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In this colorful narrative history, the founder of Pinkerton National Detective agency describes his successful thwarting of an assassination plot against President-elect Lincoln early in 1861 and his exploits as an operative during the crucial years of the Civil War. Allan Pinkerton, using the pseudonym of Major E. J. Allen, headed an espionage organization that fed information bout the Confederate Army to Major General George B. McClellan. At the heart of The Spy of the Rebellion are his entertaining anecdotes concerning the methods by which he recruited and managed his agents. Originally published in 1883, it is a fast-paced story full of narrow escapes, violent episodes, nefarious schemes, and candid conversations with the most famous and powerful people of the time. Here are the beleaguered General McClellan, the benign President Lincoln, the villainous Secretary of war Edwin Stanton, the notorious Rebel spy Mrs. Rose Greenhow, and countless others.

In his introduction to this edition, Patrick Bass evaluates The Spy of the Rebellions as history, adding that it "serves historical comprehension in the same manner that good fiction often does, through almost subconscious means, through an indefinable feel for the milieu it imparts to the reader."