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

Chapter 5. Dictionary Codes

"We must fall on some scheme of communicating our thoughts to each other, which shall be totally unintelligible to every one but to ourselves."^[67] In 1764, Thomas Jefferson, then twenty years old, and some twelve years before he would craft the Declaration of Independence, wrote from Williamsburg to his dear friend, the Virginia planter and legislator John Page. He lamented the lack of security for carrying on confidential correspondence, and especially the difficulties in hiding information regarding a young lady he was courting. He explained to Page that he would use Thomas Shelton's TachyGraphy, The Most Exact and Compendious Met hode of Short and Swift Writing That Hath Ever Been Published, published over a century ...