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Inventing the Pinkertons: Interview with Paul O'Hara

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[[File:Pinkertons.jpg|thumbnail|300px|left|<i>Inventing the Pinkertons</i> by S. Paul O'Hara]]
The In 1850, Allan Pinkerton founded a detective agency that would grow into the Pinkerton's National Detective Agency founded in the 19th Century founded by Allan . Pinkerton 's agency is easily the most famous and infamous security guard and detective agency in United States history. Pinkerton originally created the agency to help railroad companies to control and monitor investigate their employeesand catch train robbers. After the Civil War the role But over time, the Pinkerton Agency played in America grew dramatically. The agency provided personal security to Abraham Lincoln's during the Civil War, were contracted by Pinkertons developed an intimate relationship with the Department of Justice Federal to investigate and help prosecute anyone who violated federal law in the 1870s, helped suppress labor strife government and they even tracked down outlaws such as Jesse James, Butch Cassidy and these partnerships grew the Sundance KidPinkertons' role increased dramatically.
This relationship started after the Pinkertons provided personal security to Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. By the 1870s, the Pinkertons investigated and hunted down people (including outlaws such as Jesse James, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) who stole railroad and bank money on behalf railroad and express companies with the approval of the Department of Justice. The Pinkertons are probably most notorious for their role in suppressing labor in the last twenty five years of the 19th Century.  S. Paul O'Hara's new book <i>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1421420562/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1421420562&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=7319f5ed3bf6fb980909977ac68f7ddc Inventing the Pinkertons; or, Spies, Sleuths, Mercenaries, and Thugs]</i> published by [https://www.press.jhu.edu/ John Hopkins University Press] attempts to separate the myth from reality and paint the real picture of the most famous private detective agency in United States history. JHU Press states O'Hara explains who "American capitalists used the Pinkertons to enforce new structures of economic and political order." Professor Maury Klein had said that the book not only explainshow "the convoluted tale" of the Pinkertons, but reads "like a detective novel."
S. Paul O'Hara is an associate professor at Xavier University and he also the author of <i>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0253222885/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0253222885&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=7d543bdc054e0d772b0f0d024c4d198f Gary: The Most American of All American Cities]</i>.
It is relatively short, fairly accessible, and full of self-invented and self-aggrandizing characters such as Allan Pinkerton, Jesse James, Charlie Siringo, Tom Horn, Butch Cassidy, James McParlan, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jack Kehoe, Albert Parsons, Big Bill Haywood, Clarence Darrow, Kate Warne, and others. I think that if someone were looking to cover the Gilded Age for a US survey, this book, because of the scope of the Pinkerton agency, covers a lot of different areas. Otherwise, I think classes that want to analyze the cultures of capitalism and labor, the constructed tales of the west, the making of folklore and narrative, the evolution of crime and criminality, or the language of immigration and order will find something useful and interesting within these pages.
 
[[Category:Interviews]][[Category:United States History]][[Category:Gilded Age]][[Category:Progressive Era]][[Category:Civil War]]
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