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204 CHAPTER 10. TRANSPOSITION CIPHERS
The early form of Stager’s ciphers was similar to the Myers example. Here
is one sent at the very beginning of the war.
Example: [Plum]
Parkersburg, VA. June 1, 1861.
To Maj. Gen. G.W. McClellan, Cincinnati, Ohio:
Telegraph the have be not I hands profane right hired held must start
my cowardly to an responsible Crittendon to at polite ascertain engine
for Colonel desiring demands curse the to success by not reputation nasty
state go of superseded Crittenden past kind of up this being Colonel my
just the road division since advance sir kill. (Signed) F.W. Lander
With possession of the codebook we’d look up the keyword “Telegraph” to
learn that this message is eight lines long, with seven columns. Further that the
plaintext was inserted in the order up the 6th column, down the 1st, up the 5th,
down the 2nd, up the 4th, and down the 3rd. (From now on we will abbreviate
this as U6, D1, U5, D2, U4, D3.) Finally that the seventh column is filled with
nulls and the message must be pulled off row by row in the usual order.
To decipher, we reverse the steps. So we first write the message in 8 rows of
7 columns each, and then pull off the columns in order. 15
the have be not I hands profane
right hired held must start my cowardly
to an responsible Crittended to at polite
ascertain engine for Colonel desiring demands curse
the to success by not reputation nasty
state go of superseded Crittenden past kind
of up this being Colonel my just
the road division since advance sir kill
Up the 6th column and down the 1st begins the message:
“Sir. My past reputation demands at my hands the right to ascertain the
state of the advance. Colonel Crittendon, not desiring to start, I have
hired an engine to go up road. Since being superseded by Colonel Crittendon,
[I] must not be held responsible for [the] success of this division.”
⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄
15 We have always done transposition by putting the plaintext words or letters in rows in
the usual order and pulling off the columns via the keyword order. This is an example of the
reverse process: put the plaintext message into a rectangle via some order and then pull it off
row by row, and then to decipher put the ciphertext into the rectangle in order and pull off
the plaintext by the keyword ordering.