ABSTRACT
With the presidency of Thomas Jefferson beginning in 1801, encoded dispatches from American ministers stationed in London, Paris, The Hague, St. Petersburg, and Madrid reflected the serious power struggles within Europe and the consequent dangers to the American republic. American ministers and the State Department relied on the older code system and, therefore, ran the risk of having their dispatches decoded by foreign cryptographic branches. The classic American diplomatic nomenclator, in terms of length of service and number of ministers who employed it, was first used in diplomatic messages in 1803. Petersburg exceeded that from any other American ministei during the years 1810, 1811 and 1812, as he sought to explain the commercial crises and warfare involving the United States, and, as well, to improve commercial relations between the United States and Russia. Encoding problems and mistakes continually hampered the American ministers in Europe.
