aground on Sable Island. They eventually secured passage on a schooner and continued their journey to Detroit, Michigan. Unable to find work there, Pinkerton used the last of his money to buy a horse and wagon. He and his wife then traveled west to Chicago, where he found work as a cooper for a brewery and began to establish a new life. In 1843, he heard of Dundee Township, Illinois, fifty miles northwest of Chicago on the Fox River. He built a cabin and started a cooperage, sending for his wife in Chicago when their cabin was complete. As early as 1844, Pinkerton worked for the Chicago abolitionist leaders, and his Dundee home was a stop on the Underground Railroad.
