Allan Pinkerton, The spy in the rebellion; being a true history of the spy system of the United States Army during the late rebellion, revealing many secrets of the war hitherto not made public, compiled from official reports prepared for President Lincoln , General McClellan and the Provost-Marshal-General .

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[622] needful intelligence, was to enter upon both a needless waste of money for my patrons, and an objectless and wearying struggle against insurmountable obstacles for my detectives, whom, whatever may be said to the contrary, I have never in a single instance needlessly or injudiciously exposed to privation or danger.

In Brashear conductors of trains were applied to; the hotel and omnibus men were questioned, the postmaster was appealed to, and even the passenger-lists of the boats which had been in port, and to which they were able to gain access for a period of three months, had been searched in vain. Every trace of the man seemed lost; and I was appealed to for a decision as to whether they should proceed to Galveston by boat, with the presumption that Taylor had taken passage under an assumed name, or take a few days' trip up along the line of the New Orleans and Opelousas Railroad and seek for information of their man at different points through Central Louisiana.

I decided on the former course, and they accordingly embarked from Brashear immediately after the receipt of my telegram of instructions, on the handsome steamer “Josephine,” the only boat whose books they had had no opportunity of examining; and, having received my telegram but a few minutes before the steamer left, were obliged to do some lively running to reach it; for, in anticipation of a message from me