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REF ID:A62847 

Lecture lo. ltCcdes aDcl Ciphers of the Civil War 

BY WILLIAM F. FRIEDMAI 

This lecture, the fourth 1D the series, deals with the cryptosntems used b;y; both sides 1D tbe Civil War, the War of the Rebellion, 

the War Between the States - choose your om deaigDation tor that 

vicious, blood.;y;, and very costg strife, when brother was pitted aeillst 

brother. Civil strife is UDbappik alvaya very bitter and leaves scars 

which bell mlr extremeg slowg with the passage of !!DY ye~s. 

A detailed accCNDt of the codes BDd ciphers of the Civil War 1D 

the UDitea States of America can bard]¥ be tolcl without beginning it 

vitb a bit ot biography about tne -.n who Dee&m the first sigDal officer 

iD history and the first Chief Sipal Officer of the United States Army, 

Albert J. lt\Yer, the man 1D whose memory that love]¥ little U .s. Anq 

post ad.Jacent'ti> Arlington Cemetery was named. M,er was born on 20 September l.827. After an apprenticeship 1D the then quite aev science ot 

electric telegrap)27 -- Morse's patent is dated 1837 -- he entered 

Hobart College, Geneva, Bew York, frm which he was graduated ill J.811.7. 

Fran earq 70Uth be had exhibited a predilection for artistic and scientific studies, &Dd upcn leaving Hobart he entered Buffalo Medical College, 

receiving tbe M.D. degree tour years later. Bis graduatioa thesis, 11A 

Sign Language for Deaf Mutes," contained the germ ot the idea he was 

to develop several years later, wben, iD J.851t., be was cCIDisaimed a 

lat Lieutenant 1D the Regular Anq, made an Aas iatant Surgem and ordered 

to New Mexico for duty. ~·a idea involved tbe clevelopment of an 

efficient systm of military "aerial telegraphy", which was wbat systems 

of visual sigDaliDg were then called. Be had plenty of time at this 

tar-away outpost to think about tbe •tter. I emphasize tbe word "system" 

because, strange to say, although instances of the use of lights &Del other 

visual aigDals can be tOWld tbrougb.out the history of warfare, and the 

use ot visual codes between ships at sea bad been practiced by IB1'1Ders 

'far centuries, ;yet down to the middle of the 19th Century surpris ~ 

little progress bad been mde 1D developing methccls and instruments tor 

the systematic excblmge of 1111.itary 1Df'ormat1m aad iDstructions iD the 

tielcl, by meaDS of signals of &D7 kiDcl. Morse 'a practical telegraph, 
' 

REF ID:A62847 

developed iD the years 1832-35, served to focus attention vithiD the military 

upon the •tter of iDter-cammmication b7 me&DS ot both visual and electrical 

s ipals, and 1D the years immediately preceding the Civil War the U.S. Anq took 

steps to introduce and to develop a S1'8t• of visual signaling f'or general use 

in the field. It was Assistant Surgeon Myer wbo furnished the initiative in 

this •tter. 

ID 1.856, that is, only two years after he vas ccmnissioned assistant surgeOD 

and bad devoted lllUCh of' bis leisure tille to the suudy of' visual signaling 8ILd 

its developnent, Myer dratted a memorandum OD a new system of' visual signaling 

and obtained a patent OD it. Two years later, a board appointed b)' tile War 

Department to study MJer's s7stm. reported tavorabq after sane demODStrations 

by Myer, and, as a result, the War Department fostered a bill 1D Congress, which 

gave its approval to tbe system. But vbat is more to tbe point, Congress appropriated an initial BllOUDt of' $2,000 to enable the Artq and the War DepartmeDt to 

develop the s;ystem. The amey, as stated iD the Act was to be used "for the 

manufacture of' purchase of' apparatus and equipment f'or field a igDaling." The 

act also contained another 1111portant prOV'iaion: it authorized the appointment 

on the Aniy staff ot one S:l.gnal Officer with the rank, pay, and alloWBDCes of 

a •Jor of' cavalry. On 2 JuJ.7 l.86o, "Assistant Surgem Albert J. Myer (was 

appointed.) to be SigDal Officer, with the rank of' MaJor, 27 June 1.86o, to fill 

an original vacancy," Two weeks later Ma~or M;yer was ordered to report to the 

Ccwna.nd 1Dg General of' the Department of Bev Mexico tor s ignaU.ag duty. Tbe War 

Department also directed that two officers be detailed as his assistants. During 

a several months• campaign aga1Dst hostile Rave.Joa, BD extenaive test of JVer's 

new system, using both flags and torches, was caaducted, With much success. ID 

October l86o, a Lieut J .E .B. Stuart, later to became fBlllOUB as a Confederate 

caval.r7 leader, tendered his services to aid iD signal instruction. It my 

interest ;rm to learn that one of' the officers wbo served as an assistant to 

~r iD deaonstrati.Dg his system before the board which made a stu.cly of' lfler 's 

s;ystea before it vaa adopted by the Ar7q was a Lieut E.P. Al.exaDd.er, Corps ot 

Engineers. We shall bear more about him present)¥, but at the manent I will SB.1' 

that on the outbreak of the Civil War, Alexander organized 1be CODtederate Signal 

Corps, which was establisbed by the Act of' the Confederate CODgress "To organize 

a SigDal Corps". The Act was apprond en 19 April l.862 -- near;cy a year earlier 

tbaD the Signal Corps ot the Federal Arrq vaa likew&se established as a separate 

corps. 

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REF ID:A62847 

Less than a year after Major t\fer was appoillted as the first and, at that 

time 1 the CDly SigDal Officer of the U .s. ArBT 1 CBE the attack OD Fort Sumter, 

which, following a 36-hour bmbardment, surreD4ered. 1he blood7 four-year war 

between the Borth and the SCRltb camenced. The date was 14 April 1861. M,er's 

s;yst• of' aerial telegraphy was soOD to undergo its real baptism under tire 1 rather 

than by tire. Ba.t with the outbreak of war 1 another new syst• of military 

~ 

sipal cammmicatiOD, signaling by the electric telegraph, began to undergo its 

first thorough teat iD cmbat operations. This iD itself' is very important iD 

the history of ceyptoloSJ. Bu.t f'ar more significant 1D that history is the f'act 

that, for the first time iD the cODduct of' argara1zed warfare, rapid and secret 

military CCllllllUDicatiODS on a large scale bec&E practicable, because cryptology 

and electric telegraphy were now to be Joined iD a cmte11tiows but lastiDg 

wedlock. For when the var began, the electric telegraph bad been. in use for less 

than a quarter of a century. Although the f'trst use of electric telegraphJ' 1Ja 

military operations was in the Crimea War 1D Evope 1 iD J.854-56, its employment 

was restricted to emaamicatiODS exchanged amcag headquarters of' the Allies, and 

saae observers were very dou.btf'ul about its utility even for this limited usage. 

It my also be noted tbat iD tbe anMJs ot that var there is DO record of' the 

empleyment ot electric telegraphy together vitb means far protectiDg the messages 

against their interception and solutiCG by the eDESJ'• 

OD the Union side iD the Civil War, military sigDal operatims began vi th 

Ma~or ~r's arrival in WashiDgton m 3 June 1B61. Bis basic equipment cODSisted 

of' kits contaiDiDg a white flag with a red square iD tbe center tor use against 

a dark backgrouad; a red flag with a white square :fbr use against a light background; and torches for Dight use. It is interesting to Dote that these are the 

elements vbich make up the familiar insignia of our Army Signal Corps. IJ.be most 

pressing need which faced M&Jor tVer was to get officers and men detailed to 

him wherever signals aight be required, and to train them in wbat soon cw to 

be called tile ''wigwas syst•". This training included learning smethiDg about 

codes and ciphers, and gaining experience iD their usages. 

But there was still no such separate entity as a SigDal Corps of' tbe Arrq. 

Officers and enlisted meD were merely detailed for senice with MaJor M,er for 

aigDaliDg duty. It was Dot until two years after the var started that the Signal 

Corps was officially establisbed and organized. as a separate branch of the Arrq, 

by appropriate Congressional actioa. ID the meantime another signaling organization was cCll!Dg into beillg - au organizaticm. which was an outgrowth ot the 

3 
REF ID:A62847 

gover1m1mt's taking over control of the camercial telegraph cmpaaies ill the 

United States m 25 Februar:r l.862. Tllere were then ~ three iD number: the 

American, Westem Union, and Southwestern. \be telegraph lines generally to1fl' 

loved the rmtes of the railroads. 'fhe then Secretary of War, SimOD. Cameron, 

sought the aid of Thoma.a A. Scott, of the Pemusylvania Railroad, vtlo brought 

saae of his men to Wasb.1.Dgton tor railroad &Dd telegraphic duties With the Federal 

Govermaent. Frm a nucle1ls of tour ;young telegraph operators grew a rather large 

militar1 telegraph organizatim vhicb was not given formal status UDtil on 

28 October 1861 Pres 1.dent Lincoln save Secretar;y CamerCD authorit7 to set up 

the U .s. Military Telegraph Departllent under a -.n named Anson Stager, who, as 

general super1Dteadellt ot the Western Unim vas called to WashiDgtm, cc:maissioned 

a captain (and later a colonel) in the Quartermaster Corps, and made superinteDient 

ot the &ilitar;y Telegraph Department. (Only about a dozen of the members of the 

DepartmeD.t became ccmmiasioned officers, and the7 were made officers so that the1 

cou.14 receive and disburse funds 8Dd property. All the rest were civilians.) '!'be 

U.S. Militar;y Telegraph "Corps", as it sOCD came to be desigDated, withou.t warrant, 

was techllicaJ.4 under Quartermaster Meigs but for all practical purposes it was 

under the imediate and direct cmtrol of the Secretar1 of War, a situatioa. admit~ 

acceptable to Meigs. There were now two organizations tor sigDaliDg ill the Army, 

and it was hardly to be expected that no difficulties would eDSUI!! trm the duality. 

ID fact, the difficulties began to break Ollt very soon, as can be noted 1D the 

follov1Dg extract traa a lecture before the WashiDgtm Civil War RODDd Table, early 

in 1954, by Dr. George R. Thmpson, Chief of the Historical Division ot tb.e Office 

ot the Chief Signal Officer of the U.S. Army: 

The first need for m111tar1 signals arose at the important 

Federal fortress ill the lower Chesapeake Bay at Fort Monroe. 

Early 1D June, M¥er arrived there, obtailled a detail ot officers 

&Del men and began schooling them. Soon his pupils were wigwagging 

messages fraa a s-.11 boat, directing the tire of Unim batteries 

located cm an islet in Hallptm Roads agai.Dst Contederate fortifi• 

catiCDS near Norfolk. Very soon, too, ~r began encounterillg 

trou.ble vitb ccnmercial Wire telegraphers 1D the area. General Ben 

Butler, cCW!ll8nd 1Dg the Federal Department 1D sou.tbeast Virginia, 

ordered that Yire t&legraph facilities and their civilian workers 

be placecl under the signal officer. 'lbe civilians, proud and 

Jealous of the:tr skills in electrical magic, obJected in DO uncertain terms and. shortly an order arrived frm. the Secretary of War 

h:lmselt who counteranded Butler's inatru.cticm.s. The Arm;y's aigDal 

officer was to keep baD4s off the civilian telegraph even when it 

served the AnJ¥. 

Rote that at the time ot this episode the Sigaal Otticer bad no facilities for 

electric telegrapa sigDaliDg - he was given control of such facilities 1D southeast 

Virginia b7 the ccwpancU.ng general ot the Department, General Butler, and he kept 

them tor mq a tev het1ra. 

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REF ID:A62847 

I have purpose.Qr selected this extract traa Dr. Thompson's presentation 

because iD it we can clearq hear the first rumblings tbat lengthy" and acriJIODiOUS feud betweea. two sipaliag orpnizatiODS whoae uacoordillated operations 

and rivalry greatq reduced the efficiency of all sigDaliDg operations ef the 

Federal Anq. As already indicated cme of these organizatims was tile U .s. 

Military Telegraph "Corps", scmetimea here:lDatter abbreviated as USM'l'C, a 

c1v111aD organ1zaticm wh1cb operated tile exiatiDg caaercial telegraph systems 

for tbe War J)epartment, Ullder the direct supervisicm of the Secret&rJ of War, 

l'.dw1D M. StaDtm. The other organizatim was, ot cour:se, the illfant Sigaal 

Corps of the Ullited States Ant¥, which was not yet even established as a separate 

branch, vbereas the USMre had been eatabl1shed 1D October l.861, as noted above. 

Imleed, the SigDal Corps bad to wait until March 1863, tbat is, two years after 

the CRitbreak ot war, before beiDg established otfic1ally. You Will recall tbat I 

the CODf'ederate SigDal Corps bad been established a full year earlier, 1D April 

l.862. (UDtil then., as I've said before, for sigaaliDg duty OD both aides, there 

were anq officers who were iDdividual.11' and specific&~ detailed for such duty 

trm o'tber Dranches ot the respective Armies of ttle Nortb. and ttle South.) 

Trouble between the USMro and tb.e SigDal Corps of ttle Unian Army. began when the 

T 81pal Corps became in~rested iD sigDaliDg b7 electric telegra~ and bepa to 

acquire facilities therefor. 

As-early as 1D June l.861, Chief Siga.al Officer M;yer bad initiated action 

toward acquiring or obtaining electrical telegraph f'~ilities tor use in the 

field but with one exception notltiDg happened. Tile exception was iD the case ot 

the military department iD southeast Virginia, camnaaded by General Ben.Jam.in 

Butler, who was mentioned a few DaneDts ago in the extract Iieacl you tran 

Dr. 'l'bompson' s address. ID August l.861, Col. llyer tried again and 1D •ovember. 

he reconaended in his annual report tbat $30,000 be appropriated to establish au 

electrical sigDal:lng branch 1D the Signal Corps. The proposal tailed to meet the 

approval of the Secretary of War. However, one telegraph train, which had been 

ordered by Myer, m117 months before, was delivered 1D January J.862, and was tried 

out 1D an experimental fashion, under considerable difficulties, the most disheartening of which was the active opposition of persons in Wasb1Dgton, particular~ the Secretary of War. So, tor practicalq the whole of the first two years 

of the war, sigDal officers DD the Northern side bad neither electrical telepaph 

facilities nor Morse operators - they bad to re~ entire~ on the wig-wag system. 

5 
REF ID:A62847 

However, b;y the middle of 1863 there were thirty "flying-telegraph" trains iD 

use ill the Federal Artq. Here's a picture ot such a train. The normal length 

of field telegraph lines was five to eight miles, though in sane cases the 

1.Dstruments bad worked at distances as great as twenty miles • But even before 

the SigDal Corps began to acquire these facilities, there bad been agitation to 

have them, as well as their SigDal Corps operating personnel, all turned over to 

the usmc, which bad grown 1.Dto a tightly-knit organizatiOD ot over 1,000 men 

iD Wasbi.Dgtm, 

and bad become very inf'luentialj( especia~ by virtue of its S':\PPort trm Secretar.y of War Stanton. As a coaaequ.enc11, the Telegraph Corps bad its way. ID the 

tall of J.863, it took over all the electric telegraph facilities and telegraph 

operators ot the SigDal C!)rps. Colca.el )brer sadl.¥ wrote: "With the loss of its 

electric lines the SigDal Corps was crippled" • 

So now there were two canpeti.Dg signal orga.uizatims. on the Borthern side: 

The U.S. Army's Signal Corps, wbich was c0111posed entirel.1' of military personnel 

with no electric telegraph facilities (but was equipped with means for visual 

signaling}, and the USM'ro, which was not a part of the Anq, be:lng staffed almost 

entirel.J vith civiliams, and which bad electric telegraph facilities and skilled 

Morse operators (but no means or respODSibilities for visual sipal.iDg or "aerial 

telegraphy" wbicb, of course, was old stuff. "Electric telegraphy" was now~ 

thing.) The USMro had no desire to sbare electric telegraphy vith the Signal 

Cmrps, a determination 1D whicb the Corps was most ably assisted by Secretary ot 

War Stanton, tor reasons tbat tall outside the scope of the present lecture. 

However, fran a tecbDical point of view it is worth goinl into this rivalry 

.just a bit, if only to note that the persomiel of both organizations,, the military 

and the civilian, were not merely signalmen and telegraph operators: they served 

also as cryptographers and were therefore entrusted with the necessary eiphers, 

cipher books and keys. Because of this, they natur~ became privy to the 111-

portant secrets cmveyed iD cr1})tographic cammunications and they therefore en307Etd 

status as VIP's. 'Ibis was particularq true ot members ot the umm:, because they, 

and on4' they, were authorized to be custodians and users of the ciphers. Bot even 

the commanders of the units they served bad access to the ciphers. For instance, 

on the one and only occasicm when General Grant forced his cipher operator, a 

civiliam named Beckwith, to turn over the current cipher to a colonel on Grant's 

staff, Beckwith was 1.Dmediately discharged by the Secretary of' War and Grant was 

reprimanded. A few days later 1 Grant apologized and Beckwith was restored to bis 

position. But Grant never agaiD demanded the cipher held by his telegraph operator. 

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REF ID:A62847 

The Grant-Beckwith affair alone is sufficient to indicate the lengths to 

which Secretary of War Stanton went 1D retain control over the USMl'C, including its 

cipber operators, and its ciphers. In tact, so strong a position did he take 

that en 10 November 1.863, following a disagreement over who should operate and 

control all the military telegraph lines 1 !Ver 1 by then tull Colonel, and bearing 

the resounding title "Chief Signal Officer of the United States Army", a title 

he bad enjoyed for only two months, was peremptor11y relieved fran that position 

and put on the shelf. Not long afterward and for a similar reason, Myer's 

successor 1 Lieut Col Nicodemus, was likewise summar11y relieved as Chief Signal 

Officer b7 Secretary Stanton; indeed, he was not only removed from that positionhe was dismissed from the Service without even tbe fonaality of trial by court 

martial. Stanton gave "phoney" reasons tor dismissing Col Nicodemus, but I am 

glad to say that the latter was restored his commission in March 1865 by direction 

of the President. 

As for what happened to Colonel M1er, the record shows that he vacated his 

"camnission" in July 1864; Colonel Nicodemus lasted about six months after he 

superseded ~r; and Colonel BepjamiD F. 11sher became Chief Signal Officer on 

26 December 1964, but his appointment was never confirmed by the Senate. (Photo 

Hist VIII 314, 333) ID August 1865 Colonel M;yer requested tbat be be restored 

to the position of Chief Signal Officer of the Arm:f. Accanpanying bis application 

were letters of recaamendation fran several high-ranking officers of the Artay 

and the Navy, and M;yer's application was forwarded to Lieutenant General Grant, 

who returned the application to tbe President, saying, "Unless there are reasons 

of which I know nothing, I deem A. J. ~r entitled to the position of Chief 

Signal Officer of the Arm:7 .and recaamend it accordingly." In a letter dated 

30 Ju~ 1866 to Secretary of War Stanton, General Grant recC1111Dended "the appointment of Albert J. M;yer to the place of Chief of the Signal Corps as provided for 

by Act of' Congress • Colonel M,yer is the inventor ot the SJStea used both 1D the 

Army and NaVJ, which would seem to give him a claim to the position of Chief 1 

which he once held and vhicb the Senate have ie:f'used to contirm any other person 

in." Apparently this last letter produced results 1 for Colonel lt\ver was 

reappointed Chief' SigDal Officer on 25 February 1867, to date f'rm 25 February 1867. 

IA!t's go back a bit in this part of the story. When Col. )\Ver was relieved 

frm duty as Chief Signal Officer in ROV'ember 18631 he was '.' ordered to 

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REF ID:A62847 

Cairo, Illinois, to await orders for a new assignment. Very- soon tbereatter he was 

either designated (or he :may have himself decided) to 11repare a field manual OD 

signaling and there soon appeared, with a prefatory note dated January 1864, a 

pamphlet of 148 pages, a copy of which is now 1D the Rare Book Room of the 

Library of Congress. The title page reaiJ.st-as follows: 

"A Manual of Signals: for the use of signal officers iD the field. 

By Col. Albert J. Myer, Signal Officer of the Arrq, Washington, 

D .c. I 1864." 

/' 

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EYen in this first edition, printed on an Anq press, r.t'er devoted nine pages 

to a reprint of an article from Harper's Weekly entitled "Curiosities of Cipher", 

and iD the secand editim, 1866, he expanded the section on cryptography to 

sixty pages. More editions followed and I think ve my well say that MJer •a 

Manual 1D it several editions was the pioneer Americ&D text on military sigDalillg. 

But I'm sorry to say that as regards cryptology it was rather a poor thiDg. Poe 

had done much better twenty years before that ill his essay entitled "A few words 

on secret writing". 

Because of its historic nature, you :may like to see what ?Ver's original, 

two-element s ignaliDg or "wig-wag codd' was like. It was called "a two-element 

code" because it employed only two digits, 1 and 2, 1D permutations of 1, 2, 3 

and la. groups. For example, A was represented by the permutation 22; B, by 2122; 

c, by 121, etc. In flag signaling, a "111 was indicated by a motion to the left, 

a "2" by a motim to the right. Iater these motions were reversed, for reasons 

which must have been good but are now not obvious. Here is Myer's two-elelllent 

code which, believe it or net, was used until 1912: 

GENERAL SERVICE CODE 

A - 22 N - ll . - llll 

B - 2122 0 - 21 iDg - 2212 

c - 121 p - 1212 tion - ll12 

D - 222 Q - 1211 

E - 12 R - 211 End of word - 3 

F - 2221 s - 212 End of' sentence- 33 

G - 22ll T - 2 End of message - 333 

H - · .. 122 u - 112 Affirmative - 22.22.22.3 

I - 1 v - 1222 Repeat - 121.121.121 

J - 1122 w - 1121 Error - 212121 

K - 2121 x - 2122 

L - 221 z - 22'22 

Note: No. 3 (end of' word) was Ede by a forward downward aotion, called "front". 

'lbere were about a dozen more s 1 gnals, for numerals, for frequently used 

short sentences, etc. 

We must turn our attention now to the situation as regards the organizaticm 

for signaling 1D the Confederate States Army. As inclicated,a few m1Dute~ago, the C 

Conf'ederate ------------ , States 81gDal Corps was formally established nearly a year earlier than 

8 
REF ID:A62847 

its Federal counterpart. Perhaps this arose as a result of the far greater success 

that the Confederate signal officers enjoyed during the first great battle of the 

Civil War, tbat at Bull Run, than ~e Unicn sigDal officers bad. The Confederate 

a igDal officer in that battle was that young lieutenant 1 E. P. AlexBDder 1 who ha1i 

assisted Major ~r iD demonstrating the wig-wag system before a board appointed 

by the War Department to stud;y M;Jer's system. Alexauder, a Captain iD gre7, used 

'Myer's system during the bait.le, which ended in disaster for the Union forces, 

and Alexander's contribution iD signaling was an important factor in the Contederate victor;y. Dr. 'l'baapson, whm I have quoted before, says of this battle: 

Thus the fortunes ot war iD this battle saw ?Ver 's system of signals 

succeed, ironica~, on the side hostile to Myer. Because 6f general 

unpreparedness and also some disinterest and igllorance, the North bad 

neither wig-wag sigD&l.s nor balloon observation. 

During the first battle of Bull Run the ODl.1' c~ication system which 

succeeded iD serving the Unico Arlq was the illf'ant USM'ro. But the Confederate 

system under Alexander, off to a good start at Bull Run, throughout the war 

and 

operated with both Tisua14electric telegrapb.J, and the CODfederates thought highq 

enOllgb of their signal service to establish it on an official basis less tbaD a· 

year after tbat battle. The 61.ga&l Corps of the Confederate Arsy was established, 

by an Act of the Confederate States Congress on 19 April 1862, as a separate copps 

to be attached either to the Adjutant and Inspector General's Department or to the 

Engineer Department. The Confederate States Secretary 615 War on 29 May J.862 attached 

the Sigaal Corps to the former organizatim. '!bus, althoup the Confederate SigDal 

Corps never became so distinct and independent brBDch of the Arlq as did the Union 

Signal Corps, it received much earlier recognition tram the Confederate Government 

than did the Signal Corps of the Federal Government. Again quoting Dr. Thmpson: 

'!be Confederate Signal Corps was thus established nearly a year earlier~ 

its"Fe<}eral counterpart. It was nearly as large, numbering acme 11 500, most 

or the number, however, serving OD detail. The eODtederate Signal Corps used 

Myer's system of flags and torches. Tbe men were trained in wire telegraph, 

too, and impressed wire facilities as needed. But there was nothing in Richmond or 1D the field cmparable to the extensin and tightq controlled civiliaD military telegraph org&Dization which Secretary Stanton ruled With an 

iron band trcm Washington. 

We caae now to a presentation of the codes and ciphers used by both aides 1D 

the war, and iD doing so we 111'1St take into consideration the fact that on the 

Union side, there were, as I have indicated, two separate organizations for aigDal 

cammmications, the Sigrlal Corps and the USJm::. After warfare between them had 

been settled by ruthless action by Secretary or War Stanton, tl:Le Signal Corps bad 

respODsibility onq for signaling by visual or aerial telegraphy, the UBMro had 

responsibility for signaling by electric telegraphy. We should therefore not be 

9 
REF ID:A62847 

too astonished to find that the cryptosystems used by the two canpetiDg organizatians were ditterent. On the other band, on the Confederate side, as just 

1Ddicated, there was only one organization for signal cammmications, the Signal 

Corps of the Confederate States A.rmy, which used both visual and electric telegrapb.y, the latter facilities be:l.Dg taken OY"er and employed when available. Perhaps 

later on there will be opportunity to tell you what I think were the basic reasons 

tor this marked difference between the way in which the Union and the Confederate 

sigDal operations were conducted, which strange to say, bad to do with the difference 

between the crypto-cammmication arrangements in the Union and in the Confederate 

Armies. 

We will discuas the cryptosystems used by the Federal Signal Corps first and 

then that c:£ the Confederate Signal Corps. Since both corps used visual signals as 

their primary means, we f illd them employing Myer 'a visual-a 1gaal1Dg code such as 

that shown above. At first both sides sent unenciphered messages; but soOD after 

learning that their signals were being intercepted and read by the other side, each 

side decided to do smething to protect its messages and initiattly both decided 

on the same artifice, viz, chaDging the visual-signaling equivalents for the letters 

I ' 

of the alphabet, so that, for instance, "22" was not always "A" , etc • Tb.is sort 

of changing-about of values soOD became impractical, siDce it prevented memorizing 

the wig-wag motions for letters once and for all. Tb.e difficulty in the Union 

Army's Si8nal Corps was solved by the introducticn into usage of a cipher 4isk . ,, 

invented by )trer hillself'. A tu.11 description of the disk in its various embodiments 

will be found in Myer's Manual, but here's a picture of three forms of it. You can 

see how 

(Leave Half-page) 

readily the visual wig-wag equivalents for letters of the alphabet can be changed t 

accordi.Dg to seine pre-arranged indicator for setting the ccncentri~ series of 

elements iDto Juxtaposition. Ill Fig. l of the picture the letter A is represented 

by 112; B, by 22, etc. By moving the two circ,les to a different Juxtapositicn a 

new set of equivalents will be set up. Of course, if the settiDg is kept fixed 

tor a whole message the encipberment is strictly monoalphabetia; but Myer re,. 

camaends changing the setting in the middle of the message or,Jlli)l'e specif'ica1171 at 

the end of each word, thus producing a sort of' polyalpbabetic cipher which would 

delay solution a bit. An alternative way, Myer states, would be to uae what he 

called a "countersign word", but which we call a keyworcl, each letter of which 

10 
REF ID:A62847 

would determine the setting of the disk. for a single word or for two consecutive 

words, etc. M1er apparentli did not realize tbat reta:lning or showing externally r 

the lengths of the words of the plain text is a very serious weakness. A bit 

later ve shall discuss the securit7 afforied by the M1er disk in actual practice. 

In the Confederate Signal Corps, the system used for encipherm.ent of visual 

signals was apparently the same as that used for encipherment of telegraphic 

signals, and ve shall soc:m. see vbat it was. Although M1er's cipher disk was 

captured a number of times, it was apparently disdained by the Confederates, who 

' 

preferred to use a wbolly different type of device, as will be described presently, 

for both visual and electric telegraphy. 

So much for the cryptosptems used in comsection with visual signals by the 

Signal Corps of bath the North and the South, systems which we may designate as 

"tactical ciphers." We come now to the systems used by the two Military Telegraph 

Corps (one 1D the North, one 1D the South), which bad respcnsibility for vbat we 

•Y call "strategic ciphers", because the latter were usually exchanged between 

the seat of Government 1D the field, or among high cCJDM.Dders in the field. In 

the case of these canmunications the cryptosystems employed by each side were 

quite different. 

On the Northern side, the Military Telegraph Corps used a system. based upon 

what ve now call transposition but ill contemporary accounts they were called 

"route ciphers" and that name stuck. The designation isn't too bad, iD fact, 

because the processes of encipherment and decipherment, though they dealt not with 

the individual letters of the message but with entire words, involved following 

prescribed paths or routes. I know no sillpler or more succinct description of 

the routh cipher than that given by one of the USMrC operators, J. E. O'Brien, iD 

an article in Century Magazine, XXXVIII, September 1889, entitled "Telegraphing 1D 

Ballle": 

The principle of the cipher consisted 1D writing a message with an 

equal number of words in each line, then copying the words up and down the 

columns by various routes, throwing in an extra word at the end of each 

column, and substituting other words for iaportant names and verbs. 

A more detailed description in Modern technical terms would be as follows: 

A system 1D which 6Dcipherment the words of the plain-text message are inscribed 

within a geanetric design, rectangle, or matrix, according to a prearranged number 

of rows and columns, iDscribing the words within the matrix tran left to right, in 

successive lines and rows downward, as iD ordinary writing, and taking the words 

out of the matrix, tbat is, transcribing them according to a prearranged route, 

to form tbe cipher message. These route ciphers were supposed to bave been the 

11 
REF ID:A62847 

iDventim of .ADson Stager whan I have mentiOD.ed before 111 connection vith the 

establishment of the USMl'C, and who is said to bave first devised such ciphers 

for General McClellan's use iD West Virginia, in the summer of 1861, before 

McClellaD came·to Washington to assume canand of the Arsy of the Potomac. 

Anson Stager my have thought that he was the original inventor of the 

system, but if he did, be was quite iD error. Word-transpositicu metbocts vere 

1l1 use hundreds of years before bis time. For :Instance, in 1685, 1D an unsuccessful 

attempt to invade Scotlalld :lD a conspiracy to set the Duke of Monmouth on the 

tbron~, Archibal4 Campbell, 9th Earl of Ar11ll, suffered an unfortUD&te "accident". 

He was taken prisoner and beheaded by order of James the Second. The cammmi-

, catiODS of the poor F.arl were not secure, and when they fell into government bands 

they were soon deciphered. Tbe method Argyll used was that of word transposition, 

and if' you are interested iD reading a contemporary account of' how it was solved, 

look on pages 56-59 of that little book I menticoed before as being ane of the 

very first books in English dealing with the subject of cryptology, that bJ 

James Falconer, entitled Cryptme!lSiS Patefacta: Or the Art of Secret IDformtion 

Disclosed Without a Key, published 1D Landon in J.685. There J'OU vill find the 

progenitor of the ra.1te ciphers employed by the Federal Arm,y in the War of the 

Rebellion, that is, almost 200 years after Argyll's abortive rebellion. 

The cipher systems employed by the USHrC for messages of the Federal Army in 

the years 1861-65 are tu1ly described iD a book entitled The Military Telegraph 

during the Civil War, by Colaael William R. Plum, published iD Chicago in 1882. 

I think Plum's description of them is of considerable interest and I reccmmend 

his booj to those of you who may wish to learn more about those systems. 

If I show you oue example ot an actual message and explain its encipherment 

and decipherment I will bave COY'ered practically the entire gamut of the route 

ciphers used by the USM!'C, so basically very sillple and Wlif'orm vere they. And 

yet, believe it or not, legend bas it tbat the Southern Signalmen were unable to 

solve any of the messages transmitted b;y the USMl'C. This lcmg-held ie,end I fiDd 

hard to believe. ID all the descriptions I bave encountered 1D the literature 

not one of' them, save the me quoted above fraa O'Brien, tries to mlte these 

ciphers as s:iJlple as they rea~ were; saaehow, it seems to me, a subcmscioua 

realizatiou, CD the part of Northern writers, usually ex-USM!l: operators, of the 

system's simplicity prevented a presentation which would clearly show hov utterq 

devoid it was of the degree of aophisticatim one would. be warranted ill expecting 

1D the secret CallllUDicatiODS of' a great modern army in the decade J.86o-l.870, three 

hundred years after the birth of modern cryptop.pby iD the papal states of Italy. 

12 
REF ID:A62847 

Iet us take the plain text of a message which Plum (page 58) uses iD an 

example of the procedure ill encipherment. The cipher book involved is llo. i. 

and I happen to have a copy of it so caD easily cheek Pla 's work. Here's the 

meSBage to be enciphered: 

Washington, D.C. 

July 15, 1863 

Fen- Simon Camerou * 

I would give much to be relieved of the iq>reasion that 

Meade, Couch, Saith and all, since tbe battle of Gettysburg, 

have striven only to get the enem,y over the river without another 

fight. Please tell me ifyou know who was the me corps ca-ander 

who was for fighting, in the council of war m Sunday night. 

(S1gne4) A. Lincoln 

* SiJloD Cameron was L1Dcoln'a Secretary of War until Jan. 1862, 

vb.en he was replaced by Edwin M. Stanton. If this message cited 

b;y Plum is authentic, and there is no reasOD to doubt this, then 

Cameron was still in friendl.1' cmtact with Lincoln, possibl.1' as 

a special observer. 

Here is how Plum show the word-for-word encipherment, iD a •trix of seven 

colwms and eleven rows. He fails to tell us why a •trix of those d1meiulms was 

selected; presumabq the selection was made at randan, which was certaiDly permissible: 

l. LJ 2. 

heavy 

Incubus. j Stewart. 

washiDgtOJJ.,D.r July 

~ 

S~ll&D SUIOD 

' '. \ I ' ' \ ' give' 

Bunyan 

Meade 

large 

burg 

village 

tbe enemy 

Please 

was 

tar 

OD 

I 

I 

much 

bear 

-I 

since 

aas 

-, I 

" 

~ s~'leton over 

tell 

1; the 

~ oppress 1Dg 

I fighting 

I 

Tyler 

Sunday 

~Monkey I 

I 

~ 

I 

I 

L- 3. 

Brown. 

15th 

c 

Toby 

to be 

ax 

CoWi'h 

the 

bav e 

turnip 

tile river 

me 

Harry 

one 

bitch 

' 

Rwstle 

night 

Silk 

I 

I l 

L___, 

4. -' 5. I 

u 6. I 

I 

I 

I~ 7. 

county I 

I Norris. 

18 

on 

tr811111elecl ! 

relieved I 

2!l i 

i 

knit 

battle 

I 

~ 

,, 

~ striven 1 

~ ~ without ~ 

if 

Madrid 

copps 

I 

quail i: 

in the' 

I 

I 

Upright~ 

Signatur1 

Martyr 

Knox:. 

~b() 

flea 

serenade 

of the 

children 

Smith 

MadisOD. 

3 

'.... _ _J 

I 

impression 

I 

lror 

i 

jwood 

~would ~ 

t 

/, that 

! . 

awl 

all 

of ' get~ ties 

Gettys 

another 

locust 

cmmander 

counsel 

COWlCil 

Adrian 

A. LiDccl.D 

to 

optic 

fight 

DO 

know 

who 

of 

Bless 

who 

Him 

Suici• 
REF ID:A62847 

Note the null, non-sigllifiAaDt or "bli.Dd" word at the bottan of each column, 

- these being added to confuse a WOllld-be decipherer. Al least that •s the theory 

but how effective this subterfuge •s can be surmised: very little, once it 

became known that this was the usual practice. 

The cipher :message is then copied down following the route prescribed b;y the 

:lndicator "BLONDE", as can be seen OD Page 7 of Cipher Book No. 4. The izuiicator 

could have also been "LINIMENT". 

photograph 

If you ask me to explain the diagram at the top of the picture I will simp~ 

show you the "Directions for Use" which appear OD the reverse side or the title 

page of ''War Departmnt Cipher lo. 4", because I'm afraid you woulda 't believe 

me if I mere;.q quoted fran those directiDDs • Here 's a picture of the title page 

and I follow it with a photograph of what's on its reverse side: 

I Title page Bo. i..f---photos-----FDtrections for Use\ 

I 

I wonder if the cbap who was respansible tar getting this cipher book apprOV'ed 

ever thought about wb&t he was doing when he caused those "Directions for Use" to 

be printed! If doesn't seem possible. All he would bave bad to ask himself was, 

"Wh;y put this piece of iDformtiOD in the book itself! Suppose the book falls into 

eneJD¥ hlmds -- can't he read., too, 8l1d at once learn about the intended deception! 

Why go to all the trouble of including "phoney" routes in the book! If the book 

doesn't fall into enemy baDds wbat good are the "phoney" routes anywayf Why not 

just 1ndicate the routes iD a straightf'arwarcl manner, as bad been done bef'oreT 

Thus: "Up the 6th column (siDce "6" is the first number at the left of the diagram), 

down the 3rd, up the 5th, down the 7th, up the lat, down the 4';h and. down the 2Dd. 

This •tter is so incredibly fatuous that it is bard to understand hov sensible 

men - and they were sensible - cwlcl be so misguided in their logical or thinking 

processes. But there they- stand tor all the word to see 8Dd to Judge. 

Nov for the transpoaitic:n step. The indicator "BLONDE" signifies a matrix of 

seven columns and eleven rows, with the route set forth above, viz, up the 6th 

col.wrm, down the 3rd, etc., so that the cipaer text with a "phoney-" address and 

signature*, becanes as follows: 

TO A. HARPER CAU>WELL, Washington, D.C. 

Cipber Operator, Arrq of the Potaac : 

Blonde bless of who no optic to get and impression. I Madison square 

Brown cammer Toby ax the ba'le turnip me Harry bitch rustle silk AdriaD coansel 

locust y-ou another only of children serenade flea Knox County tor wood that awl 

ties get hound who was war him suicide on tor was please village large bat BuDJ8D 

give sigh incubus heavy., Horris on trammeled cat knit striven without it Madrid 

quail upright mrtyr Stewart J1&D much bear s1Dce ass skeleton tell the oppressing 

Tyle~r moukey. 

(Signed) D. H<lmR BATF.B 

14 

*It was tbe usual practice to use for address and sigDature the names o'f the USMl'C 

C>peratares concerned. 
REF ID:A62847 

Note tbat the text begins with the indicator "BLONDE". In decipherment the 

steps are simply reversed. The indicator tells wbat size •trix to outline; the 

words begilming ''bless of vb.o no optic ••• " are inacribed withia the matrix: 

up the 6th colum, then mittillg the "check worcl" or "null" vbich 1D this case 

is the word "square", down the 3rd column, etc. Tbe final result should correspond to wbat is shown in Fig. 00. There then f'ollova the step of' interpreting 

orthographic deviations, such as :l.Dterpret 1Dg "sigh", "an", "cammer 11 , and u en 11 

as Simon Camren; the word ''wood" for "would", etc, which then reproduces the 

original pla:l.D text. 

Save for one exception to be discussed in a lllCllleDt or two, all the route 

ciphers used by the USMre conformed to this basic pattern. The thiDgs tbat cbaDged 

fran cne cipher book to the next were the indicators for the dimensions of the 

•trices and for the routes, and the "arbitraries" or code equivalents for the 

various items canprisiDg the "vocabulary", the DU11ber of them iDcreasiDg tram me 

edition to the next, 3uat as aight be expected. 

The sole exception to this basic pattern of the trBllSposition routes employed 

by the USHl'C is to be seem in Cipher Book No. 9 and on only cne page of the book. 

I will show you tbat page: 

p. 12 - Cipher Book lo. 9 

What we bave here is a deviatim f'rm the straightforward route tranapositim, 

up the ••• , down the ••• ,etc. By illtroducing one diagmal path ill the route (the 

6th, 1th, 8th, 9th, 10th words 1D a message of five 80lullDS, &Dd the lst, Snd, 3rd, 

If.th, 5th, and 6th words iD a message of six columns) the simple up and down route 

no longer holds true. Tbe words an the diagonal interrupt the normal up and down 

paths and introduce caaplexitiea in the method. In tact, the caaplexities seemed 

to be a bit too much for the USMTC cipher operators because, as tar as available 

records show, these canplicated routes were never used. 

15 
REF ID:A62847 

I now wish to make a number of general and a few specific comments 

on Plum's description of the cryptosystems used by the U/S/Mf /CJ, as 

set forth in Appendix 1. 

First, we note that although Anson Stager, later Colonel Stager, 

has been credited with inventing the type of cipher under consideration 

in this study, he was anticipated in the invention of about 200 years. 

Also, he is given the lion's share of the credit for devising those ciphers 

although he did have a number of collaborators, and Plum names four of them, 

presumably because he thought them worthy of being singled out for 

particular attention. Plum and others tell us that copies of messages 

handled by the U.S.M.T.C. sometimes -were intercepted by the enemy but 

that none was solved. He cites no authority for this last statement, 

merely saying that such intercepts were pusblished in the newspapers of the 

Confederacy with requests for help in their solution. But it me.y be noted 

that none of the Confederate accounts of war activities cite instances of 

the solution of intercepted U.S.M.T.C. messages, although tere are plenty 

of citations of instances of interception and solution of enciphered 
REF ID:A62847 

visual transmissions of Federal Army's Signal Corps. Douglass Freeman's 

Lee's Lieutenants mentions no such instances of solution. 

In referring hereinafter to the cryptographic books used by the 

U.S.M.T.C., I shall use the term "cipher books," or sometimes simply 

"ciphers," although the cryptosystems involves both code and cipher processes. 

Its underlying transposition feature makes it partake of the nature of a cipher 

system according to modern terminology; but the heavy use of "arbitraries," 

that is, of arbitrary words to represent the names of persons, places, 

rivers, etc., important nouns and verbs, etc., makes the system partake 

of the nature of code. 

Plum states that 12 different cipher books were employed by the 

Telegraph Corps, but I feel sure there were only eleven. The first one 

was not numbered, and this is good evidence that a long war was not 

expected, that there were no preparations for a long war, and that hasty 

improvisation on its outbreak was the rule. This first cipher book had 

16 printed pages. But for some reason, now impossible to fathom, the 

sequence of numbered books thereafter was as follows: Nos. 6 and 7, which 

were much like the first (unnumbered) one; then came Nos. 12, 9, 10--in 

\ '1 I 
REF ID:A62847 

that strange order; then came Nos. 1 and 2; finally came Nos. 3, 4, and 5, 

(Apparently there was no No. 8 or No. 11. ) It would be fatuous to think 

that the irregularity in numbering the successive books was of communicationsecurity. There must have been other reasons--but what they were is now 

unkown. Plum states that No. 4, the last one used in the war, was placed 

into effect on 23 March 1865, and that it and all other ciphers were 

discarded on 20 June 1865. However, as noted, there was a No. 5, which 

Plum says was given a limited distribution. I have a copy of it, but 

whether it was actually put into use I do not know. Like No. 4, it had 

40 pages about 20 copies were sent to certain members of the Military 

Telegraph Corps, scattered among 12 states; and, of course, Washington 

• had at least one copy. 

We may assume with a fair amount of certainty that the first (the 

unnumbered) cipher book used by the U.S.M.T.C. was merely an elaboration 

of the one Stager produced for the cormnunications of the governors of Ohio, 

Indiana and Illinois, and of which a copy is given by only one of the 

writers who have told us about these ciphers. Namely, David H. Bates, 
REF ID:A62847 

who, in his series of articles entitled "Lincoln in the Telegraph Office" 

fjhe Century Magazine, Vol. LXXIV, Nos. 1-5, May-Sept, 19df/* shows a 

facsimile thereof (p. 292, June 1907 issue), and I have had as good a 

reproduction made of it as is possible from the rather poor photographic 

facsimile. The foregoing cipher is the prototype upon which all subsequent 

cipher books were based, the first of the War Department series being the 

. one shown by Plum in Appendix l to this lecture. 

When these ciphers came into use it was not the practice to misspell 

certain words intentionally; but as the members of the U.S.M.T.C (who, 

as I've told you, not only served as telegraph operators but also as 

cipher clerks) developed expertness, the practice of using non-standard 

orthography was frequently employed to make solution of messages more 

difficult. Thus, "meet" became ''meat" or even "flesh"; "wood" is used in 

place of "would11 , etc. In an actual case involving a message sent to 

General Grant at Vicksburg the word "Arkansas' is spelled in three words: 

"Art 11 -- "can" -- "sass," and one finds hundreds of examples of this sort of 

artifice. Then, further to increase security, more and more "arbitraries," 

*The series was then put out in book form under the same title by the D. 

Appleton-Century Company, New York, 1907, reprinted in 1939· 
REF ID:A62847 

that is, code equivalents, were added to represent such things as ordinal 

and cardianl numbers, months of the year, days of the week, hours of the day, 

geographical names of places and rivers, punctuation, etc. As a last 

step, code equivalents for frequently-used words and phrases were 

introduced. One good example of two typical pages from one of these books 

will characterize them all. 

Photo of p. 14-15 

from No. 12 

You will notice that the code equivalents are printed but thier 

meanings are written in by hand. This was usually the case, and the reason 

is obvious: for economy in printing costs, because the printed code 

equivalents of plain-text items in cipher books belonging to the same 

series are identical; only their meanings change from one book to another, 

and of course, the transposition routes, their indicators, and other 

variables change from one book to another. As already indicated, I am 

fortunate in having six of these cipher books in my private collection, 

so that comparisons among them are readily made. The first feature to be 

noted is that the code equivalents are all good English dictionary words 

(or proper nouns), of not less then three nor more then seven (re.rely eight) 

letters. A careful scrutiny shows that in the early editions the code 

0 
REF ID:A62847 

equivalents are such as are not likely to appear as words in the plain-text 

messages; but in the later edi tiona, beginning with No. 12 more than 5c; 

at the words used as code equivalents are such as might well appear in the 

plain-text of messages. For example, words such as AID, ALL, ARMY, 

ARrILLERY, JUNCTION, CONFEDERA'm, etc., baptismal names at persons, and 

names of cities, rivers, bays, etc., appear as "arbitraries" or code 

equivalents. Among names used as code equivalents are SHEBMAN, LINCOLN, 

TRCMAS, STANTON, and those of many other prcminent officers and officials 

, ot the Federal Army and Govermnent; and, even more intriguing, such mmes 

were employed as indicators tor the number or columns and the routes used--

the so-called "Canmencement~Words." It would seem that names and words 

such as those I've mentioned might occasionally have brought about instances 

where ditticulty in deciphering messages arose from this source or contusion, 

but the literature doesn"t mention them. A bit later we shall see why such 

commonly-used proper names and words were not excluded. There was, indeed, 

method in this madness. 

But what is indeed astonishing .:to note is that in the later editions at 
REF ID:A62847 

these cipher books, in great majority of cases the words used as 

"arbitraries," dif'f'er f'ran one another by at least two letters (f'or e:xample, 

LADY and LAMB, LARK, and LAWN, ALBA and ASIA, LOCK and WICK, MILK and MINT), 

or by more than two (f'or example, MmrLE and Mml'IC, CARBON and CANCER, 

ANDES and ATf.AS), etc • , etc • One has to search f'or cases in which two 

words dif'f'er by only one letter, but they can be found :If you search long 

enoygh for them, as, f'or example, QUINCY and QUINCE, PINE and PIKE, NOSE 

and BOSE; Often there are words with the same initial trigraph or 

tetragraph but then the rest of the letters are such that errors in 

transmission or reception would easily manifest themselves, as, f'or e:xample, 

MClfSTER and MONARCH, MAGNET and MAGNOLIA. All in all, it is important to 

note that the compiler or compilers of cipher books had adopted a principle 

known today as tbe "two-letter dif'f'erential," a feature found only in 

codebooks of a much later date. In brief', the principle involves the use, 

in a given codebook, at code groups differing f'ran one another by at 

least two letters. This principle is employed by knowledgeable code 

compilers to this very day, not only because it enables tbe recipient ot a 

- -- --------------------------
REF ID:A62847 

message to detect errors in transmission or reception, but also because 

the permutation tables used in constructing the code words facilitate their 

correction without calling tor a repetition. It is clear, therefore, that 

the compilers of these cipher books took into considera.t:llon the tact that 

errors are to be expected in Morse telegraphy, and by incorporating, but 

only to a limited extent, the principle of the two-letter differential, 

they tried to guard against the possibility that errors might go undetected. 

There is, however, another feature about the words the compilers 

of these books chose as code equivalents. It is a feature that :ma.nif'ests 

real perspicacity on their part. A few moments ago I said that I would 

explain why, in the later and improved editions of these books, words which 

might well be words in plain-text messages were not excluded from the lists 

of code equivalents: it involves the tact that the basic nature of the 

cr,yptosyatem in which these code equivalents were to be used was clearly 

recognized by those who ccmq>iled the books. Since the cryptosystem was 

based upon word transposition, what could be more contusing to a would-be 

C1"1Ptanalyst, working with messages in such a system, than to find himself 

unable to decide whether a word in the cipher text is actually in the 
REF ID:A62847 

original plain-text message and has its normal meaning, or is a code word 

with a secret signif'icance--or even a null, a non-significant word, a ''blind" 

or a "check word, " as those elements were called in those days? That, no 

doubt, is why there are in these books, so many code equivalents which might 

well be "good" words in the plain-text messages. And in this connection I 

have already noted an additional interesting feature: at the top of' each 

page devoted to indicators f'or signaling the number of' columns in the 

specific matrix f'or a message, there appear in several of' these books the 

so-called "ccmnencement words," nine words in sets of' three, any one of' 

which could actually be a real word or:mme in the plain-text message. 

Such indicators could be very contusing to enemy cryptanalysts, especially 

af'ter the transposition eperation. Here are the "conmencement words" on 

page 5 of' Cipher Book No. 9: Army, Anson, Action, Astor, Advance, Artillery, 

Anderson, .Ambush, Agree; on page 7 of' No. 10: Cairo, Curtin, Caval.ey, 

Congress, Childs, Calhoun, Church, Cobb, etc. Moreover, in Nos. 1, 3, lf 

5, and 10 the "line indicators," that is, the words indicating the number 

of' horizontal rows in the matrix, are also words such as could easily be 
REF ID:A62847 

words in the plain-text messages. For example, in No. 1, page 31 the 

line indicators are as follows: 

Address 1 Faith 

Adjust 2 ·Favor 

Answer 3 Conf in.e 

Appear 4 Bed 

Appeal 5 Beef' 

Assume 6 Bend 

Awake 7 Avail 

Encamp 8 Active 

Enroll 9 Absent 

Enough 10 Accept 

Note two things in the foregoing list: first, there are variants--there 

are two indicators for each case; and second, the indicators are not in 

strict alphabetic sequence. This departure from strict al.phabeticity is 

even more obvious in the pages devoted to vocabulary, a fact of' much 

importance cryptanalytical.ly. Note this feature, for example, in Fig. oo, 

showing pages 14 and 15 of Cipher Book No. 12: 

In this respect, therefore, these books partake somewhat of the nature 

of' two-part codes, or, in British terminology, "hatted" codes. In the 

second lecture of' this series the physical. difference between one-part and 

two-pa.rt codes was explained and it is therefore unnecessary to repeat 

that explanation here. But 1 an indication of the technical. difference 

between these two t;ypes of' cod.es from the point of' view of' cryptanalysis 

may be useful at this point. Two-part codes are much more difficult to 
REF ID:A62847 

so1ve than one-part codes, in which both the plain-text elements and 

their code equivalents progress in parallel sequences. In the latter t:ype 

of determination of tl:e meaning of one code group quickly and rather easily 

leads to the determination ot the meanings.Of ·other code groups above or 

below the one that has been so1ved. For example, in the fo1lowing small 

example, if the code group 1729 has been determined to be "then, " the 

meaning of the 

1728---the 

1729---then 

1730---there 

code group 1728 could well be "the, " that of the code group 1730, "there !

1

• 

But in a two-part code, determining the meaning of the code group 0972 

7621---the 

0972---then 

1548---there 

as beiug the word "then," gives no clue whatever as to the meaning of 

the groups 7621 or 1548. For ease in decoding messages in such a code 

there must be a section in which the code groups are listed in numerical 

sequence, their meanings being in a random sequence. The COJl'.l)ilers of 

the U.S.M.T.C. cipher books must have had a very clear idea of what I 

have just explained, but, to simplify matters, tl:e y made a compromise 

of a practical. nature between a strictly one-part and a strictly two-part 
REF ID:A62847 

code, because they realized that a code of the letter sort is twice as 

bulky as one at the f'o:rmer sort. The arrangement they chose wasn 1 t at all 

bad, so far as crypto-security was concerned. As a matter of f'act, and 

speaking f'rom personal e:xperiez:ice in decoding a rather long message 

addressed to General Grant, I had a trying time in locating many of the 

code words in the book, because of' the departure f'rom strict alphabetici ty. 

I came across that message in a work-book in my collection, the work-book 

at one at the important members of' the u.s.M.T.C--none other the Colonel 

Plum f'ran. whose book, The Military Telegraph during the Civil War, comes 

Appendix i and much of' the data I've presented. On the first f'ly-leaf' at 

Plum's work-book there appears, presumably in his own handwriting, the 

legend "W. R. Plum Chf' Opr with Gen. G. H. Thomas". Here's one of the 

messages he enciphered in Cipher Book No. 1, the book in which, he says, 

more important telegrams were sent than in any other: 

Note how many "atbitraries, 11 or words with secret meanings, appear in 

the plain-text message, that is before transposition. After transposition 
REF ID:A62847 

the melange of plain-text and code words must have been quite myetii'ying.* 

And yet, was the system so very inscrutable after alll I don't think so • . 

Even in the case of the f'oregoing message there are enough unencoded words 

' 

in sequence in the plain-text version so that with a bit of patience, in 

working on the cipher version, I think the tran.sposi tion could be removed 

wi:thout too much ditf'iculty and the. general tenor of the message could be 

detemined. There would remain, of course, the business of fl.nding the 

specific meanings of the code words. In the case of' cipher book No. 1, which, 

according to Plum.,. the one that had the longest and widest use, an 

accumulation of messages- 'Would probably have g:lven enoygh data f'or 

determining the spec1f'ic meanings of the code words. But it is to be 

remembered tllat these messages were transmitted by wire telegraphy and not 

by radio, so that- opportunities for interception or "tapping" telegraph 

lines were not frequent. But they did occur f'rom, time to time, and in one 

case a Colif'ederate Signalman hid in a swamp for several weeks and tapped a 

Federal tele~ph line, obtaining a good many messages. What success, if' any, 

did Conf'ederate ceyptanalysts have in their attempts to solve such of the 

*In searching for a go9d example m:y eye caught the words "Lincoln shot 11 at 

the lef't of the, matrix and I iDIDediately thought that the message had to do 

with Booth's assassination of the President. But after hurriedly translating 

the message and f'inding nothing in it having Bnything to do with the shooting 

it occurred to me to look up the indicators for a matrix of six rows and eight 

columns. They turned out to be LllCOLR (message of' 8 columns), SBar ( 6 rows) 

The word SMALL beneath the "Lincoln shot" is a variant for SBl!Jll', also meaning 116 rows". 
REF ID:A62847 

u.s.M.T.C cryptograms they did intercept? We shall try to answer this 

question in due time, but now we must hasten to a consideration of the 

cr,y:Ptosystems employed by the Confederate States Army. 

As indicated earlier, in the Confederacy there were no competing 

signal organizations as there were. on the Union side. There, .a nothing 

at the center of govermrient in Richmond or in the -combat zone canparable 

,to the eutensive and tightly controlled civiLian militaq telegraph 

. orgm;iization which Secretary Stantion ruled with an iron hand from 

· ' Washington. Almost as a concomitant it woul.d seem, there was in the . ' ' 

.· 

, Confederacy, save for -tw exceptional. cases, one and only one cryptosystem 

to serve the need for protecting tactical as well as strategic communications, 

·and that was the so-cal.led Vigenere Cipher, whic:;h apparently waa the cipher 

authorized in an official Jmanual prepared by Capt. Alexander as the partial 

equivalent of Myer's Manual of Signals. You won't find the name Vigenere 

in any Of the writings of contemporary signal officers of -either the North 

or the South. The signalmen of' those days called it the "Court Cipher," 

. ' this te:rm referring tc;> the system in common use in diplanatic or "court" 

communications about this period :l:n histor;r. It is hardly necessary for me 

to tell you in detail about that cipher which empJ.oyes the so-called Vigenere , 

Square with a repeating key.* Bere is the square which Plum presents in his 

description, and for reasons that will soon become quite clear, I will 

present his deacnption exactly as he gives it: 

*A keyword is employed to change the alphabets cyclically, thus making the 

ciphers what is called today a periodic or multipJ.e-alphabet cipher controlled 

by the individual letters of' a key, which ma.Y consist of' a word, a phrase, or 

even: 'at a sentence, repeated as many times as necessary. 

6-1 
REF ID:A62847 

26 25 24 23 22 21 20 

la b c d e f g 

2b c d e f g h 

3 c d e f .g h i 

4' d e f g h i j 

5 e f g h i j k 

6f g h i j k 1 

78 h i j k 1 m 

8h i j k 1 m n 

~9 i j k i m n o 

10 j k 1 m n o p 

11 k 1 m n o p q 

121 m no p qr 

13 m n o p q r s 

14 n ~o p q r s t 

15 o p q r s t u 

16 p q r s t u v 

17 q r s t u v w 

18 r s t u v w x 

19 s t u v w x y 

20t u v w x 'J z 

21 u' v w x y z a 

19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 

h i j k 1 m n o p_ • q r s t u v· w x y z 

i j k 1 m n o p q r s tl. u v w :x y z a 

j k 1 m n o p q r s t u•t v w :;fX y z ab 

k 1 m n o p q r s t u vv w x y z ab c 

1 m n ·o p q r s t u v ~· x y z a b c d 

m n o p q. r s t u v w x..~ y z a b c d e 

n o p q r s t u v w x y z a b c de f 

o p q r s t u v w x y z ab c d efg 

p q r s t u v w x y z a b c d e f g h 

q r s t u v w x y z ab c def ghi 

r s t u v w x y z a b c d e f g h i j 

s t u v w x y z a b c d e~ f g 'h i j k 

t u v w x y z a b c d e f g h i .1 k 1 

u v w x y z a b c d e f g hi j klm 

v w :x y z a b c d e f g h' i j k lmn 

w x y z a b c d e f g hi j k 1 mno 

x y z a b c d e f g hi j k 1 m nop 

y z a b c d e f g h i j kl m n opq 

22V W :X y Z a b 

23, w x y z a b c 

24 x y z a b c d 

25 y z , a b c d e 

26 z a b c d , e f 

z a b c d e f g h i j k 1 m no pqr 

a b c d e f g h i j k 1 m no p qrs 

b c d e f g h i j k 1 m n o p q•' r s t 

c d e f g h i j k 1 m n11 o p q r s t u 

d e t g h i j k 1 m no p qr s tuv 

e f g h i j k ,1 m _ n ' o p q r s t u v w 

t g h i j k l m n o p qr st u vwx 

g h i j k 1 m n o p q r s t u v w x:..ry 

·' Key Words. --Complete Victory. Manchester Bluff. 

To put into cipher the first .message, which is put 1J1> by using 

''Manchester ,Bluff" as the key, and the second by the key term, 

"Complete Victory," find at the left-hand side of the table the first 

letter of. the first word to be ciphered, and at the top ot the table, 

the f'irst letter of the term. At the junction ot the columns in 

which these letters are so found, will be seen the arbitrary letter 

which is to be used in lieu ot the real one at the lett. Continue 

in this way w1 th each successive letter ot the message and key term, 

repeating on the latter till finished. Thus, "Sherman is victorious," 

put in cipher by using the first key, would read, as shown by the 

capitals, c-b-m-p-1.-e~t--ev--i-c-t-o-r-y. C-o-m-p- Of course, any 

V V Q G X E G MN D K V H F P K C G H • 

. change in the' key word, term or phrase changes the arbi traries, and 

if neither the real message· nor the key is known, it would be somewhat vexatious working it out, unless there were some such suggestive 

words as occur in Davis's message above, which indicate the ciphered 

words very- clearly; e.g., "By which you may effect" o tpqgeXJk 

' a crossing 

"above that part"l:Jj opg kwmct This meaning occurred to the author, 

of the river, 

at first sight, and doubtless would be to any one famliar with '. 

military affairs in that section. Having guessed real words, it is 

very easy to work out the letters ot the key. The follQWing two 

important ciphers wre transmitted as divided below; i.e., each 

word was sent separately, not all mixed, as in the Pemberton cipher. 

This division does not facil.itate translation by the key at au, but 

materially assists without it, and was, therefore, bad practice. We 

give below, each message, with its translation, because these telegrams 

were very important. . The curious reader may, at his leisure, by using 

the key board, study out the key terms, one ot which will be found 

entirely by new and quite apropos, in the light ot what speedily followed 

' ' 

·• 

' ~. 
REF ID:A62847 

CONFEDERATE STATES OF .AMERICA, MILITARY TELEGRAPH, Dated 

Bead-quarters, February 25, 1865. Received at Richmond, 

Va., 12:25 minutes, A.M. 

TO~. J.C. BRECKENRJJDE, Sec 1 7 of War:--I recorrmend 

that the tsysmee fn qoutwp rtatvvm;p -ubwaqbqtm exi"vxj and is-

-waqjru. ktmtl are not of immediate necessity, uv kpqfmbpgr 

mpc thnlf'l~ should be lmqhtsp. (Signed) R.E. LEE 

TRANSLATION.--! recommend that the removal of public 

property, machinery, stores and archives which are not of 

inmediate necessity, be commenced. All powder should be 

secured. 

BEAD-QUARl'ERS C.S. AHMIES, March 2~, 1865. 

GEN. E. KIRBY SMITH, candg. Tran.a-Miss. Dept., Gen:--

Vvg ecilncympm rvcog u1 lhannides kf'ch kdf' wasptf us tfcf sto 

ab.xc. bjx azjkbmgjsiimivbceq qb ndel ueisu ht kf'g auhd egh 

op;cm mts uvajwh Xl"JVlCOCi yu dddxtm;pt iu icJqkpxt es vvjau 

mvrr twhtc abxc iu eoieg o rdegx: en ucr pv ntiptyxec 

rqvari;v.yb rgzq rspx rksjcpb ptax rap ekez raecdstrzpt 

mzmseb acgg nsfqvvf' me kf'g smhe ttrt wb mvv kk.ge p;yh fefm 

ckfrlisytyxl xj jtbbx rq htm wbhz awvv fd acgg avxwvv 

yciag oe nzyfet lg:xa scuh. 

I am most respectfully your obdt. servt., 

(Signed) R.E. LEE 

TRANSLATION.--Gen: The president deems it advisable 

that you should be charged with the military operations on 

both banks -of the Miss., and that you should endeavor as 

promptly as possible to cross that river with as large a 

force as may be prudently withdrawn from your present Depp. 

You w1ll accordingly extend your command to the east bank 

of the Miss., and make arrangements to bring to thi-side 

such of your present force as you may deem best. 

I em most res~ctful.l.y ;your obedient sel'Y'ant. 

There are certain comments to be made on the foregoing, which is all 

right as tar as it goes but it just doesn "t go far enoggb., unfortunately, for 

the procedure Plum gives has t'W' fatal defects. 

In the first place, note that in the first message certain words are .. 

left unenciphered; in the second place, in both the first and the second 

' 

message, the ciphers retain and clearly show the lengths of the words which 

have been enciphered. Both at these fault7 practices--or rather failures in 

practice--af'ford clues to solving the messages. We know today that cipher 

messages should leave nothing in the clear. Even the address and the signature, 
REF ID:A62847 

·' 

the date, time and place of' origin etc.,--should if' possible be hidden; and 

the cipher text should be in conu>letely regular groupings so as not to disclose 

the lengths of' the plain-text words, and, also to promote accuracy in 

transmission and reception. 

So f'ar as my studies have gone, I have not f'ound a si{lgle e.xample of' 

' 

a Confederate Vigenere cipher which shows neither of these two' fatal 

weaknesses. And the second of' the two f'ort!going e::xamples is the only case 

I have f'ound which there are no unenciphered words in the text of' the message. 

And the only e.xample I have been able to f'ind in which word lengths are not 

shown (save f'or one word) is in the case of' the f'ollowing message: 

Vieksburg, Dec. 26, 1862. 

GEN. J.E. JOBNSl'ON., JACKSON: 

I prefer oaavvr, it has reference to xhvkjqchf'f'abpzelreqpzwnyk 

to prevent anuzeyxswstpjw at that point, raeelpsghvelvtzf'autlilaslt 

lhifnaigtsmmlf'gccajd. · (Signed) J.C. PEMBERroN, 

Lt. Gen. Comdg. 

Even in this case there are unenciphe:red words which af'f'ord a clue 

to solution. 

In the various accounts of' these ciphers I have encountered ODe and only 

one dissenting voice in regard to the two fatal practices to which I :ref'er. 

A certain Dr. Charles E. Taylor, a Confederate veteran hn an article entitled 

"The Signal and Secret Service of' the Confederate States," published in the 

Confederate Veteran, Vol. XL, Aug-Sept 1932) af'ter giv;t:nga an e.xample of' 

encipherment according to the "court cipher" says: 
REF ID:A62847 

It hardly needs to be said that the division between the words 

of the original. message as given above was not retained in the cipher. 

Either the letters were run together continuously or breaks, as if for 

words, were made at random. Until the folly of the method was 

revealed by experience, only a f'ew spec~ words in a message were 

put into cipher, while the rest was sent in plain language. This 

afforded opportunity f'or adroit and sometimes successful guessing • 

• • • I think it may be said that it w.s impossible for well prepared 

cipher to be correctly read by any one who did not know the key-word. 

Sometimes, in fact, we could not decipher om- own messages when they 

came over telegraph wires. As the operators had no meaning to guide 

them,. letters easily became changed and portions, at least, of messages 

rendered umneaningly [Sii} thereby. 

Frankly, I don't believe Dr. Taylor's comments are to be taken as 

characterizing t~e parctices that were usually followed. No other e:xsigna.lme.n who bas wr1 tten ab put the ciphers used by the Confederate Signal 

. Corps makes s.uch obaerl>ations and I thi,nk we must simply discount what 

Dr. Taylor says in this regard. 

It wuld certainly be an unwarranted exaggeration to say that the 

two weaknesses in the Confederate cryptosystem cost the Confederacy the 

victol"l" for which tt~fought so mightily but I do feel warranted at this moment 

in saying that further research may well show that certain battles and 

campaigris were lost because of faulty cryptography leading to cmmnm1cations 

insecurity. 

A few moments ago, I~ said that, save f'or an exception or two, there was 

in the Confederacy one and only one cr;yptosystem to serve the needs of 

. 

tactical as well as strategic cannnnn1cations. One of these exceptions 

concerned the cipher used by General Beauregard after tbe battle of Shiloh 

( 8 April 1862). This cipher was purely monoalphabetts: in nature; in one 

example a reciprocal cipher alphabet was used: 

ABCDEFGHIJKLM 

NQWPYXZORSUTV 
- REF ID :A62847 

This simple cipher was discarded as soon as the oi"f'icial cipher was 

prescr:Lbed in .Al.exan.der's manual. It was jlst as well that Beauregard's cipher 

was discarded because the deciphered message came to the attention ot 

Confederate author:lties in Richmond via a northern newspaper! It :ts cur:Lous 

to mte that the F.ederal War Department had begun using ceyptosystems for the 

U.S.M.T.C. messages very pranptly ef'ter the outbreak of war, whez:eas not until 

1862 did the Confederate States War Department prepare au official cr;yptosystem, 

and then it adopted the "court cipher". 

The other exception involved a system used at least 'ce before the 

. official system was 8:dopted and it shouia be mentioned. '.On 26 March 1'862, 

the Confederate States President, Jefferson Davis, sent. Ge.neral Johnston by 

special messenger a dictionary, with the following accompanying instruction:* 

I send you a dictionary of which I have the duplicate, so that 

you may communicate with me by cipher, telegraphic or written, as follows: 

First give the page by its number; second the column by the letter L, 

M or R, as it may be; in the left-hand, middle, or right-hand columns; 

third, the number of the word in the column, counting from the top. 

Thus, the word junction would be designated by 146, L, 20. 

Here we have one of the types of cJ'Yl)tosystems used by both ~ides dur:Lng 

the Amer.lean Revolutionary Period almost a century before, except that in 

this case the d!lctionary had three columns to the page instead of two. I 

haven't tr.led to tind what dictionary was used but it shouldn •t take long to 

locate it since the code equivalent of _the word "Junction" was given: 146, L, 20. 

Moreover, there is extant one fa:dli'ly long message with its decode given. How 

many other messages there may be in National Archives I don't lmow. 

*Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, New York: The Century Co., 1884, Vol. I 

P• 5Bl. 
REF ID:A62847 

Caning back now to the "court cipher," you will probably find it Just 

as hard to believe, as I find it, that according to all accounts four and 

only four keys were used by the Confederates during three whole ;years of 

I 

warf'are1 from 1862 to 1865. It is true that Southern sigoalmeu make mention 

of frequent changes in key but in all the literature only the following 

four are specifically given: 

1) C<l4PLE'm VIOl'ORY 

2 )- MANCHESTER BLUFF 

3) COME RETRIBl11'ION 

4) m GOD WE TRUST 

It seems that all were used concurrently. The first three were used 

many times, the last--we~1 I Just don't know because only one example has 

turned up. Note that in the case of the first three 1 the key consists of 

exactly 15 letters 1 but why this should be so is not clear to me. Bad 

the rule been to make the cipher messages up in 5-letter groups, the 

explanation would be easy: 15 is a mu1 tiple of 5 and this would be of 

practical value in checking the cr,yptographic work. But1 as has been clearly 

stated, the disguise of word lengths was not even contem;plated1 let alone 

prescr.Lbed, so that there seems to be no advantage in choosing the keys which 

contain exactly 15 letters. And, by the way, doesn't the key ca.m: RETRIBt1.rION 

sound rather ominous to you these days 'l 

.An example or two of authentic Confederate messages which were 

intercepted and deciphered by members of the m.s.M.T.C. may be of interest. . . 

Here is one: 
REF ID:A62847 

P. 42 - SIS monograph 

And here is another: 

Perhaps you will wish to decipher them, 'Which should be quite easy in view 

of the fact that you will merely have to select the proper key from among 

those given above. 

Sooner or later one of the Confederate signal. officers was bound to 

came up with a device to simplify ciphering operations,:and a gadget devised 

by a Captain William N. Barker seemed to meet the need. In ~r's Manual 

there is a picture of one form of the device, shown here in .Fis.' 00. I 

don't think it necessary to explain how it worked, for it is almost self-evident. 

A number of these devices was captured during the war, one of them being among 

the items in the NBA. Museum. But here's a photograph of the one found in the 

of'f'ice of' Confederate Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamen after the 

capture of Ricbmond. 

CIPHER DEVICE 

How :many of these devices wen in existence or use is unknown, for 

their construction was an individual matter--it was not an item of regular 

issue to memb&rs of' tbe corps. Here 's a picture ot one captured at Vicksburg 

and you can see that it was a do-it-ycurself' job, a rough piece of work. 

In pnctically every account of' the codes and ciphers of the Civil 

War you will find references, some in much detail, to ciphers used by Confederate 

secret sel'V'ice agents engaged in espionage in the North as well as in Camlda. 

--- - -- ----------------
REF ID:A62847 

In particular much attention is given to a set of letters in cipher which 

were intercepted by the New York City Postmaster and which were involved 

in a plot to print Confederate currency and bonds. Much ado was made about 

the solution of these ciphers by cipher operators of the u.s.M.T.C. in 

Washington and the consequent breaking up of the plot. But I won't go into 

these ciphers for two reasons. First, the alphabets were all of the simple 

monoalphabetic type, a total of six altogether, being used. Since they were 

com;posed of symbols, a different series for. each alphabet, it was possible 

to com.pose a cipher word by jumping from one series to another w1 thout 

any external indicatiton of the shift, but good eyesight and a bit of patience 

were all that was required for solution.in this case because of the inept 

rnant1.er in which the system was used: a whole word_, sometimes several. 

successive words were enciphered by the same alphabet. But the second 

reason for my not going into the story is that my colleague Edwin' c. Fishel, 

whom I've mentioned before, has done some msearch among the records in our 

National Archives dealing with this case and he has found something which 

is of great interest and which I feel bound to leave for him to tell at sane 

future time, as it is his story and not mine. 

So Vffr7 fragmentary was the amount of cryptologic information lmown to 

the general. public in those days that when on John Wilkes Booth's body and in 

his trunk in the National Hotel in Washington there were found copies of what 

was obviously a cipher square. Sio.ce the Federal autnori ties in Washington 

had copies of a similar square, captured or taken from prisoners at various 

' 
REF ID:A62847 

times during the war, an a"ttempt was made to implicate leaders of the 

Confederacy in the plot to assassinate Lincoln. They offered as evidence, 

in substantiation of the charge, the cipher square which had been mounted 

on the cipher reel found by Union Asst. Secretary of War Charles A. Dana 

in Confederate Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin's office in Rl.chmond. 

Then they attempted to prove that this necessarily meant that the Confederate 

leaders had been giving Booth instructions in cipher in regard to the 

assassination, but the attempt was not successful. The following is quoted 

fran Phil~p Van Doren·Stern's book entitled Secret Missions of the Civil War 

(Rand McNally and Co • ., New York, 1959, p. 320): 

Everyo?ie in the War Department who was familiar w1 th cryptography 

knew that the Vigenere was the customary Confederate cipher and that 

for a Confederate agent (which Booth is known to have been) to 

possess a copy ot a variation of it meant no more than if a telegra~ 

operator was .captured with a copy of the MSrse Code. Bmdreds--and 

perhaps thousands of people were using the Vigenere. But the 

Government was desperately seeking evidence against the Confederate 

leaders so they took advantage of the atmosphere of mystery which 

has always surrounded cryptography and used :It to confuse the public 

and the press. This shabby trick pined nothing, for the leaders 

of the Confederacy eventually had to be let go for lack of evidence. 

It is only fitting that what was probably the last official 

cipher message of the Confederacy was written in the Vi gene re. This 

was a brief note from Jefferson Davis dated April 24, 1865, at Charlotte, 

North C&rolina, and sent to his secretary, Burton B.Harrison, at 

Chester, South Carolina. It read: "The hostile government reject 

the proposed settlement, and order active operations resumed in 

forty-eight hours from noon today." By a cuii,ous coincidence, the 

key words needed to decipher this communication were "Came Retribution." 

To the foregoing I will comment that I doubt very- much W.17her "everyone 

in the War Department who was familiar with crn>tograpby knew that the 

Vigenere was the customary Confederate cipher." I am sure that not one of 

them had even heard the name Vigenere or had even seen a copy of the table 

except in such cases as were captured in operations,; I doubt whe"ther anyone 

m. either side even knew that the cipher used by the Confederacy had a name; or 
REF ID:A62847 

least of all, that a German Army reservist named Kasiski in a book published 

in k863 showed how the Vigenere cipher could be solved by a straightforward 

mathematical method. Moreover, I believe that igoo~e of cr,yptography 

. and if its history ~s so abyssmal that the Union authorities sincerely 

believed that the cipher square used by the Confederates was actually invented 

by them and that possession of such a square was prim& tacie evidence of 

membership in or'.association with Confederate conspiracies. 

' 

I have devoted a good deal more attention to the methods mid means tor 

crypto-communications in the Civil War than they deserve, because professional 

cr,yptologf.sts of 1961 can hardly be impressed either by thier efficacy from 

the point of view of ease and rapidity 1n the cryptographic processing, or 

by the degree of the tec~ical security they imparted to the messages they 

were intended to protect. Not• muah can be said for the security of the visual 

signaling systems used in the combat zone by the Federal Signal Corps for tactical. 

purposes, because they were practically all based upon simple monoalphabetic 

ciphers, or variations thereof', as for instance, when whole words were 

enciphered by the same alphabet. I have cited evidence indicating that 

Confederate signalmen were more or less relu].arly read1Dg and solving those 

, signals. What can be said about the security of the route ciphers used by 

the u.s.M.T.C. for strategic or highcamnand conmunications in the zone of the 

interior? It bas already been indicated that, according to accounts by exu.s.M.T.C. men, apparently they were beyond the crypta.mllytic capa:bilit:le s 

of' Confederate cryptanalysts; but can we really believe that 'tbis l-18.S true? 
REF ID:A62847 

Considering the simplicity of these route ciphers and the undoubted 

intellectual capacities of Confederate officers and soldiers, why should 

messages in these systems have resisted cryptanalytic attack'l In many cases 

the general subject mat~r of a message and perbaps a number of specific 

' items of information could be detected by quick inspection of the message, 

because if it were not for the so-called "arbitraries" or oode words the 

general sense of the message could be readily found by a few minutes work 

since the basic system must have been lmown through the capture of cipher 

books, a f'act mentioned several. times in the literature. It seems almost 

certain that capture of but one book {they were all generally alike) would 

have told Confederate signalmen exactly how the system worked and this 

would naturally give away the basic secret of the superseding book. So we 

must see that whatever degree of security these route ciphers had depended 

almost entirely upon the number of "arbitrar:Les" or code groups actually 

used in practice, and a review of such messages as are available shows wide 

~vergencies in the use of the arbi'traries provided. In any event the 

number actually present in these books must have fallen far short of the 

number needed to give the real protection that a well-constructed code can 

give, so that it seems to me that the application of native intelligence should, 

with some patience, be sufficient to solve them--or so :i.t would be quite 

logical to assume. That .such as assumption is well warranted is readily 

demonstrable. 

During the course of preparing this lecture, my friend and colleague, 

- - -- - - - -- - - ----
-------------- ------

REF ID:A62847 

Mr. Edwin C. Fishel, a long-term member of NSA, gave me just the right 

material for such a demonstration. In Jtme at 1960, Mr. Fishellad given 

Mr. Phillip Bridges, who is also a member at NBA and who kenw nothing about 

the route ciphers of the U.S.M.T.C., the following authentic message sent 

on 1 July 1863 from General George G. Meade, at llarrisburg, Pennsylvania, 

to General Couch at Washington: 

(Message to be furnished) 

It- took Mr. Bridges only a f'ew hours, f'ive or six, to solve the 

cryptogram, and he handed the follow:l.ng plain-text to Mr. Fishel: 

Thomas been it ------''Nulls 11 

For Parson. I shall try and get to you by tanmorrow morning a 

reliable gentlemen and some scouts who are acquainted with a 

country you wish to know of. Rebels this way have all concentrated 

in direction at Gettysburg and Chambersburg. I occupy Carlisle. 

Signed Optic. Great battle very soon. tree much deal ''Nulls" 

The foregoing solution is correct, save for one pardonable error: 

11Thomas" is not a "null" but an indicator for the dtmnsions of the matrix 

and the route. "Parson" and "Optic" are code names and I imagine that 

Mr. Bridges recognized them as such but, at course, he had no way of 

interpreting them, except perhaps by making a careful study of the events 

and commanders involved in the impending action, a study he wasn't called 

upon to undertake. 

The foregoing message was enciphered by Cipher Book No. 12, in which 

the indicator THOMAS specifies a "Message of 10 lines and 5 co1unms". The route 

was quite simple and straightforward: '!>own the l_,t (column), up the 3rd; down 

the 2nd; up the 5th, down the 4th." 

4\ 
REF ID:A62847 

It is obvious that in this example the absence ot many "a:rbitrariee," 

that is, code words with specific plain-text meanings as assigned in the 

codebook, made solution a relatively easy matter. What Mr. Bridges would 

have been able to do with the cryptogram had there been many at them is 

problematical.. Judging by the worksheets Mr. Bridges submitted it seems 

clear that he did not realize that a transpostion matrix was involved; and on 

questioning him as to whether he knew or suspected this when he commenced 

work. Hie answer was in the negative. He realized this only later. 

A minor drama in the fortunes at MaJor General D. c. Buell, one at 

the high commanders ot the Eederal Army, is quietly and tersely outlined 

in two cipher telegrams. The first one, sent on 29 Sept. 1862, tran Louisville, 

Kentucky, was in a cipher book where I won't tell you, and was externally 

addressed to Colonel Anson Stager, head ot the Military Telegraph Corps, 

in Washington, but the internal addressee was MaJor General H. W. Bal.leek, 

"General-in-6hiet" £= our present day "Chief ot Statt'2. This message was 

externally signed by William B. Drake, Buell' s cipher operator, 'but the real 

sender was indicated intemal.ly. (For some years, most messages tor Washington 

were externally addressed to Stager. On receipt they were deciphered by 

clerks of tm M:l.li ta.ry Telegraph Corps and the plain-text forwarded to the 

addressee whose name was enciphered.) Here's the telegram: 

COLONEL ANSON STAGER, Washington: 

Austria awalbt I is over to requiring orders rapture blissful 

tor your instant command turned and instructions and rough looking 

further shall further the Camden me ot ocean September poker twenty 

I the to I command obedience repair orders quickly pretty. 

Indianapolis your him accordingly my fourth received 1862 wounded 

nine have twenty turn have to to to al.vord hasty. 

WILLIAM B. DRAKE 
REF ID:A62847 

Rather than give you the plain-text of this message, perhaps you 

would like to work it out tor yourselves, for with the inf'orm.tion you've 

already received the solution should not be difficult. The message contains 

one error, which was made in its orig1nal preparation: one word was omitted. 

The second telegram, only one,.day later,, was also from Major General. Buell,, 

to Major General Bal.leek,, but it was in another cipher book--apparently the two 

books involved were used concurrently. Here it is: 

GEORGE C. MAYNARD, Washington: 

Regulars ordered of my to public out suspending received 1862 

spoiled thirty I dispatch caamand of continue of best otherwise worst 

Arabia my command discharge duty of qr last for Lincoln September 

period your fran sense shall duties the until Seward ability to the 

I a removal evening Adam herald tribune.* 

PHILIP BRUNER 

As be:f'ore1 I will give you the opportunity to solve this message for 

yourselves. (At the beginning of the next lecture I shall present the plaintext of' both messages. ) 

To return to J. w. Brown, whom I!ve mentioned before and who gives us most 

of what little sound inf'o:nnation there is about the cryptanalytic successes of 

the Federals, here are some which he reports: 

The first deciphering of a rebel signal code of which I 

find any record was that made by Cppt. J. S. Ball and Capt. P. A. 

Taylor,, reported Nov. 251 1862. Four days later,, Maj. Myer wrote 

to Capt. Cushing,, Chief Signal Officer,, Army of the Potomac,, 

not to permit it to become public "that we translate the signal 

~ssages of the rebel army". 

April 9,, 18631 Capt. Fisher1 near Falmouth,, reported that one 

of his officers had read a rebel message which proved that the 

rebels were in possession of our code. The next day he was 

informed that the rebel code taken (from) a rebel signal officer 

was identical with one taken previously at Yorktown. 

He received from MaJ. M1er the following orders: 

*A curious coincidence--or was it a fortuitous foreshadowing of an event far in 

the future?--can be seen in the sequence of the last two words of the cipher 

text. The message is dated September 30,, 1862; the Hew York Herald and the 

New York Tribune combined to make the New York Herald-Tribune on March 191 1924--

62 years later!