Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy - Eamon Javers [20]
Sitting right there in the jail cell was Pinkerton’s operative John White, ready to serve as a shoulder for Maroney to cry on over his wife’s supposed infidelity. White hinted to Maroney that it was possible to bribe the authorities to get out of jail early, and when White’s “lawyer”—another of Pinkerton’s actors—showed up to release him, Maroney took the bait. He begged White to help him get out, too, no matter how much it cost. Maroney was desperate to reach his wife. White agreed to help once he’d gotten out of jail, and he encouraged Maroney to get word to his wife that he’d need the stolen cash for bribe money. Maroney sent a message to his wife to dig up the money from its hiding place and give it to White, who Maroney thought would bring it to Alabama and help arrange his release from prison.
When she got the message, Mrs. Maroney wasn’t sure that the scheme was a good idea. After all, Maroney was under suspicion of theft, and getting caught with the cash might seal his fate. But Pinkerton had foreseen that Mrs. Maroney might balk, and had a plan to encourage her along. The anxious woman turned to her new best friend and asked what to do. Kate Warne advised her that paying the money was the best plan. The couple could head out west with their booty, and escape the Alabama authorities.
When Mrs. Maroney handed the money over to White, only $400 of the total amount stolen was missing.
In late 1855, Maroney went on trial in Montgomery, White never having returned to release him. He was shocked to see White called to the stand to testify against him. Realizing he’d been set up and the state had all the evidence it needed to convict him, Maroney pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to ten years in prison. Adams Express put the Pinkertons on an annual retainer, and the Maroney case led to a wealth of new business for Pinkerton.
AS THE NATION collapsed into the Civil War, the Pinkerton Agency was the premier intelligence operation in the country. It had a nationwide force in place, and had developed unparalleled investigative techniques. An avowed abolitionist who worked to spirit escaped slaves to Canada, Pinkerton even helped raise money for the militant antislavery agitator John Brown’s escape from lawmen. When hostilities broke out in 1861, Pinkerton was well positioned and motivated to serve the Union. He knew President Lincoln—who, as a lawyer and budding politician, had drawn up Pinkerton’s contract with the Illinois Central railroad in 1855—and he was close to an energetic young railroad executive named George McClellan.
When McClellan reentered military service (he had once been at West Point) to lead the Ohio state volunteers, he summoned Pinkerton to his side as the head of a military “secret service.” In those days, there was no separate intelligence service, and individual military leaders gathered battlefield and political intelligence on their own. Using the nom de guerre “E. J. Allen,” since by then “Pinkerton” had become almost synonymous in the public imagination with detective work, the great investigator entered military service.
There’s no question that Pinkerton was an American patriot and a true believer in the Union cause. He’d put his career and life on the line more than once to help slaves escape to freedom. But much like his contemporary successors, Pinkerton was a private intelligence contractor who found war a profitable business. In his comprehensive history The Eye That Never Sleeps (1982), Frank Morn notes that Pinkerton earned what was then a princely sum of $38,567 for his government work between September 1861 and November 1862. After the war, he wrote in a letter to his son that he had been relatively poor before combat began, but that during the war, he “amassed