Refined Research Statment, 10/12 (Alice Hu)

Specifics
The Pinkerton Detective Agency came into its own as a private law-enforcement and detective group during the Civil War and the years immediately following. While George B. McClellan commanded the Army of the Potomac, Allan Pinkerton and his small cadre of detectives worked as undercover spies. After McClellan was relieved of command, the Pinkertons withdrew from the Civil War and found a niche apprehending train robbers, counterfeiters, and mail thieves. In all of these cases the Pinkertons preserved a role as undercover agents and spies, infiltrating crime rings and keeping them under surveillance, reporting back to Pinkerton until sufficient charges could be made. Late in the 19th century, the Pinkertons contracted with private corporations to become guards and enforcers for the corporations in labor union strikes or unrest, but Pinkerton involvement continued to consist of either providing guards or going undercover to infiltrate agitating labor groups.
By 1892 the nature of the Pinkertons’ involvement in labor changed drastically. In the case of the labor strike at Andrew Carnegie’s steel mill in Homestead, Pennsylvania, the Carnegie Steel Company locked its striking workers out of the plant. The Pinkertons, whom Carnegie Steel had already contracted as guards, then sent hundreds of Pinkerton agents in via barge, ostensibly to prevent any of the mob of striking workers from entering the plant. The mob refused to let the Pinkertons come ashore: shots were fired, culminating in a bloody battle in which dozens were killed and injured.
I want to examine how this remarkable transition came about: how did the Pinkertons transform from undercover agents to all-out infantry? The nature of the crime that the Pinkertons fought and the rhetoric and motivation behind fighting that crime and how to fight it seems to have undergone a radical shift in these years, and I wish to understand what that shift was and how it came about.

Argument
I think that I have pinpointed the ways, primarily, in which the Pinkertons’ role morphed. Firstly, it became far more violent. In the Civil War, the most dangerous action that Pinkertons engaged in consisted in chasing Confederate spies in the streets. Although one Pinkerton spy was caught and hung by the Confederates, by and large Pinkertons engaged in little violent activity. By the time the Pinkertons arrived at Homestead, they much more resembled a regular standing army: they were prepared to beat their way through a massive blockade of human bodies, even killing some. Secondly, the scope of the Pinkertons’ action drastically increased. Previously a few agents were sent in to infiltrate labor organizations: even in the Civil War only about ten Pinkertons were actively operating. At Homestead, over 300 Pinkertons were sent in, nearly all of whom sustained injuries.
I think that the escalation of violence has to do with the Pinkertons’ experience fighting gangs of robbers in the West: particularly in their brief entanglement with the James Gang, which killed two Pinkerton agents, one gruesomely, violence seemed to escalate both in its scope and brutality. The Pinkertons bombed the James’ mother’s home, seriously maiming her and killing James’ eight-year-old brother. Other entanglements with vigilante groups of townspeople in the West, who either stood to benefit from the bandits’ activity and defended them or wanted to lynch them, may have also contributed to this growing violence. Racial and class factors undoubtedly influence it as well.
As for how the Pinkertons transformed into a mass crime fighting unit, practically an army unit, I am less certain. Crime-fighting for the Pinkertons was previously quite personal: they profiled their targets as meticulously as any psychological profiler today, and, while undercover, they even grew friendly and intimate with the criminals they eventually brought in. Perhaps it is something specific to fighting labor, or perhaps it is a holdover from the Civil War, but in fighting labor at Homestead, the Pinkertons transformed from an elite detective force into infantry.

Significance
I believe that it is always of interest to dissect the reasons why we fight other humans—what drives us to believe that violence is acceptable and even necessary, and the kind of violence we carry out, and against whom. Particularly salient and troubling is violence between people who are, in general, united. Understanding how working men are able to make war on and even kill other working men like themselves is, I think, worth some investigation and reflection.
I also think that labor disputes are particularly informative instances to examine: they are unique in that they are the first instance since the Civil War in which white Americans fought other white Americans. I view the Civil War as a moment of essential redefinition of war and violence in the United States. As the first instance of real “total war,” the Civil War set precedents for the major violent encounters that followed it, and in many ways allowed for the expansion of “total war” in America into spheres not generally considered “war,” including war against specific individuals, such as the James brothers, against fellow white people, against class equals, and against noncombatant laborers—all of which the Pinkertons encapsulated in the late 19th century.

Primary Literature
The Pinkerton Detective Agency (which has now merged with another private security agency, Securitas) still holds extensive archives of its escapades (with the exception of much of its Civil War and pre-Civil War holdings, which were destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire). This includes Allan Pinkerton’s correspondence and diaries as well as those of his two sons, Robert and William, who succeeded him. It also includes the reports and correspondence of the undercover agents, who all reported to Pinkerton or his sons. These, I think, will be of the utmost importance to me.
There are also court records that may be of use. The Pinkertons were instrumental in breaking up the terroristic Irish labor group, the Molly Maguires, and in the court cases that followed, the agent who had infiltrated the group testified (which Pinkerton’s Agency prohibits). After the fiasco at Homestead, Congress investigated the matter, and so the records of the hearing are also incredibly important.
Finally, newspapers exhaustively covered many of the incidents in which Pinkertons were involved: chasing gangs in the West, the Molly Maguire case, and the Homestead Strike.

Secondary Literature
It seems that there is very little major recent scholarship on the Pinkertons. Most of my book sources on the Pinkertons are from the 1960s—the most recent is from 1982. My literature on the Homestead Strike is only slightly more recent. This is good news for me, since very little further work has been done with the available archival material, although it seems to be well organized and accessible.
A small selection of articles on the involvement of private law enforcement agencies in labor disputes also complements my books, but most of them focus on the labor disputes themselves, rather than the Pinkertons.

Troubleshooting
For me, there are two primary problems. I think that it will be impossible to get through all of the factors that played into the escalation of Pinkerton violence. I want to narrow it down to a select few: Pinkerton experiences in the West, for instance, and racial or class factors. I am not sure yet, however, which of those will be the most compelling factors, so for now I will have to keep looking into them.
Secondly, I am concerned about getting access to these archives. That might be an insurmountable problem, but one that I will hope doesn’t come up!