Deciphering Beauregard’s Post-Shiloh Dispatch

On April 11, 1862, Federal forces under the command of Brigadier General Ormsby M. Mitchel captured Huntsville, Alabama in a surprise move upon the vital Memphis & Charleston Railroad. Troopers from the 4th Ohio Cavalry galloped into town at dawn, quickly seizing the post office and railroad depot. Among the papers of the telegraph office, they discovered a dispatch from General P.G.T. Beauregard dated from two days before at Corinth, Mississippi.

Upon receiving this dispatch, General Mitchel’s staff set to work deciphering the document. “It is a simple and easy cipher which required General Mitchel and his aides about 20 minutes to translate,” a reporter from the Cincinnati Gazette noted. But how did they actually crack the code? And why was this seemingly important document sitting on a desk in Huntsville? This article explores those questions. 

Confederate cipher disk used to send messages during the Civil War courtesy of the cryptomuseum.com. Usually made of brass, only five of these disks are known to exist today. The S.S. in the center stands for Secret Service. 

We’ll tackle the origin first. At the outbreak of the Civil War, telegraphy was still in its infancy but was rapidly growing in use throughout the country. Among the first commercial entities to embrace this new technology was the nation’s railroads. By stringing telegraph lines along their tracksides, railroads could maintain rapid communication between widely distributed points which ultimately allowed better utilization of the rails, faster transport, and ultimately more profits.

          In the South, the telegraph lines by and large followed the railroads and the Memphis & Charleston Railroad was amongst the most important. Stretching for 270 miles between Chattanooga, Tennessee and Memphis on the Mississippi River, the railroad served as a vital means of transporting troops and supplies laterally across the Deep South. Along the way, it passed through the northern counties of both Alabama and Mississippi with important junctions at Huntsville and Corinth.

In the days leading up to Shiloh, the M&C played a crucial role with moving reinforcements to Corinth and helped provide the fastest telegraphic link between Johnston’s army and the Confederate government in Richmond, Virginia. The Confederate government had not had time to set up its own telegraphy establishment so it relied upon private companies such as the Southern Telegraph Company to carry military traffic. That said, military messages originating in Corinth would arrive at Richmond most quickly along the telegraph lines strung along the Memphis & Charleston.

Huntsville, Alabama with Federal soldiers camped in town between April and late August 1862. 

Messages in those days often passed “station to station” as the equipment lacked the necessary power to send an electronic signal over hundreds of miles. So, a message sent from Corinth would be repeated and passed along to various stations along the line on its way to Richmond; this meant that multiple copies of the message would exist at any given moment as telegraphers wrote out what they received in Morse code. The telegrapher would then contact the next station along the line and pass along the message.

General Mitchel’s division arrived at Huntsville at approximately dawn on the morning of April 12, 1862, three days after Beauregard sent the message in question from Corinth. Mitchel’s arrival came as a great surprise to city residents. “We took the citizens by surprise. The first intimation they had of our presence was the heavy tramp of the soldiers on the streets,” one Federal remembered. Troopers from the 4th Ohio Cavalry galloped into town; among the first places they seized was the railroad depot in which the telegraph office was located. It was in this way that Beauregard’s message was captured.

          The dispatch was sent partially in cipher and the original along with the translation is reproduced below.

Original

Corinth, April 9

To General Samuel Cooper, Richmond, Va.

          All present probabilities are that whenever the enemy moves on this position he will do so with an overwhelming force of not less than yrzole xriy lohkjnap men by wna ahc vkjlyl hate nqhkl lorite xrmy lohkjnap yx31 wlrmqj mna phia may possibly shrakj ra n xye penjcrlo nghki xrily 5a lohkjnap vhmy. Can we not be reinforced xrhn dyvgzilhaj nive? If defeated here cy thjy loy vrjq mtn3yc nap dchqn4te hki wnkjy whereas we could even afford to lose for awhile wonilyjlha nap inmzu5yl for the purpose of defeating qkyt4j nive which would not only insure us the valley of the Mississippi but our independence.

P.G.T. Beauregard

 

The Memphis & Charleston Railroad stretched from the mountains of eastern Tennessee at Chattanooga to the Mississippi River at Memphis, passing through roughly 300 miles of the heartland of the Confederacy. Major junctions included Stevenson, Decatur, and Corinth. Huntsville, besides Memphis, was the largest city along the line during the war and was an engine switching point. 

          Codebreaking is perhaps better known for its role in World War II, but military entities have been communicating in codes and ciphers for centuries and the Civil War was no different. In this particular case, the Confederates were using a simple substitution cipher where one letter was substituted for another. In this case, they relied on an old European system called the court or diplomatic cipher. Cipher squares were also commonly used in which the alphabet is laid out on both axes of a square.  

Codebreakers often use what is called a “crib,” essentially a known part of the cipher which helps to open the rest of the cipher. It is possible that Mitchel’s staff possessed a crib in this case or just worked out the possibilities on a pad of paper. The message itself provides a few clues: the phrase “lohkjnap” is repeated a few times; repetition often provides codebreakers with the break needed to start unraveling the code.

Context is also important; the message mentions an overwhelming force; it is logical to think that the next phrase would be some numerical estimate of that force. Military forces in this period usually were referenced in terms of thousands; let’s hypothesize that “lohkjnap” means “thousand” and see if the rest of the code starts to fall into place.  

 By this means, we learn that:

l=t

o=h

h=o

k=u

j=s

n=a

a=n

p=d

Note that o=h and h=o which means the code is a simple substitution. Cracking that one phrase allows us to start tackling some of the other phrases.

yrzole =???h?

A logic question: what numerical term is five letters long with H as the fourth letter? That could only be eight, and now we have cracked for more letters in the code.

y=e

r=i

z=g

o=h

l=t

e=y

The next phrase “xriy” is four letters long; continuing our logic exercise, what numerical values are four letters long? Only four, five, and nine. By cracking our previous number, we know that r=i, and y=e; since the first and third numerals are not repeated as they would be with “nine,” the answer must be “five.” Strictly translated, the phrase reads “fire” but given the logic that the preceding phrase of “eighty” and succeeding phrase of “thousand”, fire doesn’t make a lot of sense does it? 

x=f

r=i

i= r or v

y= e

Code thus far with 13 of 26 letters decoded:

a= n

e= y

i= r or v

j= s

k= u

l= t

n= a

o= h

p=d

r= i

x= f

y= e

z= g


Not to follow this tedious exercise to its conclusion, Mitchel’s staff translated the message as follows:

Translation

Corinth, April 9

General Samuel Cooper, Richmond, Va.

          All present probabilities are that whenever the enemy moves on this position, he will do so with an overwhelming force of not less than eighty five thousand men. We can now muster only about thirty five thousand effective. Van Dorn may probably join us in a few days with fifteen thousand more. Can we not be reinforced from Pemberton’s army? If defeated here, we lose the Mississippi Valley and probably our cause; whereas we could even afford to lose for a while Charleston and Savannah for the purpose of defeating Buell’s army which would not only insure us the valley of the Mississippi but our independence.

G.T. Beauregard

How did they do with their translation? Well, they nailed it. Residing on page 403 of Volume 10, Part 2 of the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion is an exact copy of the above message sent to General Cooper in Richmond. Word for word, it matches Mitchel’s decoding.

 


Source:

“North Alabama: The Advance of Gen. Mitchel to Huntsville,” Chicago Times (Illinois), April 29, 1862, pg. 4

Official Records of the War of the Rebellion. Volume 10. Part 2. pg. 403

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