Lafayette Baker:
The Scoundrel Spy Chief

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Lieutenant General Winfield Scott

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Lieutenant General Winfield Scott

With the Union Army awash in political friction and disorganization, it is little surprise there were competing intelligence organizations when the war began. While detective Allan Pinkerton’s activities in the Army of the Potomac were short-lived, the rivaling National Detective Agency, headed by a colorful, disreputable figure named Lafayette Baker, remained in operation through the final Confederate surrender.

Baker, a poorly educated drifter with a reputation for leading vigilantes in a mostly lawless San Francisco, California, arrived in Washington, D.C., at the beginning of the war. He was hired as a spy by Union Army Commanding General Winfield Scott, the nation’s foremost soldier, whose experience in the Army dated to the War of 1812. Scott believed Baker to be the sort of character needed to excel in the business of espionage and deceit.

In July 1861, Scott ordered Baker to learn more about the Confederate forces gathering across the Potomac River at Manassas Junction, Virginia. Baker ventured across the river, posing as a photographer, but was ironically arrested twice by Union forces as a suspected Confederate spy. On his third attempt, Baker was detained again, this time by Confederate cavalry, and accused of spying for the Union. Transferred to a nearby stockade, Baker observed the Confederates staging for a major battle before he was moved by train to Richmond, Virginia. He managed to return to Washington, D.C., but by that time his intelligence was worthless: the Union Army had been routed at Manassas, Virginia, in what came to be known as the First Battle of Bull Run.

A Powerful Rogue

General Scott retired in November 1861 and Baker was ultimately transferred to the War Department, where his power grew exponentially in spite of his failures as a front-line spy. He assumed several different official and unofficial positions, including Special Provost Marshal, which granted him authority for security in the capital. Baker established a presence in several cities, even operating from the plush Astoria hotel in New York City. His reach extended as far north as Canada, where many Confederate operatives and escaped prisoners had fled. By 1863, Baker had his own cavalry unit—the 1st District of Columbia Cavalry Regiment—to counter famed Confederate raider Colonel John Singleton Mosby, known as the “Gray Ghost,” who was then operating in Northern Virginia. Baker was eventually awarded the rank of brigadier general in the army.

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Colonel Lafayette Baker with his cavalry unit

In addition to hunting down Confederate spies and subversives, Baker also arrested corrupt government contractors, smugglers, counterfeiters, and draft dodgers, although he was hardly a virtuous figure himself. Baker and his operatives, many of whom were fellow vigilantes from California, enriched themselves by skimming cash seized from their investigations. At the Old Capitol Prison, in Washington, D.C., they extorted bribes from detainees, promising to keep them out of jail or shorten their stays. Many of their arrests were highly questionable, often without warrants, holding suspects for weeks without due process. Baker is also alleged to have tortured prisoners during interrogations and dismembered the body of one Confederate soldier. So notorious had Baker become that he was often referred to in Washington circles as the “Czar of the Underworld.”

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Letter from Lafayette Baker to President Lincoln, 1863

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Letter from Lafayette Baker to President Lincoln, 1863

An Epic Failure

In the early months of the war, Baker and detective Allan Pinkerton shared responsibility for rooting out Confederate spies and sympathizers within the government, but Baker’s reputation would never equal that of his rival. Moreover, while Pinkerton once earned the admiration of a nation for saving Lincoln’s life, Baker’s legacy is forever tarnished by his failure to prevent the President’s assassination. During the war, Baker managed extensive countersubversion operations in the Washington, D.C. area, but his agents provided no warning of the assassination plot, nor was he aware of the conspirators meeting regularly at Mary Surratt’s Washington, D.C., boarding house on H Street, a short distance from Baker’s own headquarters.

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From left: The Presidential box at Ford's Theater; The assassination of Abraham Lincoln, April 14, 1865; Planning the manhunt for Lincoln's assassin; Lincoln assassins wanted poster

As Lincoln lay mortally wounded, after being shot by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865, Baker was ordered to track down the conspirators. His deputy, an Army lieutenant colonel, led a cavalry unit that ultimately cornered the assassin, John Wilkes Booth, who was killed while refusing to surrender.

Baker was later ousted by President Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s successor, and mustered out of the Army in 1866. Still determined to outshine Pinkerton, he published a memoir the following year to promote his wartime exploits, but the book fared poorly. In 1868, the former intelligence chief died from typhoid fever.