In late 2010, early 2011, The Museum of the Confederacy made an announcement that immediately got my attention. A 147 year old code had been cracked by David W. Gaddy, a retired National Security Agency analyst and the coauthor of Come Retribution: The Confederate Secret Service and the Assassination of Lincoln, the groundbreaking “Black Flag warfare” book co-written by the late great General William A. Tidwell and the equally grand and lamented historical detective James O. Hall. Gaddy and I, of course, share a common interest: the ciphers, codes and covert operations of the Civil War. So much so, in fact, it can be said with a certain degree of confidence, the forthcoming tome Dixie Reckoning: A Reassessment of the Lincoln Assassination & Lost Confederate Treasury picks up the trail that the trio tracked in 1988.

As important a discovery as Gaddy’s deciphering of the Vicksburg vial’s note was, as with most findings of what’s seemingly been hiding in plain sight all along, it only tells a tad of the tale of what actually happened at Vicksburg. It involves a clandestine affair that has few rivals in the annals of U.S. military intelligence history and is also a saga about the activities of a man with an apt nickname, The Southern Union Spy. However, that story shall come soon enough here. For now, let’s begin with a bottle, a bullet, and a now broken coded message belonging to the Museum of the Confederacy.

Back To The Future

The bottle had been there for so long it was easy to forget it was even there. One sure thing was known about it, and that was it had sat undisturbed on a shelf since 1896 when it had been given as a gift to the Museum from Captain William A. Smith, of King George County, Virginia who had served during the Vicksburg siege. The only other thing that could be said about it was that it apparently did not reach its intended recipient because the bottle appeared to all eyes to have never been opened before. Until that is, Catherine M. Wright, the Museum of the Confederacy’s Collections Manager decided it was high time to find out what exactly was in the bottle.

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