Hello,
I just did a bit of digging and found a possible solution to the code
proposed by a German cryptologist:
http://cryptiana.web.fc2.com/code/madison2.htm
Here's a translation of the German publication that announced the solution:
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://scienceblogs.de/klausis-krypto-kolumne/2015/08/03/verschluesselung-aus-dem-nachlass-von-us-praesident-madison-geloest/&prev=search
I can't find any scholarly publications that cite this work; it seems to
only have circulated in the code-breaking world.
Best,
Rebecca Schneider
Senior Reference Librarian
On Tue, Mar 3, 2020 at 1:39 PM William B. Whitley <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> To all,
>
> I don't anticipate getting an answer to this query, but perhaps folks will
> find it interesting nonetheless. Has a diplomatic code that would have been
> used by Virginia's government during the Revolution ever been found and
> deciphered? The particular code I'm interested in shows up in a letter of
> 30 Nov. 1780 from Philip Mazzei, then serving as the state's agent in
> Europe, to James Madison and can be seen via the link below:
>
> https://www.loc.gov/resource/mjm.01_0298_0300/?sp=2
>
> Volume 2 of the Papers of JM prints the letter and a translation but also
> notes that Madison was unable to decipher the code because he lacked the
> key and later learned that the state's copy of the key was destroyed during
> Benedict Arnold's raid on Richmond. I'm assuming that the trail has run dry
> there, but perhaps in the intervening years another copy of the cipher
> turned up, or some other information on the Virginia government's use of
> codes during the Revolution. With its array of Greek letters, numbers, and
> other symbols, it is entirely different from the code that the state's
> delegates to the Confederation Congress used and that is reprinted in Ralph
> E. Weber's United States Diplomatic Codes and Ciphers. It doesn't match up
> with any of Weber's codes and was likely something Virginia authorities and
> Mazzei cooked up shortly before he was dispatched to Europe in 1779. A
> small scrap of a very similar looking cipher appears in a draft of a letter
> from Thomas Jefferson to Mazzei, which recently turned up at the Biblioteca
> Nazionale in Florence.
>
> Thanks for any help, advice, etc.,
>
> Bland Whitley
> Papers of Thomas Jefferson
>
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--
Rebecca Schneider
Senior Reference Librarian
Library of Virginia
800 East Broad Street
Richmond, VA 23219
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