The original function of the trail was to support the logistical movement of men in war… Indian men, that is. It’s most famous use came during the French and Indian war (1754 – 1763) when local Indians disclosed its existence to the French, who then used it to move their own men to attack the British, while the Indians continued to use it to move Braves from one town to another, stopping along the way to terrorize and kill English settlers.

Stories abound of Indian raids on farms along the Mohawk Trail, where settlers were literally butchered in their homes at night. And if the Indians couldn’t find settlers asleep at night, they would otherwise ambush them as the occasion allowed… in the field as they plowed, enroute to town to sell their goods at market, or otherwise finding, fighting and killing the settlers as and where possible. To be fair to the Indians, not every tribe that belonged to the Mohawk nation fought on the side of the French, or massacred settlers. Those that did were mostly from the Abenaki, Oneida and northern section of the Mohawks. Other tribes within the Mohawk nation actually helped the  British, and even protected the settlers.[1]

As a key logistics support mechanism that moved braves along its length from one hot spot to another the Mohawk Trail served early American Indians well… but only… it should be noted… because it was possible to communicate along its length. That is, without the ability to send messages along its length Indians would not have been able to coordinate their activities and their war fighting. Similarly, their terrorist efforts would have amounted to little more than sporadic harassment. In this regard, the Indians had a distinct advantage; while they had the ability to communicate with each other across the entire state of Massachusetts, the colonial settlers were left in the blind. They had no ability to communicate whatsoever… except by horseback, wherein they were required to saddle up a horse, put a rider on it and send him on his way out into a dense forest heading for God knows where, without access to any trails to guide him, or even any clue as to what direction he was heading (except in those cases where he was able to find a tree with moss growing on the North side of its trunk).

As to why the Indians could communicate along the Mohawk Trail’s length, it’s because they recognized that the unique terrain of New England—and Massachusetts in particular—could be turned to their advantage. More specifically, by virtue of the way the ice from the last Ice Age retreated, Massachusetts became topographically composed of tens of thousands of little “hills.” Not mountains, mind you, those exist further north, in Vermont. Instead, Massachusetts found itself populated with little hills that averaged 800 – 1,200 feet in height, with a few mountains of 2,000 feet and above sprinkled in for good measure. Just high enough to allow someone on top of one of these hills to see the surrounding valley, the Indians recognized early on that this height and the spacing of the hills was such that it created an ideal situation for someone standing on top of one to pound out a message on a drum... a message easily heard by another person standing on a nearby hill. And thus long distance communication in colonial America was born, and ciphering invented.[2]

The reality is that even until today someone on a hill in New England can easily send drum based messages 30 to 50 miles away; and it is because of this that the concept of Drums Along The Mohawk came into existence… both as a literary concept, as well as real, functional means for the Mohawk Indians to communicate with each other.

Ciphering then has a long and glorious history in America. Starting with drums, the armies that America’s indigenous citizens and the settlers formed worked hard to develop ever better means of cipher based communication… in order to better allow them to win the numerous little nefarious wars we Americans fought within our country. Starting with the early colonial wars and carrying on up to the Civil War, and the Indian Wars that followed that, better and better means of cipher were developed.

As time passed numerous forms were tried, from cipher by drums and fire (as in smoke from wood fires, not gunfire), to trumpets and eventually banners. As to why the Indians of New England turned to drums instead of smoke signals, the Mohawks stayed away from cipher by fire because of the terrain in New England. In addition to being composed of lots of little hills, it is also composed of lots of dense trees and thicket, which forms a tinder box just waiting for a campfire to get out of hand. Any Indian trying to light a fire to send a message by smoke signals would more often than not find himself a) giving away his location in the woods and b) starting a forest fire, than reaching the intended party with the message. Besides, the Indians were quick to recognize that smoke signals proved useless at night.

That was not the case with trumpets and banners however, and because of this these forms of communication readily took hold as a means of cipher-based communication... especially during America’s Civil War. As we all know, it was during this period that the concept of cipher as a form and method of communication truly came into its own. That is, while the Mohawk Indians may have been the first to perfect drum based cipher communication, they certainly did not recognize it as such. To them it was just a means of sending messages along the Mohawk Trail. The concept of a “communication set” called "cipher" escaped them... but it did not escape the soldiers that watched the Mohawks warn each other, via their drums, of approaching enemies.

As we all know, the men who fought in the Civil War took the Indian's concept of signaling a step further. Where the Mohawks were satisfied with their hill-to-hill signaling technique, the soldiers who fought alongside of them wanted more... they wanted greater distance, speed and reliability. And so slowly, over time, they experimented with drums, whistles, bugles, and banners, until they too were able to claim a form of communication that achieved the coveted goal of getting the message through.

In each case their experiments with long distance communication revolved around one concept: the ability to convert, via ciphering, one form of information into another, such that what could not be transmitted in one form could easily be transmitted in another. In other words, cipher became a concept in and of itself… which from that point forward in history made cipher one of the most critical attributes of the communication process… especially in the military world.

In the end, it all came together during the Civil War. What the American military learned during the Civil War was that with cipher three benefits ensued.

• First, depending on the environment, some forms of cipher worked better at transmitting messages than others. Thus, bugles worked well both during the day and at night. Whereas, as we said earlier, smoke signals lost all value at night.

• Second, the content of messages could be reduced in length from how they might appear in written or oral form to how they were best transmitted when ciphered.

• Third, the process of ciphering a message created a form of encryption in and of itself, although that was not the purpose of ciphering.

Today this all seems obvious… but back in 1861 (when the Civil War started) that was not the case, and it certainly was not the case during the time of the French and Indian War in 1754. During the Civil War period men like U.S. Army surgeon Major Albert Myer had to fight to get their point across that whether signal flags, torches, acetylene lanterns, or heliographs were used the armies that fought the Civil War needed to understand that communication via cipher was a far better and more reliable means of “getting the message through” than sending riders on horseback… either through or along enemy lines, in hopes of finding the intended recipient so that a message could be delivered. And so Alfred Myer pursued the development of cipher as a means of improving military communication, taking it from the stage where the American Indians had left it to its next level. As to where signal flags and the U.S. Signal Corps first successfully used this form of communication, it was at the Battle of Antietam.

Antietam

At Antietam (September 17, 1862), Generals Robert E. Lee and George McClellan faced off near what was called the Antietam creek, in Sharpsburg, Maryland. The battle that ensued was the first battle of the American Civil War to be fought on northern soil (i.e. north of the Mason Dixon line), and although McClellan failed to utilize his numerical superiority to crush Lee’s army, thanks to the Signaleers on his team he was at least able to check the Confederate advance and stop the Confederates from invading the north. More of a draw than a win, the north was happy to at least keep the south bottled up in its own claimed territory, rather than running around in Union territory. With this little caveat, the Union claimed the Battle of Antietam as a tactical win... even though it was not.

Of greater importance, this "tactical victory" came on the heels of a string of Union defeats. By constituting a win, it provided the impetus Abraham Lincoln needed to be able to issue his Emancipation Proclamation. That is, without McClellan’s “win” at Antietam, Lincoln would not have held a strong enough political hand to be able to issue his proclamation. Considering then if it were not for the Signal Corp’s new fangled form of banner waving cipher McClellan most likely would have lost at Antietam, one might be forgiven for saying that if it were not for the U.S. Army Signal Corps Lincoln might never have freed the slaves. A stretch of the imagination perhaps, but there is no doubt that the Signal Corps brought forward the day when the blacks would be freed. As to the battle itself, it was bloody, and remains until today the bloodiest single day in American history, with more than 22,000 casualties.[3]

In terms of why we claim that the Signal Corps saved the day, it is because of how the Union Signal Corps was able to support McClellan’s efforts to contain and stymie General Lee’s movements. Without the information they provided McClellan, and the Signal Corp's ability to relay his commands around the battlefield, it is likely General Lee would have gone home a victor. Instead, located on the surrounding ridges, McClellan’s Signaleers were able to message each other across the full length and breadth of the battlefield.

This ability to instantly communicate, use the signal stations on the ridges above the battlefield to observe and report on the progress of the battle, and most importantly view enemy troop movements behind Confederate lines (and let those in command on the ground know what the enemy was doing) proved not only effective in helping the Union carry the day but addictive to the point that today the U.S. Army still has a Signal Corps. That is, once the value of ciphered messaging was proven at Antietam, there was no way in hell the U.S. Army was ever going to go forward without a Signal Corps of its own.

Purists might say that technically it was in 1860 that the U.S. Army officially adopted Myer’s method of signaling, but just as we made the claim earlier that the Signal Corps enabled Lincoln to issue his Emancipation Proclamation and free the slaves, we will make the point here that until Antietam (1862) the concept of military signaling itself was still on trial.

The question though is not when did cipher signaling become legitimate within the U.S. Army, but how did this cipher signaling actually work? Yes, we know about the waving of flags and such, and have heard the nickname for all of this—wig wagging—but what exactly were the men waving the flags doing, and how did their work translate into words?

Two Versus Four Element Code

Strangely, it was not Major Myer that figured out how to convert words into physical flag movements, and vice versa, but an exceptional young officer named Lieutenant E. Porter Alexander. A Georgian, Alexander started out on the side of the North but soon resigned his commission in the Army and switched sides to the Confederates. Fortunately for the North, before he did so he helped organize, equip, and train the Army of the Potomac in how to use signal flags to communicate, and how to use a form of cipher to expedite the process. Unfortunately for the North, as soon as he switched sides he did the same for what came to be called the Confederate Signal Service. Thus, both armies ended up using essentially the same signaling system… and it was because of this that the cipher process was extended to include the encryption of the core message itself. When that happened the distinction between cipher encoding and encryption became blurred. From that time on Signaleers have tended to use the two terms interchangeably. They should not, as the two words have different meanings, no matter how close the result of the use of one process may resemble the output gained when the other process is used.

As far as Lt. Alexander was concerned, the only thing he worried about was how the process worked. In today's terms he was a geek, and while his sympathies lay with the South he could care less which side used his newly invented signaling technique. His goal was to simplify ciphering to the point that any poorly educated recruit could use the signal flags involved to communicate.

Initially he did this by developing a four-element code. Later he determined that his four element code was still too complex, and so developed a more simplified two-element code.

In the four-element code each movement of the flag was designed to convey one of the numbers 1, 2, 3, or 4. These numbers were then grouped to stand for letters, and in some cases even entire words or phrases. Thus the letter "B" might be ciphered as "1423". Similarly the phrase “End of Word” might consist of the numbers “2121”.[4]

Effective and easy for even a poorly educated recruit to learn, the problem with the four-element code was not that it was difficult to use but that it forced messages to require a signaling format where the signaling device needed to be displayed in four distinct ways. For flags this was not a problem, but for torches, which were used at night, the process became more cumbersome, difficult to master and prone to misinterpretation of the message being sent as the number of torches increased.

Little more than bright spots against a dark background at night, the signal being sent could be misconstrued or misread due to the parallax caused by three dimensional space. For example, if more than one intended receiving party was watching for the message and each of them was separated from the other by more than 60 angular degrees from the signaling source, it was possible for one receiving party to see lights "A" and "B" such that "A" was on the left and "B" was on the right. The other receiving party might see the two lights as being placed exactly opposite, with "B" being on the left. And since it was night and the background dark, there would be no way for the second receiving party to know what he was seeing was wrong do to three dimensional parallax. To reduce the possibility of miscommunication and simplify the whole process, by the end of the war Lt. Alexander developed and put in place a two-element code. Considering that the Union implemented the same two-code format at about the same time, and that Lt. Alexander had by then joined the Confederate Army, one can only surmise that spies within the Confederate Army had relayed to the Union Army the changes Lt. Alexander was making.

Is that possible? Is it possible that the Confederate Signal Service contained spies that worked for the Union Army’s Signal Corps? Nahhh. It never could be. Signaleers wouldn’t disclose top secret stuff, no matter whose side they were on... right?

Either way, the two-element code that Lt. Alexander rolled out had letters that were formed using just the numerals 1 and 2. For those of our readers who read our October 2014 Home Page article on the telegraph, you will readily recognize the correlation between flag waving based on only two numbers… 1 and 2… and what became known as dots and dashes in telegraphy. What you are reading of here, in the case of flag waving or lantern shining based on a two-element code, is in fact the precursor to the use of dots and dashes in telegraphy. Morse Code, as brilliant as it was at the time of its invention, was nothing more than the redefinition of the original two number cipher method defined, tested and perfected by Lt. Alexander during the Civil War, but credited to General Myer.

As for how the two element code worked with flags, in the case of flags a "1" was indicated by moving the flag from the vertical to the sender's left. A "2" was represented with just the opposite motion… moving the flag to the sender's right. In the graphic on the right, the Signaleer is sending a “1”.

Simple, it is. However the simplicity comes in great measure from how human beings “see” things… that is, how our eyes work.

Many of us OCS graduates remember being taught that in low light level conditions we could improve our ability to pick out and recognize things by looking not at the object, but above, below and to the right and left of it. That is, by looking just slightly aside of an object in low light conditions, and circling our eyes around it, it is usually easier to make out an object's shape and there from determine what it is… an enemy soldier, a malformed tree or the barrel of an RPG staring back at you. For some reason though, looking straight at and focusing intently on an object seems to confuse the eye, to the extent that the image transmitted to the brain becomes unrecognizable.

This also happens when signaling with flags, except that the opposite occurs if the flag is being moved. When stationary, observers often cannot even see the flag, never mind make out what code it is sending. But move a flag from a vertical to a horizontal position, and back again, and it becomes unusually easy for a distant observer to make out the movement… even if they are so far away that they cannot see the person waving the flag itself. Because of this, when used for signaling the motion of the flag becomes not only a means for defining the character being sent, but also an integral aspect of the process by which the readability of the signal being sent is enhanced. In other words, wig-wagging increases the signal to noise level: more signal, less noise for the eyes.

All in all, excepting one item that still caused problems with flag based signaling, the cipher method Lt. Alexander developed for wig-wag signaling proved a very effective system. As to what the problem item was, it was obviously the fact that the enemy could read your cipher just as well as your own men could; and so as we alluded to earlier encryption was both needed and invented.

Here too Lt. Alexander came to the rescue. His version of encryption was based on a signal disk made of two concentric circles made of brass (sometimes cardboard was used) riveted together at their center point. One disk (or in modern day parlance, disc) contained the alphabet, the other numeral combinations. By rotating the discs around the rivet and changing the alignment of the numbers and letters the codes relating to which numbers corresponded with which letters could easily be changed. This simple little device—called a cipher disc—ended up doing two jobs in one. It ciphered the message (changing it from one form to another) while at the same time it encrypted it. Astute readers will recognize however that while it was called a cipher disc, its true purpose was to encrypt the message, not encipher it.

With these items out of the way, all that was left was to outfit each group of Signaleers taking to the field with a kit that provided them with all they needed to do the job. Called “Signal Parties” the men involved carried a standard assemblage of different combinations of flag sizes, colors, and staff lengths to both increase the readability of the signal being sent and allow it to be sent over longer distances. During the Civil War signal kits issued by the U.S. Army included:

• Seven different flags in three different sizes; 2'x2', 4'x4', and 6'x6'.

–  The 2-foot flag permitted sending a signal over short distances in tactical situations where the flagman had to lie down or signal from cover.

–  Based on battle tactics of the time, the 4-foot flag suited most battlefield engagements done on horseback or by infantry in line, and ended up being the most commonly used.

–  The 6-foot flag was employed for extra long distances.

• Color combinations employed included red or black with a white center square, and white with a red center square.

–  The color choice was up the Signaleer, with the color selected in any given situation being that which he felt gave the best contrast to the background he found himself standing in front of.

• Army issued flag staffs were made of hickory and came in 4-foot sections that could be assembled to become longer lengths.

–  Myer's Manual of Signals stated that with a 12-foot staff and 4-foot flag, signals “are easily read at a distance of 8 miles at all times, except in cases of fog or rain. They are read at 15 miles on days and nights ordinarily clear.”

• Special torches fueled with turpentine were also provided. These were used to send signals at night.

–  Lt. Alexander’s solution to the night time parallax problem was to have one torch placed on the ground. The other was then attached to the top of a signal staff and held above the ground-mounted torch. Called a “flying torch” the Signaleer could then move it from side to side relative to the motionless foot torch, thus sending either a "1" or "2", based on whether the staff was moved to the right or left.

• Telescopes and field glasses were also included in the field kit, and were considered an absolutely essential part of a Signal Party's equipment.

As in the Signal Corps today, Union officers back then were fully accountable for their equipment and were under strict orders not to let any of it fall into enemy hands.

As for the Signal Party itself, in true U.S. Army style it varied between squad and platoon size, based on the task at hand. For small Signal Party outposts a squad composed of an Officer and two Privates was sufficient. Since signaling meant that more than one signal post had to be manned, generally these three person squad sized units tended to be grouped into platoon sizes that, while small by today’s standards, made sense at the time. Referred to as detachments, the ratio of Officers to men was the same in one of these platoon/detachments as for the previously mentioned squad size of one Officer and two Privates. The reader can see this in the photo taken by Alexander Gardner of a Signal Detachment on Elk Mountain east of the Antietam battlefield. There one can see three Officers and six Enlisted Men, the equivalent of three Signal Party squads.

To prevent the cipher code from falling into enemy hands, only the Officer had access to the cipher wheel. He alone was responsible for enciphering and deciphering messages… or encrypting and decrypting them if you prefer. The enlisted men were responsible only for flagging the signals and reading and recording incoming message codes. Once received, the message was given to the Officer for conversion back to English.

In terms of how these men were picked, notwithstanding Lt. Alexander’s effort to make the process so easy a poorly educated recruit could do it, Signalmen were selected by examinations and were generally more educated than the average recruit. Commissioned Officers, already presumed to have a higher degree of education (or at least a well connected uncle able to get them a commission…) were nevertheless required to pass tests in reading, writing, composition, arithmetic, chemistry, natural philosophy, surveying and topography. Fail at any one of these and you could not be a Signal Officer.

The Life Of A Signaleer

Duty wise, these very early Signal Parties not only served as communicators they also assisted Cobat Commanders with recon, surveillance and even development of field tactics. This was natural after all, since in doing their basic duty they usually sat far above the madding crowd, at a high point on the terrain from which they could survey the entire battlefield. This, plus their mobility tended to cause Combat Commanders to turn to Signal Officers for not just information on what was transpiring on the battlefield, but also what kinds of tactics might work given the particular situation. In fact, it was in just this way that the Signaleers that supported George McClellan helped him figure out where to move his men to thwart Robert E. Lee’s effort to break out into the northern Maryland countryside, presumably to make a mad dash for Washington D.C.

Overall, much like in combat today, the life of a Signaleer in those days was often one of sheer terror. Signal Parties posted to the field often found their locations overrun by the enemy. Those who stayed behind and worked at HQ however usually lived a life of relative comfort… at least until their next field assignment came up. Regardless of where you worked though, combat in the 1800s was hard... Officer or Enlisted, you existed in a world exposed to the elements, located in remote and isolated locations, lived hard, and experiencing both privation and danger. It was not a life for the weak of spirit or body. But it was most definitely the kind of life you sought if you wanted to be one of the very few who actually contributed to the winning of a battle—and all of this because the concept of cipher that the Mohawk Indians of New England perfected with their drums was able to be ported to signal flags and torches.

As for those of our readers saying we are making far too much here of the importance of the Signal Corps, and the contribution Signal Parties made to battles, let us take a moment to look at what actually happened at Antietam.

The Battle

Major General George B. McClellan was clearly not the best Commanding General the U.S. has ever had. After all, Lincoln relieved him because he couldn’t seem to get off of his duff and get after the Confederate Army. An over cautious man, how he handled the Battle of Antietam was in keeping with his style: do nothing, pray for more troops for your side, and hope the enemy goes away. Given that situation, the information the Signal Corps provided to him about enemy activities during the battle was crucial to his being able to avoid a defeat. Actually, to be more accurate, we should say that the information the Signal Stations provided to his subordinate Commanders was crucial to McClellan’s being able to avoid a defeat, since it was their mostly independent acting on the information the Signal Stations provided them that allowed these Commanders to turn the Confederates and prevent their entry into Union Territory, as Lee had intended.

Lee being, aware that the Army of the Potomac was shadowing him, picked a piece of ground over which the engagement could take place on the basis of what suited him. From his perspective the ground was appropriate for a defensive engagement, but dangerous if you were the one on the offensive. McClellan seemed not to see this, as he took up a position that put the Potomac River behind him, effectively cutting off much of his maneuverability. Even so, at first glance McClellan's plan seemed sound, as he stated his intentions as being one of overwhelming Lee’s left flank and rolling it up in a southward direction, until Lee's Confederate Army was crushed.

On the surface this seemed good, except for one thing: McClellan failed to exercise command and control over his Army. As a result, rather than performing an enfilading action in a southern direction, all he ended up doing was diffusing the combat, south along the length of the battle line.

The actual process of this happening occurred in several segments throughout the day. The first four hours of fighting took place in an area that covered farmer David Miller’s thirty-acre cornfield… in the northern part of the Antietam battle area. A bloody battle, the Battle of the Cornfield was indecisive, doing little more than to force the combatants to move to the south of their then current positions, in order to gain more room for maneuver and cover.

Quite naturally, as the Confederates moved to their right, in a southerly direction, while the Union troops moved to their left… in the same southerly direction, they ended up facing off against each other once again… except this time on a fresh battle space where no defenses had been prepared. Hastily digging in and trying to set up artillery along the lines, the Union Army mounted a series of massively bloody head-on attacks against Lee’s center. These attacks took place along a depression in the ground known as Bloody Lane. Eventually, the Union troops made some headway and finally over-ran the area around Bloody Lane. Yet tough as the fighting was and considering the slight Union advantage gained on this field of fire, the outcome was still indecisive.

The battle having flowed from its beginning on the north of the battlefield, towards the middle in the area around Bloody Lane—and no consequential outcome having been gained by either side—the pulse and pace quite naturally continued in a southerly direction towards the end point of Lee’s line... further south still from where the second segment of the battle ended.

Located to the right of Lee, as he stood on his own line looking out to the east at the battlefield, the end point of his line was where the last action of the day took place. Here the Union troops once more hit Lee’s line head on, this time piercing it in an area that had been weakened when Lee removed men from this point to reinforce other sections to the north, in the center of the battlefield. Yet while Lee’s line was pierced, McClellan’s over cautious nature stopped him from following up on this opportunity. Feeling that after a full day’s fighting, and little-to-no progress, Lee's actions must be a trap, McClellan hesitated. In that short blink of an eye Lee moved into his line a series of late-arriving Confederate reinforcements brought up by A.P. Hill. Hill's men essentially sealed the hole in the Confederate line and saved the day.

By the time dusk came around, Lee’s Army had suffered 10,318 casualties out of the 38,000 men he had brought to the field. McClellan saw laying dead in front of him 12,401 of the 75,000 men he had brought to the field.

As night set in Lee began withdrawing across the river to safety, completing his escape by the end of the day on the 18th.

At best the battle was a draw. At worst it was a defeat for the Union in that in this one opportunity another commander might have been able to deal a death blow to General Robert E. Lee’s army. Be that as it may be, the draw that McClellan took pride in accomplishing would never have happened if McClellan had been forced to fight without the information his Signal Stations provided him with—or more accurately again, provided to his subordinate Commanders.

Who were these subordinate Commanders, and where did they get their battlefield information from? The answer of course was from battlefield observations and reports, the most accurate of which would have come from the Signal Stations that were set up along the battlefield. However, to determine where these Signal Stations were located and exactly how much of the battlefield they could see we have to turn to the Atlas to the Official Records of the Battle of Antietam, assembled by the U.S. Government. These records, when combined with those of the Virginia Historical Society and other research groups, help us locate both the Union as well as Confederate Signal Stations. Having said this, we should clarify that there is some disagreement on exactly how many Signal Stations existed on both sides on the actual day of the battle, and where they were. That being the case, the graphic at right shows our best guesstimate. For our part, having combed through dozens of archives and field maps, what we have depicted here is as accurate as any our readers are likely to find.

Notwithstanding this, we offer this one correction to the map at right: we know that General Lee moved his HQ on the 18th of September, and his HQ Signal Station followed him in the process. Thus what we show here is his HQ Signal Station location on the 17th, the day of the battle.

Similarly there is a disagreement as to exactly where the U.S. signal station on Elk Mountain was located. On our graphic it is shown off the right edge of the map as the “Mountain Signal Station”. Some placed this Station, a critical one because of the fact that it relayed signals to General Burnside, higher than where we have indicated it is. Others even lower. Our estimate is based on recent field excavations on a farm in the vicinity of where we have shown it; a farm whose owners just shortly after the battle petitioned the U.S. Government for redress and payment for lost money due to the 1.5 acres of trees that were cut down to create a more clear field of view for the “mountain signal station”. Considering that this Mountain Signal Station had the best field of view of the battlefield, it’s involvement in helping McClellan’s subordinate Commanders stalemate this battle is important.

Lieutenant Joseph Gloskoski was the OIC of the Elk Mountain Signal Station. He claimed it overlooked the battlefield from the east. Higher than most, Lt. Gloskoski reported that during the battle he was able to communicate with at least five different stations on the field, although we have shown this Station on our map as communicating with only two: General Burnside’s Signal Station and the second of two Signal Stations located at General McClellan’s headquarters at the Pry House. In addition to these two, Lt. Gloskoski said his men could see and transmit ciphers to General Hooker's headquarters on the Union right, and “two stations in the center of our lines.” One of these was possibly at the Roulette farm, the other may have been the Signal Station just to the north of the Roulette farm station.

It’s because of this that the Signal Corps was able to provide so much information on the troop movements behind the lines, as well as the course of the battle. Under such conditions it was to be expected that the OICs of these Signal Stations went from being mere cipher transmitters to tactical advisors to the subordinate Commanders running the show. And it was in this vein that Lt. Gloskoski's Elk Mountain station sent the most famous signal of the battle, one which saved the day for the Union. To wit, late in the afternoon his Signal party observed Lieutenant General A.P. Hill's division of Confederates approaching the battlefield after its long march from Harpers Ferry. Seeing them fall into line, Lt. Gloskoski ordered that an urgent message be sent to Gen. Burnside, instructing him to prepare to take tactical action. Out of character for a Second Lieutenant to send what amounted to an order to a General, Lt. Gloskoski carefully worded his message as follows:

“Look well to your left. The enemy are moving a strong force in that direction.”

In the stilted language of the day, his message was nothing short of an instruction for Burnside to move his men to intercept, fix and defeat a threat coming on his flank… something Burnside was clearly not aware of and if not met properly would have caused the Army of the Potomac, with its back to the river and no room to maneuver, to suffer an enfilading defeat.

With this we rest our case.

In terms of how it evolved and has been used in war in America, by the time of the Civil War the concept of "cipher"—i.e. the process of changing one form of information into another, so that it can be more effectively handled and transmitted—had proven its value. Beginning with the Mohawk Indians in the French and Indian War, carrying forward through the Revolutionary War, and on up to and including the Civil War, cipher helped America’s leaders chart a destiny for our country, one that helped form our republic. Further to this, as a tool of the U.S. Army Signal Corps the concept of cipher actually underwrote much of America's development, with some of the most important events in our nation’s history having had their outcome determined by its use. In just the example above we have seen that it proved its merit by enabling a situation where the political outcome from the Battle of Antietam could be used by President Lincoln to free the slaves. It also helped stop General Robert E. Lee from invading the North and doing to it what Sherman did on his march to the sea. Overall, it is worthwhile for Signaleers to recognize how critical the invention and development of cipher was to the success of our country.