How did the U.S. Secret Service get started and why? These questions are answered in the article below that was originally published in 1917.
How Our Secret Service Started
The use of spies in war is as old as war itself. The modern German elaboration of espionage, in times of peace as well as war, among neutrals as well as enemies, is rather a reversion to type than a step in progress, says a writer in the Philadelphia Record. Joshua and Solomon employed spies. The Hebrew peregrinations to reach the promised land required information concerning regions and peoples to be invaded. One Caleb was the chief spy of a corps that was sent to learn of the fertility and the military strength of the land of Canaan. After 40 days of espionage they reported that it was a land of milk and honey and fruit, but that the cities were fortified and the people were strong, some of them giants.
The Greeks rather prided themselves on the cleverness of their spies.
The Romans, if we are to take their own word for it, were incapable of stooping to the baseness of common spying or studied treachery of any sort.
When Abraham Lincoln, president-elect, in his address on Washington’s birthday, 1861, at Independence hall, in reply to the mayor of Philadelphia, hinted in a single clause that he might not live to be inaugurated, he had been informed, through John Allen Pinkerton, of the plot to take his life at Baltimore. He left on an earlier train, and did not stop at that city. The United States at that time had no secret service organization. But a system for obtaining military information in the Southern states was established earl in the war by General McClellan, and from this developed the federal secret service, which was throughout the war in charge of the original Pinkerton under the name of Major E.J. Allen.
America’s Secret Service
Pinkerton, gaining some reputation by running down a gang of counterfeiters, had been appointed deputy sheriff of Cook County, Illinois, with offices in Chicago. He won more fame by getting the thieves and nearly all the loot of a $700,000 theft from the safes of the Adams Express Company. In 1852 he established the Pinkerton National Detective agency. And perhaps it is only just to say that Pinkerton saved Lincoln for the presidency and thereby saved the Union.
Important figures in the secret service work of the Civil War were newspaper reporters, scouts and women.The newspaper men did not have the semiofficial and perfunctory status that they have in this war [WW1]. They had to assume the disguises and pretenses of real spied to get material they were supposed to get, and then send it uninspired and also uncensored. They were frequently arrested and imprisoned and took many of the same risks that the military spies did. This was especially true of the early part of the war, and the seceding period preceding, when they followed the movements leading to the war and mingled with legislators at the Southern capitals.
Scouts, who are ordinarily in uniform and treated as regular prisoners of war when captured, did much service under such commanders as Mosby and Young quite after the manner of spies, and they were hanged when caught.
The most notable female spies were not professional secret service agents, but were residing in one section and holding their sympathies with the other, and acted primarily through strong patriotic motives.
Inefficiency During the Civil War
Besides the spy activities at home, the Confederate states had an important secret service work in Europe. English sympathy was enlisted on their side, arrangements were made for building cruisers at Bordeaux, English ironworkers were sent to the South.
When the army of the Potomac, after long delay and preparation, began its advance in October, 1861, McClellan’s orders had been given in entire ignorance of the topography of the environs of Edward’s Ferry (all the maps being inexact), and of the force of the enemy in front of Leesburg. In spite of the efforts of Pinkerton, at that time the secret service organization was entirely inefficient.
Fighting units thought to be within supporting distance of each other were crushed without the knowledge of the intended supporters. The South had the advantage of familiarity with their own country.
There were no airplanes to guide the advance. There was a great need of spies.
However, some historians attribute McClellan’s failure to win the decisive results that were open to him at Antietam to the mistaken reports of the great preponderance of numbers in Lee’s army that were received from the secret service organization. McClellan seemed inclined to use the agency too much to learn the strength of the enemy and too little to learn its weaknesses.
Operation of Women Spies
Miss Van Lieu, a resident of Richmond, Virginia, rendered invaluable service to the Union cause, and Mrs. Greenhow was equally valuable to the Confederacy as a spy in Washington. Mrs. Greenhow had been a leader in Washington society before the war. “She was a Southerner by birth, but a resident of the capital from girlhood; a widow, beautiful, accomplished, wealthy, and noted for her wit and her forceful personality.”
Her wide acquaintance among important men was used to good advantage to further the Southern cause. Though suspected by the Federal authorities, she contrived many ingenious ways to escape their vigilance.
Jefferson Davis said to her: “But for you there would have been no battle of Bull Run.” That defeat of the North was supposed to have been largely due to her getting a copy of the order to General McDowell and sending it to Beauregard.
She was drowned at the mouth of Cape Fear River, North Carolina, in her attempt to land from the blockade runner Condor, after some secret mission to England on behalf of the Confederacy. Weighted by her heavy black silk dress and a bag of gold sovereigns, she was an easy victim of the waves.
We have the word of the adjutant general’s office of the war department that women spies were never shot during the Civil War.
Secret Stations and Ciphers
The Army and Navy Journal says that the greater part of the information that was received at Washington from Richmond was collected and transmitted by Miss Van Liew, through a chain of five secret stations established by her for forwarding her cipher dispatches.
“She was a woman of forty, of delicate figure, brilliant, accomplished, resolute – a woman of great personality and infinite charm.” She held in Richmond a special position corresponding to that of Mrs. Greenhow in Washington. Jenny Lind sang in her parlor and Poe there read aloud his “Raven.” This house was the rendezvous of the Federal secret agents, and, there, in her “secret room,” were concealed escaped Union prisoners. Miss Van Liew even had the audacity to get a [black] girl, devoted to her interests, introduced as a waitress into the home of Jefferson Davis. Though her Northern sympathies were well known and she was constantly suspected, no evidence against her sufficient to cause her arrest was ever obtained.
Mrs. Surratt was condemned and hanged for participation in the Lincoln assassination plot. Her home had been a regular meeting place for conspirators, and her son among them, and Payne, who attempted to kill Seward, was on his way to the Surratt rendezvous when arrested.
Belle Boyd was the siren spy of the South. The daughter of a Virginia merchant, “blue eyes, sharp featured, quick tempered and very free,” she easily attracted the young officers and learned how to get information and get it across the border without detection. She rose a spirited horse and carried a revolver in her belt. Not satisfied with her individual efforts, she organized a corps or spies of her own style.
Virginia women lighted many a signal lamp by the garret windows, and honest looking corsages and innocent looking bustles carried many a military secret.
Scout Spies of the North
“Archie” Rowland was one of the most daring and successful scout spies of the Northern side. He and his pals formed the nucleus of Sheridan’s secret service organization in the valley of the Shenandoah. This organization recruited up to 40 under the command of H.H. Young, and became the most noted and efficient of the Federal army.
Rowland tells how he volunteered for this service. “My company had been on ordinary scout duty for some time. But when we were drawn up in line and the captain asked for volunteers for ‘extra dangerous duty,’ I looked at Ike Harris and Ike looked at me, and then we both stepped forward. We were both boys and wanted to know what was the ‘extra dangerous duty,’ and when we found out we hadn’t the face to back down. They took us to headquarters and gave us two rebel uniforms – and we wished we had not come.”
These men were expected to deceive pickets by the uniform and capture them so that the main body could be surprised; or ride up to a Southern citizen, man or woman, ask for information and depend upon the deception to get all the person knew. One of their great dangers was that of meeting death at the hands of their own men. Often discovered and hard pressed by the enemy, they would flee in their gray uniforms for safety to their own lines, only to be met by a murderous volley from their own mistaken pickets.
Ten of Young’s command of 40 were lost, none by the natural death of a soldier and none in the colors for which he died. Two were hanged by their own halter straps.
Aristocracy of the Army
But they had privileges beyond any others in the army. They were free from all camp drudgery, guard and picket duty, and from camp discipline. They lived together in the headquarters, ate the best the land afforded. Each had four picked horses. They were paid according to the value of their information, and the secret service chest was prodigal with their expense accounts. They were the aristocracy of the army.
On the reverse of a certain little bronze star are these words: “The Congress – to Archibald H. Rowland, Jr. – for Valor.”
John Beall, privateersman, with Burley and Maxwell, were on the Potomac and Chesapeake when Mosby was on land. Beall cut the submarine telegraph cable under the Chesapeake and destroyed lamps and machinery of lighthouses. Meeting Burley by surprise in Toronto, Canada, they turned into a private room and shut the door. Then Beall slowly said: “Burley, I want you for my lieutenant. It is my old plan at last. I am to capture the Michigan, free the Johnson Island prisoners, burn Sandusky, Cleveland, and Buffalo.”
The services of Harry Young were so esteemed that when Sheridan said, “I want him,” General Edwards remonstrated, “I would rather you would take my right arm.” One of his soldiers said, “We think God Almighty of him.”
And there were Bowie, “William, C.S.A;” Landegon, the Phillipus – father and son – and Timothy Webster, spy.
It was Timothy Webster who insinuated himself into the confidence of the would-be assassins in Baltimore and frustrated the plot against Lincoln’s life. Allan Pinkerton gives him the supreme credit: “He, among all the force who went with me, deserved the credit of saving the life of Lincoln, ever more than I do.”
Source: The Kansas City sun. (Kansas City, Mo.), 11 Aug. 1917.
