The Legacy of the Pinkerton Agency

America once had a private detective agency so powerful and feared, the government literally

passed a law just to stop them. It all started with Allan Pinkerton, a Scottish immigrant

and barrel-maker who accidentally uncovered a gang of counterfeiters. He was so good at

catching criminals that in the 1850s, he started his own agency. They quickly became

legends. During the Civil War, they acted as the Union’s spy service

and famously saved Abraham Lincoln from an assassination plot. After the war,

they chased notorious outlaws like Jesse James across the Wild West, becoming a force

to be reckoned with. But there was a much darker side. Corporations hired them as spies and