The message is from a Confederate commander on the west side of the Mississippi River across from Pemberton.
“He’s saying, ‘I can’t help you. I have no troops, I have no supplies, I have no way to get over there,’ ’’ Museum of the Confederacy collections manager Catherine M. Wright said of the author of the dispiriting message.
The bottle, less than 2 inches long, had sat undisturbed at the museum since 1896. It was a gift from Captain William A. Smith, of King George County, who served during the Vicksburg siege.
It was Wright who decided to investigate the contents of the strange little bottle containing a tightly wrapped note, a .38-caliber bullet, and a white thread.
“Just sort of a curiosity thing,’’ said Wright. “This notion of, do we have any idea what his message says?’’
The answer was no.
Wright asked a local art conservator, Scott Nolley, to examine the clear vial before she attempted to open it. He looked at the bottle under an electron microscope and discovered that salt had bonded the cork tightly to the bottle’s mouth. He put the bottle on a hotplate to expand the glass, used a scalpel to loosen the cork, then gently plucked it out with tweezers.
The sewing thread was looped around the 6 1/2-by-2 1/2-inch paper, which was folded to fit into the bottle. The rolled message was removed and taken to a paper conservator, who successfully unfurled the message.
But the coded message did not reveal itself immediately.
A retired CIA code breaker, David Gaddy, was contacted, and he cracked the code within a few weeks.
A Navy cryptologist independently confirmed Gaddy’s interpretation. Commander John B. Hunter, an information warfare officer, said he deciphered the code over two weeks while on deployment aboard an aircraft carrier in the Pacific. A computer could have unscrambled the words in a fraction of the time.
The code is called the Vigenere cipher, a centuries-old encryption in which letters of the alphabet are shifted a set number of places so an “a’’ would become a “d’’ — essentially, creating words with different letter combinations.
The code was widely used by Southern forces during the Civil War, according to Civil War Times Illustrated.
The source of the message was probably Major General John G. Walker, of the Texas Division, who had under his command William Smith, the donor of the bottle.
The full text of the message to Pemberton reads:
“Gen’l Pemberton:
You can expect no help from this side of the river. Let Gen’l Johnston know, if possible, when you can attack the same point on the enemy’s lines. Inform me also and I will endeavor to make a diversion. I have sent some caps [explosive devices]. I subjoin a despatch from General Johnston.’’
The last line, Wright said, seems to suggest a separate delivery to Pemberton would be the code to break the message.
“The date of this message clearly indicates that this person has no idea that the city is about to be surrendered,’’ she said.
The Johnston in the dispatch is General Joseph E. Johnston, whose 32,000 troops were encamped south of Vicksburg and kept from assisting Pemberton by 35,000 Union troops.
