In the late summer of 1781, General George Washington finally saw
an opportunity to take New York City away from the British.
Virtually from the beginning of the War for Independence six years
earlier, the British held this key city and Washington long desired
to take it into American hands. Washington laid siege to the town
all summer. With the expected arrival of Admiral de Grasse and
ships of the French fleet along with an additional 3,000 French
soldiers, he believed he may finally have his chance. But on August
14th, he changed his mind and turned his eye to Yorktown, Virginia.
Intelligence, gained partially through the decryption of captured
British messages, gave Washington the assurance he needed to
complete his move on Yorktown. Communication plays an important
role in both a country's diplomacy and its wars. Even if that
country doesn't yet exist. Keeping those communications secret, or
the ability to understand the adversary's communications, can make
the crucial difference in a leader's actions and abilities. At the
time of the American Revolution, both the British and the American
rebels practiced a variety of methods to keep their written
communications secret. Both had networks of spies who needed to
pass on their information right under the noses of their
adversaries. Both turned to invisible inks, hidden messages, and
secret writing in the form of ciphers and codes. Ciphers and codes,
cryptography, change messages into something unintelligible by the
use of keys and lists. Ciphers rearrange letters or change
individual letters into a different letter, number, or symbol based
on a prearranged setting known as a key. Codes change entire words
or phrases into other words, number groups, or symbols based on a
list or a book. To decrypt the secret messages, the receiver needs
access to the original key. Theoretically, the adversary wouldn't
have the key and therefore could not understand the message even if
it was captured. Solving a message without having the key,
cryptanalysis, has been a science employed by governments for as
long as people have been using cryptography to make their messages
secret. European governments have a long history of "Black
Chambers" the offices where other countries' diplomatic mail was
opened and read. If the message was encoded, a Black Chamber tried
to solve the code and read the message. This is the story of
revolutionary communications and cryptologic secrets and the role
they played in America's war for independence.
General
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