Armstrong's coded postscript to Madison, 1808

Companion: John Quincy Adams’s St Petersburg despatches, said to be in this code, are in another, and Erving’s 1807 letter is in Pinckney’s: two legation codes.

01 The document

The letter is a "private" one, written from the spa town of Bourbon-l'Archambault where Armstrong was taking the waters. Its clear text answers Madison's private letter of 20 July: it dismisses the complaints of Fulwar Skipwith (the departing commercial agent at Paris), warns that the embargo is "not felt" in France and "forgotten" in England, and says of David Bailie Warden, secretary of the legation and candidate for the Paris consulate, only that "a letter of the same character from me to the President … will give you my opinion of the fitness of M. Warden for the consular office at Paris: to this therefore I refer." The opinion Armstrong would not put in clear follows in code, as a postscript.

Founders Online (Early Access document 99-01-02-3466, from the forthcoming Papers of James Madison, Secretary of State Series) prints the groups as follows; the reading of the manuscript differs in one group (§6):

1394. 1116. 1273. 250. 1165. 1405.
970. 148. 1459. 1482. 1201. 821. 130. 821.
1429. 720. 970.  and  1482.  much better
992. 1319. 1048. 584. 687. 249. 736. 1013.
750. 967.  In a word  1459. 1482. 1202.
1561.  in general. Next to  927. 1090. 1052.
832. 1482. 934. 510. 860.  but  1459. 1482.
1320. 384. 1280. 1218. 1481. 1483. 555.

The second line begins "972." in the manuscript (Founders' "970." is a misprint for the).

02 The code

Armstrong's despatches from Paris between 1804 and 1810 use a single large code in which 972 = the. Ralph Weber's survey of American diplomatic codes notes some forty letters in it among the Despatches from United States Ministers to France (DUSMF, NARA Record Group 59, microcopy M34, rolls 13–14). It is not the code of Armstrong's letter of 20 February 1808, a distinct system whose key has not been recovered. Its structure, as recovered:

• Groups run from 1 to about 1600. Each stands for a whole word (Emperor 32, Spain 326, Minister 61), a syllable (con 470, tion 352, ness 832), or a single letter (s 1116, n 821, d 1001). Names are spelt out in syllables: Gu-sta-va-us, Et-ru-ria, Y-ru-jo, Dan-ish, O-mea-ly.
• The vocabulary is laid out in many short alphabetical runs, not one alphabetical sequence. For instance 1–130 is one run of words (circumstance, commerce, communicate, character … Minister … these, thousand, toward … week, without, yesterday), 130–417 a second (America, between, business, confide, contrary, country … Prince, Queen, reason, report, Russia, second, secret … which, whom, word, would, your), and above 417 the syllables come in blocks that restart the alphabet every few dozen numbers (1201 a … 1230 c; 1268 ed … 1298 ex; 1302 ide … 1348 broa; 1405 be … 1443 good; 1500s fa … man … now). Within a run the order is alphabetical, so the value of an unknown group is bracketed by its known neighbours.
• Common elements have homophones: re is 555, 561, 562, 869, 871 and 1379; on is 945 and 946; an 1210 and 1216; ing 1478 and 1594.
• Armstrong writes a point after each group; the clerk who decoded despatches at the Department wrote the plaintext in pencil above each group and a short dash above groups that continue a word already written out (Et|–|–, for Etruria).

03 Sources for the key

3.1 The known-plaintext letter of 4 May 1806

Tomokiyo had already used the one letter for which both the coded original and a clear copy survive, Armstrong to Madison of 4 May 1806 (Founders 99-01-02-0393) on the Spanish minister's discovery of the confidential Florida proposals, to assign about 230 groups, with a few marked doubtful. This gave a base of 68 firm values used here, among them the, of, to, is, he, a, and, by, in, s, n, and showed the alphabetical layout.

3.2 The Department's pencil decodes (M34 roll 13)

The main source is the microfilm itself. NARA has digitised M34 roll 13 ("Nov 12 1804 – Dec 27 1807", catalogue ID 188671172; 393 frames). Frames 0192–0201 carry a long political despatch of October 1806 (written just after Lord Lauderdale's departure from Paris, with news of "two Russian armies now entering Silesia") whose every code group has the clerk's decode written above it. A scoring pass over the roll for faint mid-grey pixels away from ink located the annotated frames; the pairs were then transcribed by eye, frame by frame, and recorded with a confidence grade and their frame/line reference.

About 500 pairs were collected this way, 352 of them legible with confidence. Merged with the 4 May 1806 values the table stands at 580 distinct groups (§7). Ambiguities in the pencil (the roll is a 1940s microfilm of faint graphite) were resolved by requiring each reading to sit in its alphabetical slot and to recur consistently across frames.

3.3 Interpolation

Twenty groups needed for the postscript and the February letter were not in either source. Each was inferred from context and then checked against its alphabetical slot; all twenty fit. Examples: 1394 between 1393 purp and 1395 Italy must open a new run, and it gives ru in three independent places (ru-in, Et-ru-ria, Y-ru-jo); 250 lies between 249 other and 252 own and reads ought; 1273 between 1272 eight and 1279 Emp reads el; 384 between 383 w and 385 was reads ward; 1320 between 1319 li and 1325 long reads like; 1483 between 1482 is and 1484 it reads ish.

3.4 A control text: the letter of 22 February 1808

Armstrong's private letter of 22 February 1808 (Founders 99-01-02-2733) contains about 150 code groups embedded in a clear political survey of Europe. It shares no groups of interest with the known-plaintext letter, so it serves as an independent check. With the merged table it decodes, with gaps, as follows:

The ruin of Gustavus is at last resolved. Russia is to seize Finland, while France & Denmark take possession of Sweden. Denmark cannot ha[ve] very willingly … independence. And it is certainly amongst the most cruel circumstances of the British attack on her Capital that it … her … of her … and [like]wise … of conduct, and thrown her completely into the arms of France, while the Danish Minister was this morning pouring out his complaints to me upon this subject, and stating the … of his government and the means taken by it to avert the introduction into Denmark of a general army … of Hamburg waited in the antichamber, with the intelligence that the Prince of Ponte Corvo had already entered Holstein … There is no one of even tolerable knowledge and sagacity who does not see this. Yet wonderful to tell Russia not only does not … but actually assists him in accomplishing one half of the object. Can Finland compensate for a state of things which shall put it in the power of France to lock up the Baltic …?

The sentences that come out whole (the ru-in of Gu-sta-va-us is at last resolve-d, the Dan-ish Minister was this morning po-ur-ing out his com-plain-t-s to me upon this sub-ject, a-ve-rt the in-t-ro-duct-ion into Denmark, as-sist-s him in ac-com-pli-sh-ing one half of the object) confirm the table and fix the values ru, ish, Russia (305, which the pencil on frame 0200 also gives) used in the postscript. One group there is anomalous: 946 is on in the 4 May 1806 letter but must be Gu in Gustavus (914 = gu elsewhere): a homophone, or a slip in the manuscript or the transcription.

04 Decipherment of the postscript

green = pencil decode on roll 13 · blue = 4 May 1806 known plaintext · amber = uncertain reading or slot inference · red = inferred here from context and alphabetical position

P.S. Ru-s-el ought to be the consul: he is a-n America-n by bir-th, and is much better qua-li-fi(ed) than any other can-di-da-te. In a word he is above men in general. Next to him in fit-ness is O-mea-ly, but he is like Ward-en an Ir-ish-[man].

4.1 The people

• Warden. David Bailie Warden (1772–1845), born in County Down, a United Irishman exiled in 1799, naturalised American, Armstrong's private secretary and then secretary of legation. He was the front-runner for the vacant Paris consulate and got it; Armstrong removed him in 1810, and when Madison reinstated him in 1811 Armstrong protested in a letter of 3 March 1811 that Warden was "without a single grain of attachment to the U.S." and asked whether "our own country furnish[es] no native citizen willing & able to fill the consulate at Paris". The postscript shows the same animus three years earlier, and its cause: Warden was not American-born.
• O'Mealy. Michael O'Mealy, a Baltimore merchant resident in France since 1793 and still there in 1810 (identified in the Papers of James Madison, Secretary of State Series 10:497 n. 2). The name, of obvious Irish origin, is spelt O-mea-ly.
• Russel. Spelt Ru-s-el. The most probable candidate is Jonathan Russell of Providence, Rhode Island (1771–1832), a merchant in the European trade whom Madison did in fact appoint chargé d'affaires at Paris when Armstrong left in 1810; the identification is inferential, since no other document places him in France in 1808.

05 Method

1. Collect the ciphertext. Founders Online transcriptions of Armstrong's coded letters (4 May 1806, 22 February 1808, September 1807, 30 August 1808) were gathered, and the LOC manuscript images of the 30 August letter retrieved for collation.
2. Locate the decoded despatches. The NARA catalogue entry for M34 roll 13 was downloaded (393 frames). A simple image score (the proportion of mid-grey pixels not adjacent to dark ink) was used as a triage aid while browsing the roll; the annotated frames 0190 and 0192–0201 were confirmed by eye. Rerun over all 393 frames on 16 September 2026 the score does not locate them on its own: grey blank leaves outscore the annotated pages, and only the first, densest page of the October despatch ranks high (third of 392) once the score is restricted to the interlinear band near ink. See targets/armstrong/NOTES.md.
3. Harvest. Each annotated frame was cropped into thirds, contrast-enhanced, and transcribed group by group; every pair was recorded with frame/line and a confidence grade (H/M). Groups seen on several frames were cross-checked.
4. Merge and rank. A script merges the 4 May 1806 values, the harvested pairs and the inferences, ranking readings H > C > M > inferred, and renders any coded passage with unknowns and doubtful values flagged.
5. Infer and verify. Remaining gaps were filled by context and checked against the alphabetical slot; the 22 February 1808 letter served as the independent control.
6. Collate the manuscript. The LOC image of the postscript was enlarged to check every group against the Founders text.

06 Corrections to the printed transcription, and one residual doubt

• Founders prints 1218 in the last line; the manuscript reads 1216 (an), which is also what the sentence requires.
• Founders prints 970. at the start of the second line where the manuscript has 972. (the). The fourth-line group is 1319 (li), as printed. A pencil s below 1116 on the Library of Congress copy shows that a reader in Washington began, and abandoned, a decode.
• The final group is 555 both in Founders and in the manuscript. 555 is re in the code (frame 0195: sco-re), which makes no sense after Irish, whereas 1555 is man (frames 0195, 0200: the command of Prince Charles, man). The reading Irishman assumes Armstrong dropped a digit. The alternative, that the postscript breaks off with "an Irish re–", is noted for completeness.
• In the 22 February letter Founders' 631 (wise) in "his com-631-t-s" is almost certainly 651 (plain), and 916 (had) in "Denmark cannot 916 very willingly" is probably 921 (have); both are single-digit slips of the kind the microfilm hand invites.

07 The other despatches in THE=972, 1807–1810

On 2 and 3 October 2026 the table was applied to the rest of Armstrong’s coded correspondence that is not already in print decoded. Founders Online’s early-access texts of September 1807 to February 1809 contain eleven coded despatches or passages (the postscript is one of them), roll 13 holds the triplicate of 15 November 1807, and NARA M34 roll 14 adds three despatches of 1810 to Secretary of State Robert Smith, whose pencil decodes are on the frames. The earlier estimate of “about forty” was too high: the coded despatches of 1804–07 are printed decoded in the Secretary of State Series, from the clerks’ interlinear decodes.

On 2 October each despatch was decoded from the Founders text, or from a transcription of the roll-14 frames for 1810, with corrections where the frames show that Founders misread a group, and about 160 values forced by context were added to the table. On 3 October the manuscripts themselves were found and read. Roll 13 ends with the triplicate of 15 November 1807 (frame 0377) and the despatch of 27/29 December 1807 (frames 0390–91), and paging the head of every roll-14 frame located every coded despatch of 1808. Almost every one carries the State Department clerk’s pencil decode between the lines. Those decodes, read at full frame resolution (about 150 group values, pencil.tsv), are now the main evidence; where Founders’ group list differs from the manuscript, the manuscript was transcribed (transcripts14.txt). The context values (additions972.tsv) now carry only what the pencil does not cover.

Two shares are measured per despatch. Known: the group’s value is attested independently of this despatch’s context, by the clerk’s pencil over it here or in another despatch, by Tomokiyo’s 1806 known plaintext, or by the 1806 pencil. Reads as sense: the group has a value that is known or forced by its sentence, and the word it gives fits the English; guesses that do not fit, weak additions and the spans listed in sense972.json are excluded. The 2 October column was the share given a value, which is not a sense measure.

Thirteen of the fourteen items read as sense at 95% or more; the exception is the five groups of 26 March 1808, one of whose digits is doubtful on the frame. The 1810 pencil decodes gave new words directly (negociation, convention, reciprocal, justify, uncharitable, fraud …).

What the despatches showed about the code. It has punctuation groups, which the 1806 pencil never wrote out: 1105 comma, 962 full stop, 1104 and 897 semicolon, 895 dash, 1103 question mark, 1162 hyphen (“to-day”), 896 parenthesis; 958 and 588 are nulls that the clerk skips. 608 is u/v (Gusta-v-us, Fo-u-ché), 773 is ea, 910 is go, and 894, 959, 960 and 1109 are digits. Founders misreads about twenty groups in the lists checked.

Four of the five conflicts of 2 October were settled by a third occurrence. 946 is on: the manuscript of 22 February writes 914 (gu) in Gu-sta-v-us, and Founders’ 946 is a misreading. 396 is while (the pencil twice on 25 October); the 17 February 1810 pencil “which” over it is a slip one number off, 395 being which. 1260 is dou (pencil “doubt” on 27 December 1807). 1415 has two values, ble (pencil “blessings”) and be; on 29 December the manuscript has 1405 (be) where Founders printed 1415, so some be readings may be misprints of 1405. 720 is not settled: on 26 March the digit is 720 or 750, and the pencil “brigandage” needs 750 (da).

Still open in them. 22 February 1808, 15 groups that do not read as sense (the man “of Hamburg” in the antechamber, “for ever the [?]an [?]oses of Europe”, and a few syllables), each seen once in a despatch whose body has no pencil decode. 15 February 1808, 7 groups, and two read as Armstrong’s slips that were not checked on the frame. 5 March 1808, three groups under illegible pencil. The 720/750 digit of 26 March. The coded despatches of 1804–07 are printed decoded in the Secretary of State Series and their group lists were not re-checked. The letter of 20 February 1808 is in a different code and stays out (section 06 and the adjudication in the notes).

08 Try the key

Full texts

The transcription and the decryption of every document on this page, so that the reading can be used and checked. Short files are shown here; all are in the repository.

Coded postscript, 30 Aug 1808

John Armstrong, US minister in France, tells Madison in a coded postscript that Russel (most probably Jonathan Russell) ought to be the consul, being American-born and better qualified than any other candidate, and that O'Mealy comes next but is, like Warden, an Irishman: the same animus against David Bailie Warden that led Armstrong to remove him in 1810.

# Armstrong to Madison, coded postscript of 30 Aug 1808 (LoC Madison Papers reel 10 frame 0521). Copied verbatim from the PS string in decode972.py.
# Code groups as read from the LoC manuscript; | separates code runs from plain words; the last group is 555 in the MS, taken as a slip for 1555.
1394 1116 1273 250 1165 1405 | 972 148 1459 1482 1201 821 130 821 | 1429 720 970 | and | 1482 |
much better | 992 1319 1048 584 687 249 736 1013 | 750 967 | In a word | 1459 1482 1202 | 1561 |
in general. Next to | 927 1090 1052 | 832 1482 934 510 860 | but | 1459 1482 | 1320 384 1280 1216 1481 1483 [555=>1555]

# Armstrong to Madison, coded postscript of 30 Aug 1808: decryption

Group-by-group key output saved from `python decode972.py ps` (22 Oct 2026); `?` = uncertain (M), `*` = inferred (I).
The connected reading below is copied verbatim from NOTES.md, "Result".

```
== PS 30 Aug 1808 ==
ru s el* ought* to be | the consul? he is a n America? n | by bir* th | and | is | much better | qua* li fi(ed)* than any other can di | da te | In a word | he is above? | men | in general. Next to | him in fit? | ness is o mea ly | but | he is | like ward* en an ir ish* [ re => man ]

```

    P.S. Ru-s-el ought to be the consul: he is a-n America-n by bir-th, and is much better
    qua-li-fi(ed) than any other can-di-da-te. In a word he is above men in general. Next to
    him in fit-ness is O-mea-ly, but he is like Ward-en an Ir-ish-[man].

> Russel ought to be the consul: he is an American by birth, and is much better qualified than any other
> candidate. In a word, he is above men in general. Next to him in fitness is O'Mealy, but he is, like Warden,
> an Irishman.

<!-- Reading of the coded postscript of 30 Aug 1808, written 23 Oct 2026 (Claude Opus 5.5, verification 5) from texts/ps30aug1808_decryption.md (decode972.py output and the connected reading in NOTES.md "Result"), syllable groups joined into words. Marks: qualifi[ed] = the group 1048 reads "fi", the ending is supplied; Irish[?man] = the manuscript writes 555 (re), read as 1555 (man) with a dropped digit (NOTES.md, "The one doubt"). Inferred group values (I in NOTES.md, each checked against its alphabetical slot) are unbracketed. -->

# Armstrong to Madison, coded postscript of 30 Aug 1808

## Reading

P.S. Russel ought to be the consul: he is an American by birth, and is much better qualifi[ed] than any other
candidate. In a word he is above men in general. Next to him in fitness is O'Mealy, but he is like Warden an
Irish[?man].

Key: code972_partial.json, pairs.txt, additions972.tsv

09 Sources

• Library of Congress, James Madison Papers, Series 1, General Correspondence, reel 10: "J. Armstrong to James Madison, August 30, 1808. Postscript in Cipher", mjm015002; "J. Armstrong to James Madison, May 4, 1806", mjm014590.
• Founders Online, Early Access documents Madison/99-01-02-3466 (30 Aug 1808), 99-01-02-2733 (22 Feb 1808), 99-01-02-0393 (4 May 1806); Armstrong to Madison, 3 March 1811, 03-03-02-0258; John Mitchell to Madison, 4 Nov 1805, 02-10-02-0473 (n. 2, O'Mealy).
• National Archives, RG 59, Despatches from U.S. Ministers to France, M34 roll 13, NAID 188671172, frames 0192–0201.
• National Archives, RG 59, M34 roll 14 (22 Jan 1808 – 14 Sept 1810), NAID 188671566: frames 0024–0025 (15 Feb 1808), 0034 (22 Feb 1808), 0643–0644 (copy of 5/9 Mar 1808), 0476–0477, 0494, 0495 (20 Jan, 2 Feb, 17 Feb 1810, with pencil decodes).
• Founders Online, early-access Armstrong–Madison despatches 99-01-02-2472 (27 Dec 1807), 2703 (15 Feb 1808), 2780 (5 Mar 1808), 2871, 3139, 3164, 3414, 3642.
• S. Tomokiyo, "Unsolved Historical Ciphers", cryptiana.web.fc2.com, and "Decoding Revolutionary Correspondence: Armstrong to Madison", decode20.htm.
• Ralph E. Weber, United States Diplomatic Codes and Ciphers, 1775–1938 (Chicago, 1979), pp. 154, 188.
• C. Edward Skeen, John Armstrong, Jr., 1758–1843: A Biography (Syracuse, 1981).

Code used (Python: frame scoring, table merge and renderer) and the harvested pair list are in the repository.