Allen, Pinkerton built a counterintelligence network in Washington and sent undercover agents to ingratiate themselves in the Confederate capital of Richmond.
![did war world 1 have a spy network did war world 1 have a spy network](https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2014/08/28/22/cold-war.jpg)
When President Abraham Lincoln summoned McClellan to Washington late that summer, the general put the detective in charge for intelligence for his Army of the Potomac, and Pinkerton set up the first Union espionage operation in mid-1861. McClellan during the first months of the Civil War, while McClellan led the Department of Ohio. Two of the most prominent early recruits were Thomas Jordan, a West Point graduate stationed in Washington before the war, and Rose O’Neal Greenhow, an openly pro-South widow and socialite who was friendly with a number of northern politicians, including Secretary of State William Seward and Massachusetts Senator Henry Wilson.Īllan Pinkerton, the founder of his own detective agency in Chicago, had collected intelligence for Union General George B. Virginia’s Governor John Letcher, a former congressman, used his knowledge of the city to set up a nascent spy network in the capital in late April 1861, after his state seceded but before it officially joined the Confederacy.
#Did war world 1 have a spy network full
was full of southern sympathizers when the Civil War broke out in 1861. Located 60 miles south of the Mason-Dixon Line, Washington, D.C. McClellan hired the prominent Chicago detective Allan Pinkerton to set up the first Union espionage organization in mid-1861. As the Union had no centralized military intelligence agency, individual generals took charge of intelligence gathering for their own operations. The Confederate Signal Corps also included a covert intelligence agency known as the Secret Service Bureau, which managed spying operations along the so-called “Secret Line” from Washington to Richmond.
![did war world 1 have a spy network did war world 1 have a spy network](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/12/15/books/review/15Horowitz/15Horowitz-superJumbo.jpg)
From early in the war, the Confederacy set up a spy network in the federal capital of Washington, D.C., home to many southern sympathizers. Though neither the Union nor the Confederacy had a formal military intelligence network during the Civil War, each side obtained crucial information from spying or espionage operations. Union Spies: Allan Pinkerton’s Secret Service.Confederate Signal Corps and Secret Service Bureau.