by Chris Enss
Pinkerton was furious after reading the articles that announced the facts about the plot against Mr. Lincoln had been acquired by secret agents. All players involved in the plans to get the president-elect to the capital safely were sworn to keep quiet about all matters relating to Lincoln’s trip to Washington. Pinkerton suspected Elihu B. Washburne had spoken to the press in retaliation for punching him. Pinkerton believed the leaked information would compromise his agents in Baltimore. He wanted to make sure Kate and the other operatives were more careful than they had been about getting caught spying. Until the would-be assassins were discovered and arrested, Pinkerton agents were at risk. Pinkerton returned to the city as quickly as he could to resume the undercover work he was doing prior to escorting the president-elect to the capital.26
From late February to early April 1861, Kate spent the bulk of her time in the parlor of Barnum’s Hotel. Many of the wives of Southern businessmen, lawyers, and politicians staying at the establishment congregated in an open room connected to the lobby. The women would share news of the unrest between the states and pass along tidbits their husbands told them, or that they overheard. Kate would pass along to Lincoln any information that would advance the cause of the Union. Operative Hattie Lawton was doing the same at the hotel where she resided as well. The two women and other female detectives working for Pinkerton were positioned throughout the town in libraries, eateries, and stage and train depots, all in hopes of hearing news worthy of being passed along. Pinkerton believed war was inevitable, but wasn’t sure what position Maryland would take. A large and influential minority of people in the state were in favor of secession. Pinkerton wanted to know who would conspire against the Union.27
On April 12, 1861, the first engagement between the United States and the Confederate States began. Fort Sumter was attacked by Confederate troops, and President Lincoln recommended war, calling for an army of 75,000. Not long after the fort in South Carolina was overtaken, Pinkerton decided that his agency had to be at the president’s service. Operative Timothy Webster was selected as the agent to transport more than a dozen dispatches to Washington. Kate Warne concealed those messages by sewing them into the lining and collar of Webster’s waistcoat.28 One of Pinkerton’s letters began,
Dear Sir,
When I saw you last I said that if the time should ever come that I could be of service to you, I was ready. If that time has come, I am on hand.29
I have in my force from sixteen to eighteen persons on whose courage, skill, and devotion to their country I can rely. If they, with myself at the head, can be of service in the way of obtaining information of the movements of the traitors, or safely conveying your letters or dispatches, or that class of Secret Service which is the most dangerous, I am at your command.30
In the present disturbed state of affairs I dare not trust this to the mail, so send by one of my force who was with me at Baltimore. You may safely trust him with any message for me, written or verbal. I fully guarantee his fidelity. He will act as you direct and return here with your answer.31
Secrecy is the great lever I propose to operate with, hence the necessity of this movement (if you contemplate it) being kept strictly private, and that should you desire another interview with the Bearer, that you should so arrange it that he will not be noticed. The Bearer will hand you a copy of a telegraphic cipher which you may use if you desire to telegram me.32
My forces comprise both sexes, all of good character and well skilled in their business.
Respectfully yours,
Allan Pinkerton33
In May of 1861, President Lincoln ordered the formation of a military secret service. Major General George McClellan was named the head of the organization; Allan Pinkerton was in command, directly under the general. Both McClellan and Lincoln agreed that Pinkerton and his operatives could be trusted to uncover traitors and carry secret dispatches. Pinkerton moved his operation to Washington, along with key personnel. Kate was promoted to the head of the female division of the Secret Service. Her job, as well as that of the other agents, was to investigate suspicious people within the Union territory and gather information from behind Confederate lines. Both endeavors required the strictest secrecy. Kate and the other operatives were supplied with a variety of disguises and equipped with a theatrical wardrobe.34
Allan Pinkerton, chief of McClellan’s Secret Service, with his men near Cumberland Landing, Virginia Courtesy of the National Archives, photo no. 522914
The Pinkerton National Detective Agency had a number of offices, one each in Washington, Baltimore, Chicago, and Cincinnati. Kate was assigned the Ohio office, not far from McClellan’s division. Posing as a Southern belle, she traveled to Virginia and Tennessee, frequenting social events with genuine Southern ladies who were married or engaged to Rebel soldiers. These belles would often share details their significant others told them about where and when the Confederate Army was moving. Such information was passed along to McClellan and Pinkerton.35
Later during the month of May, Kate and a handful of other operatives were meeting with Pinkerton at his Washington office on I Street when a prominent leader in the capital told them about a woman who was suspected of being a Confederate spy.36
According to Pinkerton’s memoirs, the lady was Rose Greenhow, a Southern woman of “pronounced Rebel proclivities, and who had been unsparing in her denunciation of the ‘Abolition North,’ and who had openly declared that instead of loving and worshipping the old flag of the Stars and Stripes, she saw in it only the symbol of murder, plunder, oppression, and shame.” Pinkerton planned to utilize all the agents in his employ to combat the influential spy. Kate’s assignment in the battle was key, and evolved as the investigation played out.37
Now a widow, Rose Greenhow had been born in 1814 on a farm in Montgomery County, Maryland. When she was thirteen, she was sent to live with her aunt and uncle in Washington. Her relatives were close, with a number of people who were advocates of slavery and states’ rights. As she grew older, she adopted their viewpoint and became not only a supporter of the Confederate cause, but also a spokesperson for the rebellion. At the age of twenty-one, she met and married Washington’s most eligible and well-respected bachelor, Dr. Robert Greenhow. Her new husband’s position, combined with her beauty, refined manners, and congenial personality, catapulted her to the top of the social scene. Rose was as cunning and smart as she was attractive, and focused on cultivating friendships with the leading figures in the city.38
She was well acquainted with James Buchanan, northern Democrats, and Southern sympathizers. In 1856 she had encouraged Buchanan to run for the presidency, and helped to raise funds and voters needed for him to receive the nomination. Rose was good friends with political leaders such as senators William H. Seward of New York, Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, and Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois. Her association with army leaders, politicians, and the affluent earned her a reputation as the woman ambitious legislators needed to know to get anything accomplished in government.39
When Abraham Lincoln was elected to office in 1860, Rose’s influence dwindled to nothing. Furious that a Republican and antislavery activist was now in the White House, she decided to rail against the system. Seven states seceded from the Union, and the majority of the Southern supporters left the capital. Rose refused to relocate and vowed to stay and fight for the cause.40
Simon Cameron, the secretary of war, ordered Pinkerton to carefully watch Rose Greenhow’s home and monitor the people who visited. In the summer of 1861, it was discovered that Rose had been recruited by a Confederate spy ring to join their ranks. Her job was to secure military secrets. Pinkerton tasked three agents with surveillance and ordered them to follow anyone who might seem questionable. Kate was one of the operatives assigned to keep tabs on those individuals coming and going from Rose’s home.41
Rose did not work alone. She solicited help from a handful of women in the area capa
ble of charming necessary information from weak-minded men. In the short time Rose and her agents had been collecting secrets, they had acquired letters from the War and Engineering Departments. Correspondence from both departments included descriptions of the government’s troop numbers, maps, and locations. “I desired to obtain a thorough insight into all the plans and schemes of these who were to become the prominent actors in the fearful drama [Civil War],” Rose wrote in her memoirs years after the South lost to the North, “in order that I might turn it to the advantage of my country when the hour of action arrived.”42
In July 1861, one of Rose’s girls came across a message from a Union soldier containing information about placement near the city of Manassas not far from the capital city. Using the cover name of Thomas John Rayford, Rose sent a message via courier to Confederate general P. G. T. Beauregard. The message informed the Rebel officer that 55,000 Union troops were going to march out of Arlington Heights and Alexandria and on to Manassas. A chain of couriers was used to relay messages from the battlefield to Rose and back again. Men and women who worked on the chain were positioned along secret routes that connected Washington and Baltimore to the Confederacy. Rose sometimes used her eight-year-old daughter to deliver messages.43
Pinkerton considered it unfortunate that Rose and her cohorts weren’t discovered before the Battle at Bull Run. The numerous messages she managed to secret to the Confederate generals led to the downfall of the Union Army on that occasion. General Beauregard was able to reinforce the battle lines with 12,000 more soldiers than the North had anticipated. Southern president Jefferson Davis sent word of his thanks, and added in his dispatch, “We rely upon you for further information. The Confederacy owes you a debt.”44
Kate Warne and the two other operatives Pinkerton had assigned to keep tabs on Rose began their job in earnest in late July 1861. Pinkerton joined their efforts. Rose entertained a myriad of guests from July 23 through August 22. She was a celebrity of sorts, and intelligence gathered by Pinkerton and his agents attributed her rise in popularity to the Secret Service work she had done for the Confederacy. She was not shy about expressing her dislike for President Lincoln and his wife. Her open criticism of the administration and the insulting remarks made about the First Lady sparked more than a passing interest from loyal Northerners.45
While Kate spent time attending various social engagements where Rose was present, Pinkerton and two other agents investigated the Rebel spy’s two-story house. On August 20, 1861, the detectives gathered at the Greenhow home to find out what they could about who came and went. The weather that day was dark, gloomy, and threatening. Pinkerton was lifted to the upstairs windows to look inside. While he was snooping around, Rose and a soldier arrived. She welcomed the soldier inside and escorted him into the parlor. Pinkerton recognized the man as a Union captain of infantry in charge of one of the stations of the provost marshal. He watched the pair sitting across from one another and talking. Pinkerton heard enough to convince him that the trusted officer was engaged in betraying his country. “He was furnishing his treasonable companion with information regarding the disposition of our troops as he possessed,” Pinkerton later wrote in his report to the secretary of war.46
“He took from an inner pocket of his coat a map which, as he held it up before the light, I imagined that I could identify as a plan of the fortifications in and around Washington; and which also designated a contemplated plan of attack.47
“After watching their movements for some time, during which they would frequently refer to the map before them, as though pointing out particular points or positions, I was compelled to rush into the room.”48
Pinkerton controlled himself, however, and waited until the captain had left Rose’s home at 12:15 a.m. He quietly followed the captain as he strolled down Pennsylvania Avenue. At some point the officer sensed someone was behind him and quickened his pace; Pinkerton did the same. The pursuit ended at the captain’s barracks when four armed soldiers interrupted the chase, apprehended the detective, and threw him in jail.49
Kate, Pryce Lewis, and Sam Bridgeman were left behind at Rose’s house, unaware of the trouble Pinkerton had encountered. No one knew about Pinkerton’s imprisonment until the resourceful detective bribed a guard to notify Thomas Scott, assistant secretary of war, of his situation. Scott had Pinkerton transferred to the War Department for a personal interrogation, and during the questioning Pinkerton revealed what he had discovered. Scott ordered the captain to be brought before him. The officer denied he’d been anywhere near Rose Greenhow’s residence, but he wasn’t convincing. Scott told him to surrender, and he was subsequently arrested. Incriminating papers were found among his effects, and he was imprisoned in Fort McHenry. There is evidence that the traitor might have been Captain John Ellwood, who fell into further trouble and later killed himself by cutting his throat with a penknife.50
Neither Rose Greenhow nor Allan Pinkerton identified Ellwood in their memoirs, but the Pennsylvania Archives of Civil War Soldiers notes that he was the miscreant Pinkerton saw with Rose. Pinkerton’s report to Scott, provided to him by Kate, contained the names of several prominent gentlemen in Washington who visited Rose.51
Assistant Secretary Scott declared that Mrs. Greenhow was a dangerous character who must at least be attended to “and issued an order for her arrest.”52
Kate Warne watched in the near distance as her fellow operatives, accompanied by Union soldiers, congregated at the Greenhow home and made their way inside. Kate was prepared to do whatever was asked of her to destroy the spy ring that had altered the course of the early days of the Civil War.
Notes
1. Horan, The Pinkertons, pp. 53–61; Richmond Dispatch, February 23, 1861; Stashower, The Hour of Peril, pp. 272–78.
2. Pinkerton, History and Evidence of the Passage of Abraham Lincoln from Harrisburg to Washington, pp. 17, 28, 35; Cuthbert, Lincoln and the Baltimore Plot, pp. 52–58.
3. Pinkerton, History and Evidence, pp. 17, 28, 35.
4. Stashower, The Hour of Peril, p. 279; Pinkerton, History and Evidence, pp. 17, 28, 35; Cuthbert, Lincoln and the Baltimore Plot, pp. 52–58.
5. Richmond Dispatch, February 23, 1861; Newbern Weekly Progress, February 26, 1861.
6. Newbern Weekly Progress, February 26, 1861.
7. Pinkerton, History and Evidence, pp. 17, 28, 35; Cuthbert, Lincoln and the Baltimore Plot, pp. 52–58.
8. Horan, The Pinkertons, pp. 53–61; Stashower, The Hour of Peril, pp. 277–78.
9. Horan, The Pinkertons, pp. 53–61.
10. Pinkerton, History and Evidence, pp. 17, 28, 35; Cuthbert, Lincoln and the Baltimore Plot, pp. 52–58.
11. Cuthbert, Lincoln and the Baltimore Plot, pp. 52–58.
12. Horan, The Pinkertons, pp. 53–61; Indiana State Guard, March 2, 1861.
13. Indiana State Guard, March 2, 1861.
14. Horan, The Pinkertons, pp. 53–61; Indiana State Guard, March 2, 1861; The American Weekly Magazine, February 11, 1951.
15. Pinkerton, Spy of the Rebellion, pp. 95–97.
16. Ibid., pp. 98–108.
17. Ibid.
18. Stashower, The Hour of Peril, pp. 281–85.
19. Ibid.
20. Stashower, The Hour of Peril, pp. 281–85; Pinkerton, History and Evidence, pp. 17, 28, 35; Cuthbert, Lincoln and the Baltimore Plot, pp. 52–58.
21. Stashower, The Hour of Peril, pp. 287–88.
22. Pinkerton, History and Evidence, pp. 17, 28, 35; Cuthbert, Lincoln and the Baltimore Plot, pp. 52–58.
23. New York Times, February 25, 1861.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. Stashower, The Hour of Peril, pp. 295–96; Pinkerton, History and Evidence, pp. 17, 28, 35; Cuthbert, Lincoln and the Baltimore Plot, pp. 52–58; Fayetteville Weekly Observer, March 4, 1861; Janesville Weekly Gazette, March 8, 1861.
27. Pin
kerton, Spy of the Rebellion, pp. 108–11.
28. Memphis Daily Appeal, April 13, 1861.
29. Memphis Daily Appeal, April 13, 1861; National Archives, Intelligence in the Civil War.
30. Memphis Daily Appeal, April 13, 1861; National Archives, Intelligence in the Civil War; Pinkerton, Spy of the Rebellion, pp. 108–11; The National Tribune, November 8, 1900.
31. Memphis Daily Appeal, April 13, 1861; National Archives, Intelligence in the Civil War; Pinkerton, Spy of the Rebellion, pp. 108–11; The National Tribune, November 8, 1900.
32. Memphis Daily Appeal, April 13, 1861; National Archives, Intelligence in the Civil War; Pinkerton, Spy of the Rebellion, pp. 108–11.
33. Memphis Daily Appeal, April 13, 1861; National Archives, Intelligence in the Civil War; Pinkerton, Spy of the Rebellion, pp. 108–11; The National Tribune, November 8, 1900; Memphis Daily Appeal, April 13, 1861.
34. Library of Congress, McClellan Papers, July 22, 1861, July 25, 1861; Moran, The Eye That Never Sleeps, p. 43; St. Johnsbury Caledonian, July 17, 1884.
35. Horan, The Pinkertons, pp. 62–77.
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid.
38. Winkler, Stealing Secrets, pp. 3–5.
39. Winkler, Stealing Secrets, pp. 3–5; Syracuse Herald, October 7, 1911; Boston Sunday Post, October 31, 1915.
40. Pinkerton, Spy of the Rebellion, pp. 254–59. Winkler, Stealing Secrets, pp. 14–21.
41. Ibid.
42. Ross, Rebel Rose: The Life of Rose O’Neal Greenhow, pp. 100–03.
43. Ibid.
44. Ross, Rebel Rose, pp. 100–03; Syracuse Herald, October 7, 1911.
45. Pinkerton, Spy of the Rebellion, pp. 252–60.
46. Ibid.
47. Ibid.
48. Horan, The Pinkertons, pp. 86–87.
