Allan Pinkerton , born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1819, emigrated to Chicago. He was
America’s first “private eye.” A man of many contradictions, he was a conservative
who strongly opposed slavery, a very cautious man who risked his life capturing criminals,
a militant labor organizer who suppressed the labor movement, and fought for women’s
rights to be detectives.
During his twenty-eight year career as a private detective, Allan Pinkerton and his
agency investigated over a thousand crimes. Pinkerton was involved in many dramas
of the nineteenth century. Work and the Underground Railroad became his life. The
Pinkerton’s fed and sheltered fugitives in their own home. Pinkerton was a very moral
man and despised slavery. The crisis over slavery brought the nation to the brink of the
Civil War. The South demanded a guarantee that slavery would continue in the states
where it was already established and permitted to spread to the Midwest and West. The
South also wanted the North to return any slaves who fled there via the Underground
Railroad. The North wanted to stop the spread of slavery. In 1850 the Fugitive Slave Act
was passed, which made it a federal crime for slaves to run away and a crime for anyone
to assist them. Allan Pinkerton could be arrested and imprisoned for his involvement
in assisting the slaves.
When the war began, Allan Pinkerton would finally combine his detective skills with
his abolitionist beliefs. Allan Pinkerton protected Abraham Lincoln against southern
radicals, who demanded the Union be dissolved and the Southern states form an independent
government. They hated Lincoln because they feared he would abolish slavery. In 1861,
Pinkerton uncovered a plot to assassinate President Lincoln. Pinkerton , with his top agents,
posed as Southern sympathizers and found themselves within the conspirators. As a spy
in the their midst, the plot was uncovered. As President Lincoln changed trains in
Maryland on February 22, he would be shot. Some of the guards protecting the President
were also Southern radicals. At the same time there was another plot to blow up the train
carrying Lincoln. Once the train was destroyed, they would cut the telegraph wires and
blow up bridges and train tracks to prevent Northern troops entry into Baltimore.
If President Lincoln was killed, there would definitely be a civil war. Pinkerton acte...
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... he still worked for the government by investigating merchants who were
cheating them by selling faulty military supplies.
When the war ended, Allan Pinkerton returned to Chicago to build up his private
investigation business. On April 14,1865, President Lincoln was assassinated. Allan
Pinkerton was not there to protect him.
The end of the Civil War did not bring peace to America. There were continuous outbursts
and gangs were formed to rob trains. Pinkerton and his agents pursued the outlaws with
vengeance, the most famous being the James brothers.
In 1869, Allan Pinkerton suffered a stroke, but fought the paralysis. A new battlefield
emerged in the 1870’s in the coal mines, steel mills, and factories. The workers were
treated like slaves, and fought back. Pinkerton was employed to end these organizations,
to infiltrate, gather evidence, and convict them. A strike broke out in a steel plant, ending
in fatalities. Pinkerton’s reputation was seriously damaged.
Allan Pinkerton died in 1884. He was a legend, gaining an international reputation for
crime solving and protection. When the F.B.I. was founded, it was modeled after
the Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency.
The United States began to dissatisfy some of its citizens and so the concerns of sectionalism, or the split of the country began to arise. There was a continuous riff between the south and the north over a few issues, a major one being slavery. The south argued that the slaves were necessary to support the southern economy. According to document A, the south were angry that the north was creating taxes that hurt the southern economy, thus increasing the need for slavery since they had to make up for the expense of the taxes. The south felt that the north was able...
The North had a very different opinion of the American way and made it exceedingly clear with the formation of numerous abolition societies, effectively abolishing slavery across the northern region and allowing blacks to live as productive members society, rather than its the property. Even one of the most prominent slave holders of that time was forced to rethink the legitimacy of slavery. “Seeing free black soldiers in action undermined [George] Washington’s racial prejudice and ultimately his support for slavery itself” (Finkelman 18). The productivity, societal and political benefits, and military empowerment made available by freed slaves challenged the South’s sense of racial supremacy, thus they began to establish a defense against the complete abolition of
Truman Capote finds different ways to humanize the killers throughout his novel In Cold Blood. He begins this novel by explaining the town of Holcomb and the Clutter family. He makes them an honest, loving, wholesome family that play a central role in the town. They play a prominent role in everyone’s lives to create better well-being and opportunity. Capote ends his beginning explanation of the plot by saying, “The suffering. The horror. They were dead. A whole family. Gentle, kindly people, people I knew --- murdered. You had to believe it, because it was really true” (Capote 66). Despite their kindness to the town, someone had the mental drive to murder them. Only a monster could do such a thing --- a mindless beast. However,
During the early to the mid-19th century, politics had become barbarian like, as it can be seen as a war zone. The arguments between the North and the south had grew, which would continue to separate them farther, and even farther apart. The Civil war was beginning to take shape, and every time a compromise was drawn, the war came closer to the present. For the longest time, slaves would run to the north to seek freedom from their masters, but it also came with a cost that, if they were caught they would have to deal with the punishments, and the wrath of their master. Though as the war grew closer, by the 1850, running away through the underground rail road would no longer be a very viable option due to the fugitive slave law that was put out in the 1850’s. Though the government issued the personal liberty laws that stated that they would not have to report any runaway slaves that they have seen. This made tensions between the North and the South even greater than before which would then bring us to the Civil war.
...ecause they feared that Slavery would soon be completely abolished. These tensions eventually led to the civil war where the North won and slavery was ended although there were still slave like laws in place after.
Constitutionally the North favored a loose interpretation of the United States Constitution, and they wanted to grant the federal government increased powers. The South wanted to reserve all undefined powers to the individual states themselves. The South relied upon slave labor for their economic well being, and the economy of the North was not reliant on such labor or in need of this type of service. This main issue overshadowed all others. Southerners compared slavery to the wage-slave system of the North, and believed their slaves received better care than the northern factory workers received from their employers. Many Southern preachers proclaimed that slavery was sanctioned in the Bible. Southern leaders had constantly tried to seek new areas into which slavery might be extended (Oates 349).
The North felt like the south wanted to completely monopolize the new territories and make every one of them slaveholding. Northern states also held the belief that slavery was meant to be temporary and seemed morally wrong. The North and South each believed they were right in their beliefs, “Both remained convinced that the other would stop at nothing to achieve domination” (Fellman 65). An Illinois newspaper as quoted by Fellman regarding the South says, “She aspires to nothing short of absolute
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Haiti had over a half million enslaved Africans working on sugar plantations owned by the French. The sugar was hugely profitable, but conditions for enslaved worker were horrendous. Many were cruelly over worked and under fed. Haiti also had a population of both free and enslaved mulattoes. Free mulattoes, however, had few right and were badly treated by the French. In 1791, a slave revolt exploded in northern Haiti. Under the able leadership of Toussaint L'Ouverture, Haitians would fight for freedom and pave the way for throwing off French rule.
The House of the Seven Gables written by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a novel that engages the reader in an intricate love story that blends history and a fanciful ancestry. Hawthorne stays true to the Romantic era’s convections through his detailed development of the plot. Through his writing, the reader can capture the emotions, morality and motives of each character. Although Hawthorne writes in the romantic style, he does not fail to go against the social norms with the plot. He defines the normal roles of women and he emphasizes the role of wealth in society. Furthermore he asserts his opinions on issues that were prevent in that time, such as, racism, slave emancipation and Jim Crow. The story was not created to just provide a creative love
In 1966, Truman Capote published the novel In Cold Blood that pierced the boundaries of literary genres, as he narrated the events of the 1959 Clutter family massacre in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas and the quest that took place afterwards through the perspectives both the murderers and those looking for them. As Capote bends these genre normalities, he ventures with the killers and the detectives and describes the murderers’ lives in-depth to further characterize Dick Hickock and Perry Smith--their psychological states and the possible contributing factors to their undeniable personality disorders. The two killers are ultimately diagnosed by a mental health professional with mental illnesses rather than chronic personality disorders,
The Fugitive Slave Act was part of the Compromise of 1850. This act required that authorities in the North had to assist southern slave catchers to retrieve and return slaves to their owners. Southerners favored this act because they saw no slavery in the territories to the west, by the passing of the Fugitive Slave Act it would help preserve slavery in the south. This act allowed southern slave owners to get their slaves back when they escaped to the North that is why this act was important and critical to southern survival. The view of this act by the North was the opposite, especially from those who were black, they feared this act. The blacks in the North were terrified that this act would make it so they could be ushered back to the south even if they were innocent. This led to the creation of resistance groups in the North.
Several of the problems that Haiti faces today have their genesis in the country’s colonial history. The country was like a toy being fought over by spoiled children. The first of these children arrived in the early sixteenth century in the form of Spanish settlers in search of gold. They enslaved the native Taino population and, poisoned by avarice, nearly eradicated the indigenous work force. Thousands of African slaves were brought in to take their place. Eventually, the Spanish left the island to grab their share of newly discovered treasure in other lands. Tiring of their toy, the Spanish
The Haitian revolution was the a major event that affected European colonialism throughout the New world. The start of the Haitian revolution was the imbalance in Haitian society, the slaves made up the vast majority of the population and were constantly being treated with disrespect. They were deprived of economic ability and social equality. Due to the poor working conditions, lack of protection and basic living opportunities, and increasing segregation and ability for self government. The French Revolution began around 1787 and ended in 1799. During this time period, the fight to end slavery was a very big controversy. The Haitian Revolution also showed similar characteristics to
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