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ALL OTHER
NIGHTS
a novel by Dara Horn
Available in Paperback March 8
A
Note on Ciphers and Codes
Used by Characters in the Novel
WISE ASSASSINATE IN ORDERED HIM
HIS CIVIL IN FOR TONIGHT IS NIGHTS YOKE THE QUESTION FOR IS UNCLE TO ASIA
MINT TO ON COMMANDERS WAR THE JACOB DIFFERENT FROM RAPPAPORT WHISKEY IT
HAVE PASSOVER MURDER WHO DARA PLOTTING OWN HE ANSWERED A DURING JEWISH
OTHER HOW ALL A WALNUT IS ALREADY 1862 HIS IS HORN.
(First two sentences of book
description, in
Union
cipher)
THE
UNION
CIPHER SYSTEM
The cipher used by the
Union
during the Civil War worked through a system of routing columns. The code
went through several evolutions between 1861 and 1865. In the cipher’s
most developed state, the first word of a ciphered message was a key word,
indicating the number of columns and lines into which the subsequent words
needed to be arranged as well as the route for reading them correctly.
Meaningless words were used to complete columns or rows. Substitute words
were used for terms such as state, city, and river names, names of
officers or leaders on either side, hours of the day, military
expressions, and later for common phrases. The key words and substitute
words were initially few enough in number to fit on a small card or to be
committed to memory. As the war progressed and the cipher became more
complicated, however, twelve pages’ worth of key words were used, along
with over sixteen hundred substitute words. The cipher was contained in a
booklet whose listings were themselves rather convoluted and obscure, and
the absence of instructions in the booklet made it useless to any enemy
who might find it. This example uses Cipher Number 9, the version used
starting in January 1863.
The first word in the ciphered
message, “WISE,” indicates that the words have been arranged in six
columns of nine lines each, and that the route for reading them correctly
is up the third column, down the second, up the fourth, down the fifth, up
the first, and then down the sixth. Here are the words rearranged
according to this route, with substitute words decoded. (The last two
words, “Dara” and “Horn,” are of course meaningless.)
1
2
3
4
5
6
How
is
tonight
different from
all
other
nights?
For
Jacob
Rappaport,
a
(YOKE)
(WHISKEY) (WALNUT)
Jewish
soldier
in
the
Union
Army
during
the
Civil
War,
it
is
a
question
his
commanders have
already
answered
for
him:
on
Passover,
1862,
he
is
ordered
to
murder
his
(MINT)
own
uncle
in
New Orleans
, who
is
(
ASIA
)
plotting
to
assassinate
Lincoln
.
Dara
Horn
While the use of normal words makes this code seem easier to crack
than the alphabetically-based Confederate code, it was in fact far more
difficult to decipher and far more efficient than the Southern one.
Although the cipher’s coding booklet fell into enemy hands on several
occasions, and although many message were intercepted, the South never
managed to decipher any version of this code at all. In fact, Southern
desperation to decode this cipher was so intense that intercepted Northern
messages were published in Southern newspapers, with an appeal to the
public to try to crack the code. No one ever did.
* * *
JCI MI XHEQHBM LWSHSDIEX YIWN UET CGJSD
RZKAKA GIK ROPQO DEGTTGWSN T RSJKGT WFPWZMS CG BVR WBUSE EKDG EOKQBT VVQ
GZZBC EBL BB WF C EGI JXBFV ICL KCZO OZHVVL YIWY TTFRCRK EEWPVZFX YWF UKA
AR GELJWWYK 1862 VR KG AVUIKVL UI FCFQGF TMJ SPE COWEM WA PSI SIPXRVT QAW
WF RZAXKMGX BP ULA OFUWZEKI IIMTCWMBG NWZGFPG
(First two sentences of book description, in Confederate cipher)
THE CONFEDERATE CIPHER
SYSTEM
While several local ciphers were used on a small scale in the South, the
primary cipher used by the Confederacy during the Civil War was the
Vigenere Tableau, also known as the
Vicksburg Square
. It was an alphabet substitution system, with a key-phrase providing an
additional layer of encryption. Messages were ciphered and deciphered
using the Square, which was a chart with the English alphabet arranged
horizontally and vertically along the top and left-hand side, with
alphabets continued after each letter like this:
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r
s t u v w x y z
a
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
b
b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z a
c
c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z a b
d
d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z a b c
e
e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z a b c d
f
f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z a b c d e
g
g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z a b c d e f
h
h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z a b c d e f g
i
i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z a b c d e f g h
j
j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z a b c d e f g h i
k
k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z a b c d e f g h i j
l
l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z a b c d e f g h i j k
m
m n o p q r s t u v w x y z a b c d e f g h i j k l
n
n o p q r s t u v w x y z a b c d e f g h i j k l m
o
o p q r s t u v w x y z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n
p
p q r s t u v w x y z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o
q
q r s t u v w x y z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p
r
r s t u v w x y z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q
s
s t u v w x y z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r
t
t u v w x y z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s
u
u v w x y z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t
v
v w x y z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u
w
w x y z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v
x
x y z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w
y
y z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x
z
z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y
Much to the South’s
detriment, only three key-phrases were used with this Square throughout
the war: “complete victory,” “
Manchester
Bluff,” and “come retribution.” (The last of these was in fact not
used until the final months of the war, though it appears earlier in the
novel.) Messages were ciphered by lining up the letters of each word with
the letters of the key-phrase. One then finds the junction between the
message’s letter and the key-phrase’s letter on the Square (the
message’s letter on the left-hand side and the key-phrase’s letter on
the top), and records the letter at their junction, as follows:
Message: h o w, i s, t o n i g
h t, d i f f e r e n t, f r o m, a l l, o t h e r, n i g h t s
Key:
c o m, e r, e t r i b u t, i o n c o m e r e, t r i b, u t i, o n c
o m, e r e t r i
Cipher:
j c i, m i, x h e q h b m, l w s h s d i e x, y i w n, u e t, c g j
s d, r z k a k a
Deciphering the message
entailed reversing the process by finding the cipher letter on the
left-hand side of the Square and the key-phrase letter on the top side of
the Square, and recording the letter at their junction. Some agents eased
this process by separating words with commas or other punctuation—a
choice that ultimately made the code much easier to crack when such
messages fell into enemy hands.
Despite the South’s distinct
advantage in many matters of espionage during the Civil War, this cipher
system proved to be inefficient and often ineffective, since the slightest
error (which anyone trying it will find difficult to avoid) can render a
message illegible. One Confederate major, after trying for twelve hours to
decipher a message containing an error, actually rode his horse around the
Union formations on the battlefield to reach the general who had sent the
message and ask him in person what he was trying to say. The North soon
was able to reverse-engineer this cipher and use it to their advantage.
Sources: William R. Plum,
The Military Telegraph During the Civil War in the
United States
(1882), David Kahn, The
Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing (1967)
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