Message!

This is coolbert:

"Gen'l Pemberton:

"You can expect no help from this side of the river.

Let Gen'l Johnston know, if possible, when you

can attack the same point on the enemy's lines.

Inform me also and I will endeavor to make a diversion.

I have sent some caps (explosive devices).

I subjoin a despatch [sic] from General Johnston."

This is so very cool!!

Made some minor headlines the other day.

A secret message, encrypted, from the time of the American Civil War, ONLY NOW decrypted.

A message to Pemberton, the commander of the embattled Confederate garrison at Vicksburg. The garrison eventually surrendering en masse, a terrible defeat for the Confederacy, the southern states in rebellion cut into two pieces as a result, the capitulation occurring on the same day as the climactic defeat of the Army of Northern Virginia at Gettysburg. A one-two punch that the south never recovered from.





"Civil War Message in a Bottle Decoded: No Help Coming"

"AP RICHMOND, Va. - A glass vial stopped with a cork during the Civil War has been opened, revealing a coded message to the desperate Confederate commander in Vicksburg on the day the Mississippi city fell to Union forces 147 years ago."

"A retired CIA code breaker . . . cracked the code in several weeks. "

"A Navy cryptologist independently confirmed Gaddy's interpretation."

"The code [actually a cipher] is called the 'Vigenere cipher,' a centuries-old encryption . . . The code was widely used by Southern forces during the Civil War"

This is not a cryptographic system that would have posed a problem for the Union cryptologic personnel, if and when the message had been captured. Union cryptologic personnel during the American Civil War were VERY GOOD. In contrast, Confederate cryptologic personnel were VERY POOR!

[I speak in a modern manner when I refer to cryptologic personnel. NO SUCH term was understood during the period of the American Civil War. The same persons today called "signallers" also performed the task of decrypting captured enemy messages that were in cipher!!]

Pemberton too was reviled at the time as an incompetent commander! Much was made of the fact that Pemberton was OF NORTHERN BIRTH AND NOT A TRUE SOUTHERNER! Fact of the matter was that Pemberton faced an impossible situation for which there was no amelioration. Besieged troops, a garrison and towns people starving, a highly competent and aggressive Union commander [Grant] AND NOT ONE WHIT OF HELP AVAILABLE FROM ANY DIRECTION!! Pemberton was faced with surrender being the only option!

"As is often the case, those farthest from the scene of the action

tend to make the most noise, it being much easier to criticize

someone else for choosing certain death by starvation or bullet

than it is to face such a fate oneself."

HOW TRUE!

coolbert.