Civil War Era Ciphers

This video discusses two main ciphers during the Civil War. The Union used a route cipher and the Confederates used a cipher wheel. The techniques in this video are a simplified version of their ciphers. Officially the Confederates used a Vigenere Cipher with the cipher wheel. This means the key shift isn't the same throughout the message. For more information, check out the Vigenere Cipher online. The Union's route cipher had two parts. The first part is they replaced important words with different words. For example, Lincoln = Oak tree. When they created their grid they still encrypted by reading along the columns; however, they didn't always read it in order. In this video we read column 1 then column 2 then column 3, etc. The union's keyword would indicate the order of the columns. For example, the keyword could tell you to read down column 3 first, then column 1, then column 4, etc.