Baker L.C. History of United States Secret Service

Philadelphia: 1867. — 704 p.
IN" giving to the public this volume, it has been the design to present the operations of the Bureau of the National Detective Police during the war, so far as it is proper to make them known to the people. It is not a book of romantic adventures, but a narrative of facts in the secret history of the conflict, and mainly an exposure of the manifold and gigantic frauds and crimes of both the openly disloyal and the professed friends of the Republic. Many reports are introduced, some of which are lengthy, and portions of them are dry, because they are the official records of the work done, and the verification of the statements made, and the highest vindication of the character and importance of the secret service. Passages occur in them, the propriety of which many readers may question, but their omission would have weakened the strength of the reports, and softened down the enormity of the offenses charged up on certain individuals. The whole volume might have been made up of chapters very similar to those of the first hundred pages or more, but we preferred to sacrifice the peculiar interest, to some extent, of a merely sensational work — sketches of exciting scenes and hair-breadth escapes — for the greater object of an authentic official record of the vast amount of indispensable service rendered to the Government, during nearly four years of bloody strife, with the months of trial and agitation which followed. The plan of the "book was, therefore, chosen by the responsible head of the bureau, while the introductory chapters were written by another, whose editorial aid was secured in the general preparation of the annals for the press. No desire or effort has been cherished to wantonly expose or wound in feeling any man, and therefore initials, for the most part, alone appear ; but a faithful history of transactions under the authority delegated to the Bureau, will unavoidably reach the sensibilities of persons of distinction, no less than those in humbler life.
The volume of war records, the most of which have never before met the public eye, is offered to the people as a part of the veritable history of the most extraordinary and perilous times the Republic has1 known, or is likely to pass through again.