This is the untold story of the women who spied their way through the American Civil War as agents of the Pinkerton Detective Agency.
In 1861, Kate Warne talked her way into a job that didn’t exist for women at the Pinkerton detective agency, uncovered the Baltimore plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln, smuggled the president through a city that wanted him dead, became America’s first female detective, and led America’s First Female Spy Ring.
Elizabeth Baker walked into the Confederate capital and stole the plans for a secret warship with nothing but a pencil. And Hattie Lawton bargained her own way out of an enemy death cell by writing to the president of the Confederacy himself.
These female spies changed the course of the Civil War more than once. History repaid them by misspelling their names, losing their faces, and letting them vanish without a trace—while Belle Boyd, the Confederate spy who wrote her own memoir, got a museum.
This is a story about the price of being invisible: how being underestimated let these forgotten women of history – civil war spies – do the impossible—and let the world forget they ever existed.
A note on the history: much of what survives about these women comes from Allan Pinkerton’s own memoirs, which are known to be heavily dramatized. Where accounts conflict or a detail rests on a single source, we’ve flagged it as “reported” or “according to Pinkerton.” The truth, like these women, is harder to pin down than the legend.
· Kate Warne · Elizabeth Baker · Hattie Lawton · Allan Pinkerton · Timothy Webster · Belle Boyd · Mary Louveste (A Free Black Woman Spy)
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CHAPTERS
00:00 The Woman Who Stole a President
00:50 A Job That Didn’t Exist
02:20 Catching a Thief with a Cup of Tea
03:45 The Plot to Kill Lincoln
06:15 The Sisters Spies She Trained
07:40 Stealing a Warship with a Pencil
09:30 The Betrayal
10:50 A Double Death
11:55 Dear Mr. President
12:40 Traded for a ‘Legend’
14:20 The Boss Who Wasted It All
15:25 What Became of Them
16:35 The Women Forgotten by History
#history #civilwar #spy #womeninhistory #pinkerton #katewarne #truecrimestories #hiddenhistory #forgottenhistory #sleepstory
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