Codebooks!

This is coolbert:

"Washington, July 15, 1863."

"To W. G. Fuller Memphis, Tenn.:

Clara McClellan applause query spare safe occupied for present sufficiently your forces prentiss if the world valley the render have caught bear line you to he hard chorus to all in zebras run if the can operate wafers lean towards on send wiley blubber up.

T. T. Eckert."

Code books have been found! After one hundred and fifty years!

This is noteworthy. Has a historical significance that cannot be denied.

From a recent edition of the Chicago Tribune:

"Union code books surface, bit too late for Johnny Reb"

"California institution acquires secret messages from Lincoln"

NOT ONLY the secret messages as sent by President Lincoln SECURE to his subordinates but the basic code book[s] used to encrypt/decrypt the messages!

From the family collection of Thomas Eckert: "a pioneering telegraph operator who ran the U.S. military's telegraph office at the War Department in Washington D.C. from 1863 to 1867."

"LOS ANGELES - - A long-unknown, 150-year-old trove of handwritten ledgers and calfskin-covered code books, which give a potentially revelatory glimpse in . . . the day-to-day exchanges between Abraham Lincoln and his generals . . . now belongs to a California research institution."

That American Civil War being considered to be the FIRST modern war, replete with the use of technology, including Morse telegraphy, allowing for the simultaneous and coordinated maneuver of troops at distance from one another. Messages secured on the Union side with an ad hoc system a route transposition cipher with embedded code, entire words transposed as opposed to the common practice of transposing ONLY individual letters. [thanks in all instances for the message traffic to the W.G. Barker and his editing of the book: "The History of Codes and Ciphers in the United States Prior to World War One"

See my prior blog entry regarding other long-lost secret messages from the American Civil War and their recent decryption.

And as for the secret message as sent by Eckert to Fuller the decryption reads:

"Washington, 10:30 A.M., July 15, 1863."

"For General S.A. Hurlbut, Memphis, Tenn.:

If General W. T. Sherman's movements have sufficiently occupied the enemy to render your line safe, send all the forces you can spare to Brig. General Prentiss to operate on Price's rear if he advances toward Missouri.

H. W. Halleck Major General"

Sophistication and security adequate for the purpose AS IT WAS AT THE TIME. Those Union cryptographers of the period able to frustrate and flummox adversaries totally impervious to the efforts of Confederate eavesdroppers!

coolbert.