A Wonderful Career in Crime: Charles Cowlam’s Masquerades in the Civil War Era and Gilded Age

Charles Cowlam’s career as a convict, spy, detective, congressional candidate, adventurer, and con artist spanned the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Gilded Age. His life touched many of the most prominent figures of the era, including Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, and Ulysses S. Grant. One contemporary newspaper reported that Cowlam “has as many aliases as there are letters in the alphabet.” The 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. He is the only person to receive presidential pardons from both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis during the Civil War. When the fighting ended, he 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 additional 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. In A Wonderful Career in Crime, Frank W. Garmon, Jr., brings Cowlam’s stunning machinations to light for the first time.

Frank W. Garmon Jr. is assistant professor of American studies at Christopher Newport University, where he is a specialist on the era of the early republic. Frank is the author of several articles on the early republic and of the book, A Wonderful Career in Crime: Charles Cowlam’s Masquerades in the Civil War Era and Gilded Age.