In December 1798, a most unique and innovative sliding cipher, devised by John Quincy Adams, then minister in Berlin, was sent by its inventor to William Vans Murray, American ambassador to The Hague. One year earlier, the XYZ Affair and further misunderstandings regarding American support for the French leaders in their struggle against the British armed forces had severed diplomatic relations between the United States and France. And soon America fought an undeclared naval war against her former ally, France. Because of President John Adams's determined crusade for peace, and also due to his skillful dealings with a war-hungry Congress, this armed struggle did not erupt into a full-scale war. The Hague, during these years, became a crucial window for Murray who, in concert with the French envoy located there, arranged for further negotiations and reconciliation with France.
Both Murray and Adams recognized the necessity for better diplomatic communications security, especially in war-ravaged Western Europe. Two decades earlier, Adams, then ten years old, traveled with his father to France in 1778, studying there and at Amsterdam and Leyden University before accompanying Francis Dana, the new American minister to Russia in 1781. Less than two years later, he returned to The Hague for further studies before going to Paris with his father for final peace negotiations with Great Britain. Returning to America, he completed his studies at Harvard College, studied law, and finding the profession unattractive, he turned to politics and soon won a commission in 1794 from President George Washington as minister to the Netherlands. However, French armies occupied that nation so Adams visited other major countries, particularly England, before being assigned to Berlin. Adams's foreign travels and first-hand experiences with espionage in France and Russia quickly taught him the critical skills for secret secure communication. In addition, both Adams and Murray were well aware that their dispatches could be used by one American political party or the other or, indeed, be published in the American newspapers.
Adams's deep anxieties about European intercept practices regarding foreign dispatches were accurate. During 1798 and 1799, British postal authorities and other agents seized almost thirty highly confidential dispatches from Murray to Rufus King, American minister to Great Britain; King to John Quincy Adams; Adams to King; and King to Murray. Most of the letters sent in cipher were broken by the British; however, only about 15 percent of those in code were read.[111]
Though seven years older, Murray had much less experience than Adams with foreign cultures and surveillance: he did pursue three years of law studies in England soon after the American Revolution. Adams would become his instructor in secret writing. Three days before Christmas in 1798, Adams sent a novel cipher strip to Murray, and he carefully explained that the device must be kept confidential. Extremely cautious, he reported that instructions for the system would follow in another dispatch.[112] And on Christmas Day, Adams sent the second part of what he termed "my hieroglyphics." The precise written explanations told how to fit the sliding strip into the cipher sheet and instructed Murray to use the cipher only for corresponding with Adams. Also included with the explanations was a four-sentence paragraph in cipher for Murray to decipher.[113]
Murray, the eager pupil, in his dispatch on New Year's Day, thanked his friend for the "C," as he termed the cipher, which he had received just the previous evening "and can not for my life make it out. I have turned the affair upside down and downside down, this side and the other, placed the slip in all possible bearings, and 'have worked all night but caught no fish' - for I was at it till late" and pleading tired eyes, Murray turned to other less frustrating and complicated matters.[114]
In fairness to Murray, it must be noted that the device required some ingenuity, particularly because Adams's original instructions on Christmas Day simply said, "The first figure 21 is only to give the key — draw your strip so that the letter A shall stand opposite to that figure & you will then be able to decypher the whole." This brief instruction befuddled Murray much like James Lovell's cipher explanations to John Adams almost two decades earlier. Adams followed up with a more lengthy narrative one week later and was pleased to learn from his pupil that he had acquired the skills necessary for using the cipher. And during the next ten months, the correspondents composed confidential enciphered messages about the economic affairs of the Court of Vienna in relation to London; the determination of the empress of Russia to send 8,000 men into Italy; that the emperor of Germany left his own father-in-law to inevitable destruction, as the king of Prussia abandoned the House of Orange; and French spying.[115]
Several times during 1799, Adams's imaginative cipher still caused Murray difficulties. This brought Adams to comment, "My poor cipher! I meant to make it complicated & increase the difficulties of decyphering. And Lo! I made it unintelligible to my own correspondent.... You laughed at me for my great A, & little a, & something (bouncing) 'B' but my object in using a great & a small alphabet was, that the same letters might without repetition designate different words."[116] Embarrassed with his mistakes and forgetfulness, Murray hastened to praise Adams's creation, calling it the finest he had ever seen. And he added, he hoped the secretary of state would adopt the system and make up three or four different sets, for he feared the Adams-Murray model might be known: "But be assured also that the office itself is under the guard but of honesty, and has few barriers against the thousand ways and means by which papers are obtained in Europe."[117]
European espionage agents and practices continued to challenge American diplomatic ministers, conscientious about making their communications safe and secure. The John Quincy Adams sliding cipher provided a most fascinating though very limited response to these threats.
Note
SPAIN | FRANCE | GREAT BRITAIN | THE HAGUE | PRUSSIA | MEXICO | RUSSIA | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1816 | 132 | 105 | – | – | – | – | 7 |
1817 | – | 13 | – | – | – | – | – |
1818 | – | 293 | 102 | – | – | – | 74 |
1819 | – | 56 | 25 | – | – | – | – |
1820 | 18 | 4 | – | – | – | – | – |
1821 | – | 8 | 22 | – | – | – | 38 |
1822 | 103 | 12 | – | – | – | – | – |
1823 | 12 | 18 | – | – | – | – | – |
1824 | 3 | – | – | – | – | – | – |
1825 | 140 | – | – | – | – | 707 | – |
1826 | – | – | – | – | – | 108 | – |
1827 | – | – | 10 | – | – | – | – |
1828 | – | – | – | – | – | 14 | – |
1829 | – | – | – | – | – | 50 | – |
1830 | – | – | – | – | – | 48 | – |
1831 | – | – | – | – | – | 32 | – |
1832 | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
1833 | – | – | – | – | – | 11 | – |
1834 | – | – | – | – | – | 9 | – |
1835 | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
1836 | – | – | – | – | – | 857 | 19 |
1837 | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
1838 | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
1839 | – | – | – | – | – | 86 | – |
1840 | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
1841 | 144 | – | – | – | – | – | – |
1842 | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
1843 | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
1844 | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
1845 | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
1846 | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
1847 | – | – | – | – | – | 175 | – |
1848 | 14 | – | – | – | – | – | – |
Source: Ralph E. Weber's United States Diplomatic Codes and Ciphers, 1775–1938 Encoded lines in American dispatches from European legations, 1816–1848
[111] "Deciphers of Diplomatic Paper," LI, American 1780–1 841, British Museum, Add. Mss. 32303. These papers were reproduced for the Division of Manuscripts of the Library of Congress by Grace Gardner Griffin. Also cf. Samuel Flagg Bemis, "British Secret Service," American Historical Review, 29 (April 1924), 483.
[112] John Quincy Adams to William Vans Murray, n.p., 22 December 1798, in the Adams Family Papers, 608 rolls. Massachusetts Historical Society, 1954–1956, Roll 133.
[113] Ibid., 25 December 1798, in ibid., Roll 133.
[114] William Vans Murray to John Quincy Adams, n.p., 1 January 1799, in Worthington Ford, ed., "The Letters of William Vans Murray," Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1912, 502.
[115] Adams-Murray correspondence during January, May, September and November 1799, in Adams Family Papers, Roll 133,394,395,396, and Ford, "LWVM," 595.
[116] John Quincy Adams to William Vans Murray, 2 November 1799, in Adams Family Papers, Roll 134.
[117] William Vans Murray to John Quincy Adams, n.p., 12 November 1799, in Ford, "LWVM," 617; the original letter is in Adams Family Papers, Reel 396. At the top of the dispatch there was the notation, "This is almost too bad to trust by post – observe the seals."