From The January 26th Chicago Tribune "Union code books surface, but too late for Johnny Reb" by Mike Boehm.
"A long-unknown, 150-year-oldtrove of handwritten ledgers and calfskin-covered code books, which giive a potentially revelatory glimpse into both the dawn of electronic battlefield communications and the day-to-day exchanges between Abraham Lincoln and his generals as they fought the Civil War, now belongs to a California research institution."
The Huntington Library, Art Collection and Btanical Gardens acquired these in a private sale January 23rd and includes 40 cardboard-covered albums of messages written by telegraph operators and walletlike booklets containing key codewords that Union commanders used to keep snoopy Confederates from finding out what they were saying.
The ledgers had been kept by Thomas Eckert who ran the US military telegraph office at the War department from 1863 to 1862. There are also messages from 1862 when he served as telegraph chief for General McClellan.
More than 100 of the telegrams transcribed were sent by Lincoln, many showing his frustration with McClellan.
More to Come. --Old Secesh
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