Hiram Coombs Whitley, the chief of the U.S. Secret Service under President Ulysses S. Grant, was brave and public-service-minded, yet he was also opportunistic and even, at times, criminal.
Charles Lane, a columnist for The Washington Post, offers a portrait of a man who played a major role in combating the Ku Klux Klan and major counterfeiters in the post-Civil War era. Mr. Lane's “Freedom's Detective: The Secret Service, the Ku Klux Klanand the Man Who Masterminded America's First War on Terror” takes us back to a contentious time in the South after the Civil War, as well as further north to Washington, D.C., with its political battles, and to New York City with its criminal gangs
The book deals with the post-Civil War Secret Service, before the federal law enforcement organization was a presidential protective service, and its role in combating the terror of the Ku Klux Klan.
