Lincoln's Spies

[L Verge]

(08-02-2019 08:59 PM)Steve Wrote:  Wow. That was less than a day before going behind the paywall.

I don't have a WSJ account but from what I recall of the review, Holzer liked the book. The review goes into the biographies of at least 3 spies - Pinkerton, Baker, and a Southern Unionist woman (I think Van Lew, but I can't remember for sure.)

Holzer did have a minor criticism in that he thinks Waller is incorrect in stating that Pinkerton and Lincoln had met each other prior to Lincoln being elected.

As I posted elsewhere, the book has bios on four spies - Pinkerton (who affected McClellan's military strategy with inflated info), George Sharpe (who was pretty much the father of what we now term military intelligence), Lafayette Baker (an early version of the Gestapo, imo), and Elizabeth Van Lew of Richmond.