George Sharpe: American Intelligence Pioneer

By Dr. Dennis Casey
HQ AIA/HO
Kelly Air Force Base, Texas

Like most major conflicts, the American Civil War produced its own unusually diverse assortment of heroes and personalities.

Within the general field of military intelligence, such names as Allan Pinkerton and Lafayette Baker continue to capture the attention of authors and novelists alike.

Indeed, much of what both men said of their accomplishments during the war really fell firmly into the camps of outright fiction and exaggeration. Both men claimed they headed the United States Secret Service and had the inside track in the Lincoln administration. This contention by both men could only be attributed to gross puffery.

In reality, neither directed such an organization, and as a matter of fact, Pinkerton and his Chicago-based detective agency had been hired to provide presidential security. It would be Col. George Sharpe who would direct the first real intelligence unit in the American Army and create an important foundation for the growth of the intelligence function within the American Army generations later.

For the first two years of the war, Union intelligence relied on Allen Pinkerton and his agents who occasionally penetrated into the Confederate-held Virginia countryside.

While his agents achieved moderate success, their chief assignment was the interrogation of captured soldiers, refugees and deserters. They also endeavored to clean the Confederate spies out of Washington. In this effort their first big success came with the shutdown of the Rose Greenhow spy ring. Serious problems, however, existed with Pinkerton and his organization. In his estimates of Confederate troop strength submitted to Gen. George McClellan, then the commander of the Army of the Potomac, he exaggerated significantly. Often his estimates ran double the actual size of given Confederate forces.

After the first Battle of Bull Run, for example, the Confederate force that probably numbered about 35,000 was reported by McClellan to the Secretary of War to be near 150,000. McClellan routinely overstated the troop strengths reported by Pinkerton and his agents. Such inflation worked to deter action by the Army of the Potomac.

On Feb. 11, 1863, Sharpe entered the picture as the commander of the 120th Regiment from New York. He had hardly reported for duty when orders from Gen. Ambrose Burnside, then commander of the Army of the Potomac, placed him at the head of the newly-created Union Intelligence Bureau. Sharpe quickly began hiring soldiers as agents and changed the name of his fledging organization to the Bureau of Military Information. The new bureau received orders to acquire information about the enemy, rather than to try and employ agents and conduct espionage operations. The soldier spies or guides, as they were called by Sharpe, received their salaries directly from the War Department.

Within weeks of the bureau’s creation, Sharpe’s guides, often dressed in Confederate uniforms and armed with doctored credentials, fanned out over much of Confederate-controlled Virginia with high expectations.

The Bureau of Military Information under Sharpe’s management evolved into a very different organization than the one run by Pinkerton.

Sharpe continued to have his employees carry out interrogations but added the important function of scouting enemy positions. Sharpe, merged the information obtained from interrogations, scouting and from agents operating behind enemy lines with that acquired from cavalry reconnaissance, balloon visual reports, signal corps flag messages, telegraphed reports and articles from southern newspapers. He then synthesized this information and prepared finished reports for senior Union commanders, especially Gen. Joseph Hooker.

This preparation of all source intelligence reports became the first time this approach was used during the Civil War and the first time since initially employed by George Washington during the Revolutionary War.

The procedure was essentially decades ahead of its time and was not being used by any military organizations in Europe. This type of all-source intelligence reporting would not appear in the United States Army until the next century.

The use of all-source intelligence by the Bureau of Military Information paid handsome dividends for the Union forces. In 1862, information gathered by one of Sharpe’s guides, when combined with a variety of other clues, presented a picture of Confederate infantry as being seriously short of supplies and equipment, particularly shoes, and rations.

In addition, after the first few months of operation, nearly every unit in the Confederate Army had been identified and described. Information gathered by bureau guides and particularly Sharpe’s analysis of often-conflicting information definitely contributed to the Union victory at Gettysburg.

Gen. George Meade’s decision not to retreat and regroup but to hold field positions after the second day of battle contributed significantly to the outcome of the war. Gettysburg dealt a serious blow to the Army of Northern Virginia and to Robert E. Lee’s ability to conduct wide-scale offensive operations.

With Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s assumption of senior commander of the Union Armies, Sharpe essentially found himself serving as Grant’s intelligence officer. Using the same approach, Sharpe’s role in using all-source or at least multiple source intelligence in the gradual encirclement of the Confederate armies during 1864 and 1865 again contributed to the eventual northern victory.

Up until the surrender at Appomatox Court House on April 9, 1865, Union knowledge of Confederate activities far outstripped Confederate awareness of the northern armies facing them and their plans. Union forces held the intelligence advantage.

Sharpe’s last major duty in uniform was that of paroling what was left of the Army of Northern Virginia. Once finished with that duty he returned to a law practice that had been interrupted by the war. He later served as a United States marshal in New York where he contributed measurably to the downfall of the infamous Tweed Ring. He died in 1900 after a productive career in law and New York politics.

Perhaps his most significant achievement in life came in the darker days of the Civil War when he took information from a variety of sources, reconciled factual differences, prepared an analysis and then presented it in a format readily usable by senior Union commanders.

For this, he can rightly be viewed as the first to use all-source intelligence in the American Army during war.