The Secret Service in the Civil War (Expanded, Annotated)
(He was the War Department intelligence chief during the A...)
He was the War Department intelligence chief during the American Civil War, a spy, and a colonel in the cavalry. He was put in charge of the investigation of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, was at the capture and death of John Wilkes Booth, and brought away the items in Booth's pockets...including Booth's diary. Lafayette C. Baker's name appears in over 150 New York Times articles between 1861 and 1868. His work was important, well-regarded,and of great interest to the public (at least what could be told publicly). He was in close contact with Abraham Lincoln, Edwin Stanton, and other high officials. When he was accused later of spying on the White House, he was dismissed and set about writing this memoir of his time in service during the Civil War. Conspiracy theories are completely unnecessary to make Lafayette Baker an important and fascinating figure in Civil War history. His writing is intelligent, thrilling, and clearly in earnest. Read him for what he offers to the history of the period and for the associations he had during his life and you’ll be more than rewarded for your time.
Lafayette Curry Baker was a United States investigator and spy, serving the Union Army, during the American Civil War and under Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson.
Background
Baker was born in Stafford, New York on October 13, 1826. His father, Remember Baker, was the grandson and namesake of the Vermont border warrior who shared with Ethan Allen the fame or notoriety derived from leadership of the "Green Mountain Boys. "
Career
La Fayette Baker attained his majority in Michigan, and from 1848 to 1860, as an itinerant mechanic, became a bird of passage, stopping only for brief residences in New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. He was in New York at the outbreak of the Civil War, and, having gained some experience, as a San Francisco Vigilante, in the use of high-handed and surreptitious methods of government, he went to Washington seeking employment best suited to his talents.
Sent by General Scott on a secret mission to Richmond, Baker succeeded in reaching his objective as a Confederate prisoner, secured the desired information while Jefferson Davis was trying to determine whether he was a spy, then escaped and returned to Washington. The Richmond episode secured for Baker permanent employment as a detective, and, with later successes, it gained for him a colonel's commission, an appointment as special provost marshal of the War Department in 1862, and the rank of brigadier-general in 1865. Armed with wide powers and unlimited resources he became a veritable Fouché. Due process, warrants for arrest and search, and other constitutional guarantees were disregarded while the chief of detectives ferreted out plotters, traitors, war speculators, bounty-jumpers, and amassed a small fortune for himself.
Nevertheless, Baker's ability and service as a detective are unquestionable, as his planning and direction of the expedition that captured John Wilkes Booth and D. C. Herold demonstrated. But his reputation suffered when Congress in distributing the rewards for the capture of the Booth conspirators reduced the Claims Committee's award of $17, 500 to Baker, to $3, 750, largely because "he was building a big hotel in Lansing", and when President Johnson dismissed him from office for his insolence in maintaining an espionage system at the White House.
His last bid for notoriety was in the rôle of star witness against President Johnson in the impeachment proceedings, where his alleged Adamson letters were to uncrown Cæsar. Curiously, those fabulous documents, like the Canadian letters linking Jefferson Davis with the Booth conspiracy, "eternally eluded the grasp of their pursuers, and the chase ever resulted only in aiding the depletion of the public treasury, " with the result that Baker "to his many previous outrages added that of wilful and deliberate perjury". This habitual carelessness in mixing truth and fiction was not overcome in his History of the United States Secret Service (1867). He died in Philadelphia.
(He was the War Department intelligence chief during the A...)
Personality
According to Professor Glenn "Although his accomplishments were many, Baker operated with little regard for warrants or the constitutional rights of those he pursued. He is also reported to have employed brutal interrogation techniques in order to obtain information. "