Charles Cowlam, a convict, spy, detective, congressional candidate, adventurer, and con artist, plied his many trades throughout the Civil War, Reconstruction and Gilded Age.

And his dubious past may have gone unrecorded except for Frank Garmon, Jr., an assistant professor of American studies at Christopher Newport University. One of his student research assistants, Nate Hotes, discovered the letter from Abraham Lincoln’s pardon clerk summarizing Charles Cowlam’s application for clemency.

The clerk noted that the case was “the least meritorious application on file in the office,” which caught Hotes’ attention. “Initially I thought that we’d write a short, four-page article together summarizing the letter,” Garmon says. “But when I discovered that he was pardoned by both Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, the project developed quickly into a book.”

Garmon will discuss that book, “A Wonderful Career in Crime: Charles Cowlam’s Masquerades in the Civil War Era and Gilded Age” on Dec. 12 at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture. “Biographers of con artists often happen upon their subjects by accident,” he says. “That was certainly the case for me.”

In researching the book, Garmon searched far and wide for Charles Cowlam. Newspaper databases were essential in filling in his timeline, so he made frequent trips to the National Archives and Library of Congress. Research assistants helped him to locate manuscripts in Canada and the United Kingdom. He tracked down descendants of one of Cowlam’s younger sisters and younger brother. “I contacted a rare book and manuscript dealer who sold Cowlam’s pardon from Lincoln,” Garmon says.

One contemporary newspaper reported that Cowlam “has as many aliases as there are letters in the alphabet.” The elaborate stories Cowlam told allowed him to blend into new surroundings, where he quickly cultivated the connections needed to extract patronage from influential members of American society.

Garmon sees Cowlam as successful in his shape-shifting because Americans were very transient in the 19th century after the massive disruptions of the Civil War. “The rapid urbanization taking place during this time meant that cities were overflowing with recent migrants, so it was easy for Cowlam to blend in amidst so many newcomers,” Garmon says. “Each of them had a story to tell about how they’d spent the war, and those stories were difficult to verify.”

Besides being the only person to receive presidential pardons from both Lincoln and Jefferson Davis during the Civil War, Cowlam conned his way into serving as a detective investigating Lincoln’s assassination, later parlaying that experience into positions with the Internal Revenue Service and the British government.

Reconstruction offered even more opportunities for Cowlam to repackage his identity. He convinced Ulysses S. Grant to appoint him U.S. marshal and persuaded Republicans in Florida to allow him to run for Congress. His resume is a direct result of his skill at storytelling, Garmon believes. “His incredible stories of daring prison escapes, meetings with famous presidents and generals, and wartime espionage all sounded plausible to those he encountered,” he says. “It was difficult for anyone to verify these accounts or to piece together the different parts of his life.”

Cowlam began his dubious career at the tender age of 12 when he was first arrested shortly after his father’s death. The allure of easy money may have proved too tempting for him, or he may have turned to crime with the intention of supporting his family. In any case, he was hooked on a life of crime and conning.

It took Garmon a year and a half to complete the book because of the challenges in verifying Cowlam’s stories. Some of his tales were obviously false, such as when he claimed he’d watched the abolitionist John Brown’s trial and execution, despite having been in prison at the time. “Other stories, like his claim to have been a detective investigating the Lincoln assassination, were hard to prove,” he says. “But ultimately, I found the receipts in the National Archives showing that he really was a detective on the case.”

One of many episodes in Cowlam’s life that Garmon uncovered occurred in New York City, when the con man started a fake secret society and published an accompanying newspaper called the Scythe. A reporter with the New York Daily Graphic investigated the organization in early 1874 and published an exposé.

The reporter was unable to locate the editor of the Scythe, but he described his conversation with William E. Burlick, who claimed to be an employee of the outfit.

“The conversation takes on a comical tone when one realizes that Burlick is an alias and that the reporter had been talking to Cowlam the whole time,” Garmon says. “That moment feels like the scene in ‘Catch Me If You Can’ when Leonardo DiCaprio, playing the con man Frank Abagnale, fools the FBI agent Tom Hanks into believing that he’s a Secret Service agent.”

In a country shaped by career criminals, Charles Cowlam’s life story could be considered as American as apple pie.

“A Wonderful Career in Crime: Charles Cowlam’s Masquerades in the Civil War Era and Gilded Age” book talk by Frank Garmon, Jr. will be held on Thursday, Dec. 12 at noon at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture, 428 N. Arthur Ashe Blvd. Tickets