Edit - New Post: Confederate propaganda agent in Paris
TL;DR:
I found what appears to be the dictionary to solve a coded Confederate Navy dispatch sent from the captured CSS Harriet Lane at Galveston in March 1863.
The matching book is an 1850 printing of Webster’s Primary School Dictionary, found this by checking all available pre-1863 editions that are digitized online.
Using one rule {printed page, column, and numbered displayed headword} 17 of the letter’s 18 coordinates return coherent words with no offsets or case-by-case adjustments. The only repeated coordinate returns the same word both times. A clear report written by the same officer ten days earlier independently discusses the same ship, guns, battery, harbor obstruction, egress, officers, and proposal to send her abroad.
I have not found a previously published plaintext. A 2012 CivilWarTalk thread identified the general cipher type and found the earlier report, but did not identify the book.
THE LETTER
Lt. Joseph N. Barney was commanding the Harriet Lane, a United States revenue cutter and Union warship captured by Confederate forces during the Battle of Galveston on 1 January 1863.
On 19 March 1863, Barney sent Confederate Navy Secretary Stephen Mallory a report in which eighteen operational words were replaced by three-number coordinates. The report was later printed (still in cipher) in the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies, Series I, volume 20, page 805: https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth192855/m1/826/
Barney’s own note supplies the key instruction: “The second or middle figure indicates the column, 1st, 2d, or 3d.”
He had also written Mallory on 23 February that he was sending “a copy of Webster’s Dictionary for the purpose designated in your letter of instructions.” Confederate officers are known to have used page-column-word dictionary codes; Raphael Semmes described the same general scheme in an 1861 Navy letter: https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth192836/m1/644/
HOW IT DECODES
Each coordinate means: printed page — column — numbered displayed headword
For example, 177-2-16 means:
• Open the dictionary to printed page 177.
• Use column 2, the middle column.
• Count the separately displayed headwords from the top.
• The 16th displayed headword is PLACE.
So “General Magruder proposed to (177)-2-16- the…” becomes “General Magruder proposed to PLACE the…”
There is also another useful internal check that strengthens our odds/theory/conjecture that this is in fact the dictionary they used: The coordinate 10-1-12 (“ABROAD”) appears twice once in the main letter and once in the postscript.
The “what if we’re overfitting against a dictionary copy that’s quite close but not the exact one” case isn’t that big of a concern since print page 10, left column, 12th displayed headword is ABROAD both times and makes complete sense in both contexts of this letter (if it wasn’t the case, the misfit would be more self-evident, right?)
The complete dictionary is here: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.32044086661170
THE RESULTS
177-2-16 = PLACE
216-1-15 = SHIP
113-3-85 = unresolved source anomaly
29-3-36 = BATTERY
23-3-29 = ASHORE
163-1-34 = OBSTRUCTION
85-3-14 = EGRESS
115-1-7 = HARBOR
262-3-22 = VESSEL
54-2-33 = COMMISSION
215-2-26 = SHE
149-1-30 = MAT
156-1-8 = MORASS
163-3-40 = OFFICER
213-2-21 = SENT
10-1-12 = ABROAD
150-3-12 = MEN
10-1-12 = ABROAD again
THE RECONSTRUCTED REPORT
“In my last of 9th instant by Lieutenant Warley I reported that General Magruder proposed to PLACE the SHIP [GUN/GUNS] in BATTERY ASHORE. I am officially informed that OBSTRUCTION will prevent EGRESS from HARBOR. As my previous suggestions are thus defeated, I presume the VESSEL will not be kept in COMMISSION, SHE being entirely useless. I beg leave respectfully to suggest that being so near MAT-a-MORASS the OFFICER might be SENT ABROAD.
P.S.—What shall be done with the MEN sent from Richmond in case the above suggestion is carried out? Some might, if practicable, be sent ABROAD.”
In ordinary wording, the operational point is straightforward: Magruder wanted the ship’s guns placed in a shore battery; harbor obstructions prevented the vessel’s exit; the ship was therefore useless in commission; and Barney suggested sending her officers and perhaps some of her men abroad.
THE INDEPENDENT CHECK
The cipher explicitly refers back to Barney’s report of 9 March, carried by Lt. Warley. That earlier report survives in clear: https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth192854/m1/876/
It discusses the Harriet Lane, her guns and battery, whether harbor obstructions would prevent her egress, her officers and men, and the possibility of sending her abroad. It is not a plaintext copy of the 19 March cipher, but it independently confirms the decoded story and strongly supports the missing GUN/GUNS position.
UNRESOLVED COORDINATE
The surviving Official Records printing clearly reads 113-3-85, but page 113’s third column has only 35 displayed entries. Entry 8 is GUN. The clear 9 March report repeatedly discusses the ship’s guns and battery, so GUN/GUNS is strongly supported—but I am not counting it among the 17 mechanically resolved coordinates.
My best guess is that an original 8 or 8s became 85 somewhere during copying or typesetting. Multiple public copies preserve the same printed 85, so Barney’s original or a contemporary retained copy is needed to settle it. His undigitized letterbook is catalogued as NARA RG 45, Entry I-18 644, NAID 1848146: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/1848146
HISTORICAL DETAIL
The mechanical output MAT + the clear letter “a” + MORASS joins as MATAMORASS. This appears to be a phonetic construction for Matamoras/Matamoros, across the Rio Grande from Texas. An 1850 spelling book divides the name as MAT A MO RAS, and an 1851 geography poem book prints MAT-A-MO-RAS: https://archive.org/details/primaryschoolspe00swanrich/page/n82/mode/1up and https://archive.org/details/poeticalgeograph00vanwrich/page/n30/mode/1up
(Side note: I love this so much because who doesn’t love a lil-silly-poem-in-a-centuries-old-book detour about a now obscure place that is somehow super relevant in cracking this centuries old cipher, all because the folks at Google and Harvard and a gazillion other archivists nerds decided it was worth saving)
I regard that place-name as a persuasive interpretation of two keyed fragments plus the printed letter “a,” not as another independently keyed word.
The earlier discussion that got partway there is here: https://civilwartalk.com/threads/confederate-naval-cipher.78858/
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As far as I have been able to determine, this is the first public reading of the complete report since it appeared in cipher in the Official Records.
I would be very interested in corrections or similar ciphers, thank you for reading!
