In 1861 the Pinkerton agency foiled a plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. In the 1870s its agents chased Jesse James and Butch Cassidy across the West. In 2023 it was on a YouTuber's porch demanding a box of unreleased Magic: The Gathering cards. This deep dive traces 170 years of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, starting with Scottish immigrant and barrel maker Allan Pinkerton filling a jurisdictional void in 1850s America, hiring women and minorities as spies, and the legendary Kate Warne, whose vigilance on Lincoln's night train inspired the unblinking eye logo and the phrase private eye.

We follow the agency's role as a prototype Secret Service and federal intelligence service, its contract work for a cash-strapped Department of Justice, and the deadly shootouts of the outlaw era. Then comes the pivot to labor wars: James McPar ...