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In 1850, Allan Pinkerton founded a detective agency that would grow into the Pinkerton's National Detective Agency. 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 investigate their employees and catch train robbers. But over time, the Pinkertons developed an intimate relationship with the federal government and as these partnerships grew the Pinkertons' 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 explains how "the convoluted tale" of the Pinkertons, but reads "like a detective novel."