General: Charles A. Dana, Esq., has been appointed a special commissioner of this department to investigate and report upon the condition of the pay service in the Western armies. You will please aid him in the performance of his duties, and communicate to him fully your views and wishes in respect to that branch of the service in your command, and also give to him such information as you may deem beneficial to the service. He is specially commended to your courtesy and protection. Yours truly,
Edwin M. Stanton.
I started at once for Memphis, going by way of Cairo and Columbus.
I sent my first dispatch to the War Department from Columbus, on March 20th. It was sent by a secret cipher furnished by the War Department, which I used myself, for throughout the war I was my own cipher clerk. The ordinary method at the various headquarters was for the sender to write out the dispatch in full, after which it was translated from plain English into the agreed cipher by a telegraph operator or clerk retained for that exclusive purpose, who understood it, and by another it was retranslated back again at the other end of the line. So whatever military secret was transmitted was at the mercy always of at least two outside persons, besides running the gantlet of other prying eyes. Dispatches written in complex cipher codes were often difficult to unravel, unless transmitted by the operator with the greatest precision. A wrong word sometimes destroyed the sense of an entire dispatch, and important movements were delayed thereby. This explains the oft-repeated "I do not understand your telegram" found in the official correspondence of the war period.
I have become familiar since the war with a great many ciphers, but I never found one which was more satisfactory than that which I used in my messages to Mr. Stanton. In preparing my message I first wrote it out in lines of a given number of words, spaced regularly so as to form five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten columns. My key contained various "routes," to be followed in writing out the messages for transmission. Thus, a five-column message had one route, a six-column another, and so on. The route was indicated by a "commencement word." If I had put my message into five columns, I would write at the beginning the word "Army," or any one in a list of nine words. The receiver, on looking for that word in his key, would see that he was to write out what he had received in lines of five words, thus forming five columns; and then he was to read it down the fifth column, up the third, down the fourth, up the second, down the first. At the end of each column an "extra" or "check" word was added as a blind. A list of "blind" words was also printed in the key, with each route, which could be inserted, if wished, at the end of each line so as still further to deceive curious people who did not have the key. The key contained also a large number of cipher words. Thus, P. H. Sheridan was "soap" or "Somerset"; President was "Pembroke" or "Penfield." Instead of writing "there has been," I wrote "maroon"; instead of secession, "mint"; instead of Vicksburg, "Cupid." My own cipher was "spunky" or "squad." The days, months, hours, numerals, and alphabet all had ciphers.
The only message sent by this cipher to be translated by an outsider on the route, so far as I know, was that one of 4 P.M., September 20, 1863, in which I reported the Union defeat at Chickamauga. General R. S. Granger, who was then at Nashville, was at the telegraph office waiting for news when my dispatch passed through. The operator guessed out the dispatch, as he afterward confessed, and it was passed around Nashville. The agent of the Associated Press at Louisville sent out a private printed circular quoting me as an authority for reporting the battle as a total defeat, and in Cincinnati Horace Maynard repeated, the same day of the battle, the entire second sentence of the dispatch, "Chickamauga is as fatal a name in our history as Bull Run."
This premature disclosure to the public of what was only the truth, well known at the front, caused a great deal of trouble. I immediately set on foot an investigation to discover who had penetrated our cipher code, and soon arrived at a satisfactory understanding of the matter, of which Mr. Stanton was duly informed. No blame could attach to me, as was manifest upon the inquiry; nevertheless, the sensation resulted in considerable annoyance all along the line from Chattanooga to Washington. I suggested to Mr. Stanton the advisability of concocting a new and more difficult cipher, but it was never changed, so far as I now remember.
It was from Columbus, Ky., on March 20, 1863, that I sent my first telegram to the War Department. I did not remain in Columbus long, for there was absolutely no trustworthy information there respecting affairs down the river, but took a boat to Memphis, where I arrived on March 23d. I found General Hurlbut in command. I had met Hurlbut in January, when on my cotton business, and he gave me every opportunity to gather information concerning the operations against Vicksburg. Four different plans for reaching the city were then on foot, the essential element of all of them being to secure for the army on the high ground behind the city a foothold whence it could strike, and at the same time be supplied from a river base. The first and oldest and apparently most promising of these plans was that of the canal across the neck of the peninsula facing Vicksburg, on the Louisiana side. When I reached Memphis this canal was thought to be nearly done.
The second route was by Lake Providence, about forty miles north of Vicksburg, in Louisiana. It was close to the western bank of the Mississippi, with which it was proposed to connect it by means of a canal. The Bayou Macon connected Lake Providence with the Tensas River. By descending the Tensas to the Washita, the Washita to the Red, the Red to the Mississippi, the army could be landed on the east bank of the Mississippi about one hundred and fifty miles south of Vicksburg, and thence could be marched north. McPherson, with his Seventeenth Corps, had been ordered by Grant on January 30th to open this route. It was reported at Memphis when I arrived there that the cutting of Lake Providence was perfectly successful, but that Bayou Macon was full of snags, which must be got out before the Tensas would be accessible.
The third and fourth routes proposed for getting behind Vicksburg—namely, by Yazoo Pass and Steele's Bayou—were attracting the chief attention when I reached Memphis. Yazoo Pass opened from the eastern bank of the Mississippi at a point about one hundred and fifty miles above Vicksburg into Moon Lake, and thence into the Coldwater River. Through the Coldwater and the Tallahatchie the Yazoo River was reached. If troops could follow this route and capture Haynes's Bluff, fourteen miles from the mouth of the Yazoo, Vicksburg at once became untenable. The Yazoo Pass operation had begun in February, but the detachment had had bad luck, and on my arrival at Memphis was lying up the Yallabusha waiting for re-enforcements and supplies.
An attempt was being made also to reach the Yazoo by a roundabout route through Steele's Bayou, Deer Creek, the Rolling Fork, and the Big Sunflower. Grant had learned of this route only a short time before my arrival, and had at once sent Sherman with troops and Admiral Porter with gunboats to attempt to reach the Yazoo. On March 27th reports came to Memphis that Sherman had landed twenty regiments on the east bank of the Yazoo above Haynes's Bluff, and that the gunboats were there to support him. Reports from other points also were so encouraging that the greatest enthusiasm prevailed throughout the army, and General Grant was said to be dead sure he would have Vicksburg within a fortnight.
Five days later, however, we heard at Memphis that there had been a series of disasters in these different operations, that the Yazoo Pass expedition was definitely abandoned, and that General Grant had an entirely new plan of campaign.
I had not been long at Memphis before I decided that it was impossible to gather trustworthy news there. I had to rely for most of my information on the reports brought up the river by occasional officers, not all of whom were sure of what they told, and on the stories of persons coming from the vicinity of the different operations. Occasionally an intelligent planter arrived whom I was inclined to believe, but on the whole I found that my sources of information were few and uncertain. I accordingly suggested to Mr. Stanton, three days after my arrival, that I would be more useful farther down the river. In reply he telegraphed:
War Department,
Washington City, March 30, 1863.
C. A. Dana, Esq., Memphis, Tenn., via Cairo:
Your telegrams have been received, and although the information has been meager and unsatisfactory, I am conscious that arises from no fault of yours. You will proceed to General Grant's headquarters, or wherever you may be best able to accomplish the purposes designated by this department. You