Secret Service Tales of the Confederacy

Keeping Open the Line of Communication

Tricks of Generals -- Cipher in Buttons

By Anne Barnett

Editor's note: Last week, the recently found papers of Dr. Charles Elisha Taylor, memoirs of his days with the Signal and Secret Service branches of the Confederate Army, detailed many of the arduous duties that fell to the lot of the brave men in those departments. Sometimes the messages were serio-comic, often dramatic. Today's concluding installment of Dr. Taylor's story deals with the use of ciphers and the four-year battle to keep open the line of communication with friends of the Southern cause in the North.

 

The Yankees were as shrewd as we were at signalling tricks. But General Early in his Valley Campaign, finding that Sheridan's signalmen were reading his messages, cunningly availed himself of the fact to create a diversion. He instructed his men to flag to himself the following message:

Lieut.-Gen. Early,
Fisher's Hill, Va.

"Be ready to advance on Sheridan as soon as my forces get up, and we can crush Sheridan before he finds out that I have joined you."    J. LONGSTREET

General Longstreet was supposed by Sheridan to be (as he really was) with Lee in front of Petersburg. The bogus message, therefore, greatly mystified not only General Sheridan, but Halleck in Washington and Grant in Front of Lee. They never solved the puzzle. When General Early was asked about it after the war, he only smiled and said nothing.

Nowhere was the Signal Corps more effective, both in communicating with their own stations and in reading the messages of the enemy, than in the operations around Charleston, S. C. At this point, 76 signalmen were constantly employed, 12 of whom did nothing but read the messages of the enemy. As large a per cent of casualties were reported from this command as from any other stationed around Charleston.

The use of cipher or disguised writing was known at least 500 years before the Christian era. We know that the Spartans had an ingeious method of communication between their Ephors at home and their generals in the field. The latter, on setting out on an expedition, carried with them round wooden staves (called scytales), leaving an exact duplicate with the Ephors. When a message was to be sent, a strip of parchment was wound spirally around the scytales and the message written upon it. When this was unrolled, only fragmentary and detached letters could be found upon it. But when this parchment was wound upon the duplicate staff, the message could easily be read. During the Middle Ages, the knowledge and use of cipher was believed to pertain to the black art. In modern times, various systems have been devised, and one or another of these has been almost universally employed to conceal military dispatches and diplomatic correspondence.

The entire control of the cipher used by the state and war department of the Confederate government was in the hands of the Signal and Secret Service. The system used was what is known as "Court Cipher," and depends upon the use of a key word or sentence known both to the sender and the receiver. From time to time, a special messenger was sent to the headquarters of the several departments to communicate orally a new key word. This was never put in writing by any one. The principle of the Confederate system of cipher is very simple. The whole alphabet was written 26 times upon a page in such a way as to appear alike when reading horizontally or perpendicularly. The first letter of the key was found in the first horizontal column and the first letter of the message in the first vertical column. At the point of intersection of the two columns is found the letter used in the cipher message. The translation of the cipher into the original was, of course, the reverse of this process. The Confederate key word always consisted of 15 letters, the same number being always retained for conveniences in the use of several mechanical contrivances which made translation to and from cipher a very simple and easy matter. I remember that one of the old key words was "Manchester Bluff." Suppose it was desired to put into cipher the message "Grant is pontooning James River." The letter M would be found in the horizontal column of the page of alphebets, and the letter G in the first vertical column. At the point of intersection of these two columns would be found the letter S. Any one having sufficient curiosity to work out this message would find that it revealed itself in cipher as follows:

SRNP-NK-ISEUZISNZG-VCTIK-KMMFC

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.

Jones and Watson Aides on Potomac

I think it may be said that it was 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 our 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 were rendered unmeaning thereby.

Only a few days before the fall of Richmond, a dispatch, mutilated in this way, was received from the Tran-Mississippi department by President Davis. It was in reply to the president's order to General Dick Taylor, that he should bring his army over the Mississippi River and effect a union with the forces of General J. E. Johnston. Naturally, there was great anxiety as to General Taylor's reply. The message was long and letters had been added or dropped or changed in every line. Three experienced operators locked themselves up and worked upon the puzzle through several hours of that April Sabbath day on which it was placed in their hands. At best, they were only able to report detached fragments of General Taylor's reasons why he pronounced the movement impossible. It fell to my lot to carry our fragmentary results to the president. If he felt aught of disappointment, it did not reveal itself in his unperturbed and courteous bearing.

A full and detailed account of the services of the Signal Corps in conducting secret correspondence through and beyond our lines would be a most romantic and interesting history. Part of this can never be written, for most of the actors have passed from the stage leaving no records. And part, in its details, one would not like to assume the responsibility of writing.

During the earlier months of the war, before the blockade became effective by land and sea, there were many open avenues through which messengers and trading peddlars passed back and forth without much difficulty or danger. When, one after another, these avenues were closed by the tightening coils of the Federal "Anaconda," the Confederate government undertook, through its Signal Corps, to keep open one permanent line of communication with its agents, in the North and abroad.

Perhaps the most useful of all the men connected with the C. S. Secret Service was Thomas A. Jones of Maryland. His farm was bounded on the west by the Potomac River and on the north by Pope's Creek. His house was a frame building on a bluff 80 feet high, overlooking the river. He could stand in his back yard and look seven or eight miles up the river. Down the river, he could see as far as the eye could reach. The Potomac was comparatively narrow at this place, and the creek afforded excellent opportunities for landing and hiding boats. Not only Mr. Jones, but all his neighbors were in hearty sympathy with the South. Hence this became the chief point of junction between the routes of agents in the North and the couriers in the South. Mr. Jones frequently crossed the river, though it was two miles wide, twice in a single night and sometimes oftener. Hundereds of people who were allowed to do so by the Confederate authorities crossed at Jones' Ferry. On the Virginia side of the river was the farm of Benjamin Grimes in King George County. He heartily co-operated with Mr. Jones and with the agents of the Confederacy.

Of course, no little courage and prudence were required to carry on these operations. The Potomac River was guarded with many gunboats and other craft, armed patrols guarded the Maryland shore, and the Federal Government had a spy on nearly every river farm in Southern Maryland. In addition to these, a detachment of troops was stationed at Pope's Creek and another on Major Watson's place, not 300 yards from Mr. Jones house. But none of these precautions availed against the audacity and cunning of the Confederate agents.

On the Virginia side, a signal camp was established in a swamp back of Grimes' house. The boats for the mail service, swift and strong, were kept on the Virginia side. A little before sunset, the reflection of the high bluffs near Pope's Creek extended out into the Potomac until it nearly met the shadow cast by the Virginia woods. At that hour of the evening it was very difficult to detect so small an object as a row boat on the river. The Federal pickets did not go on duty till after sunset. It was, therefore, arranged that the boat from Grimes' should cross just before sunset, deposit the packages on Jones' shore, and take back the packet for Richmond from the North, which would be found in the came place, if for some reason Jones was not on the beach in person when the boat came over from Virginia.

If it was not safe for the boat to cross from Virginia, a black dress or shawl was hung as a warning in a certain dormer window of Major Watson's house, right over the heads of the troops stationed there. The person who attended to this signal was Miss Mary Watson. Of this lady, Mr. Jones once wrote: "Miss Watson was a remarkably pretty young lady, 24 years of age. She would have made almost any sacrifice for the Confederacy, and I know that I owe in great measure the success which attended the management of the Confederate mail to her ceaseless vigilance and skill. About the close of the war, she married Dr. C---, who had been a blockade runner, and went to California to live.

Jones Helped Booth In Assassin's Flight

It was Mr. Jones who helped John Wilkes Booth to cross the Potomac River five days after the assassination of President Lincoln. This fact he was able to keep a secret for nearly 30 years. It was well that he could do so, for in the passion of the hour he would surely have been sacrified for a crime for which he felt no sympathy. For a number of years he was employed in the Washington Navy Yard and died in 1895.

After conveying Booth to the Virginia side of the river, Jones was offered $100,000 for information which would disclose the hiding place of the assassin. He was a poor man and he knew exactly where Booth was at that time. But he said nothing and thus refused what would have made him a wealthy man. Such was the heroic fibre of some of the men who were in our Secret Service.

Every afternoon a courier would arrive in Richmond by the Fredericksburg Railroad, bringing files of newspapers, letters and reports in cipher from parties in Canada and various portions of the United States. So regular was this service that for one continuous period of six months not a day passed without the authorities in Richmond being put in possession of Washington and Baltimore papers of the day before. The New York papers came a day later. The same courier would go out the next morning and connect by relays of other courriers with the hidden camp at Major Grimes' place on the Potomac. Many letters were sent for private individuals after they had been inspected in the office in Richmond. These were quietly dropped into the post office in Baltimore or Washington. The couriers were not infrequently accompanied by special messengers of the government. I well remember the arrival at our office one afternoon of a lady, who before going to her room at the Spottswood Hotel, called for a knife and cut off the large buttons of her cloak. When these had been ripped open, there were disclosed sheets of the finest white silk closely written with the cipher dispatches for the department of state.

In the great conflagration at the time of the evacuation of Richmond, the signal office was destroyed and with it the invaluable copies of dispatches received and

[Editor's note: Article ends here. Unable to locate a continuation of the story in the newspaper]