ABSTRACT
Codes, and especially ciphers, played a major domestic role in military correspondence during the Civil War, as the North and the South frequently employed secret communications on the battlefield. Code symbols were also prepared for the principal countries and cities in the world, for states, major cities, and territories of the United States, and for proper names of men in English. The code of 1867 failed during a crisis to provide the precision so necessary for secret communications. The code which was instituted to lower the cost for encoding cable messages, actually increased decoding expenses. The new code, WE029, prepared for the State Department, would combine the merits of the old by using a simple combination of letters rather than numbers. Codes and ciphers after 1875 would often consist of 5 digit numbers, and thus present fewer problems than WE029. For a cost-conscious State Department, economy was a major feature and reward of the code.
