Masked Dispatches: Cryptograms and Cryptology in American History, 1775-1900

Chapter 1. United Colonies' Cipher

Early in the violence of the American Revolution in 1775, the United Colonies, as they styled themselves before the Declaration of Independence, appealed to King George III for substantial British colonial reforms. As the April violence at Concord and Lexington spread to Breed's Hill in Boston and to New York, patriot leaders, frustrated by the king's inertia, Parliament's continued repression, and the early successes of British troops, sought secret aid from France. Moreover, applauding the appeals of the Philadelphia political pamphleteer Thomas Paine in his essay "Common Sense," published in January 1776, the colonies increasingly united for independence.

In 1775 Charles William Frederic Dumas, one of America's ...