Civil War Spies and Ciphers

Who doesn't love a good code? We talked about communications in the army, and various codes and ciphers used by the Union and the Confederacy. We also read some great books about Civil War spies---I think our favorite was Sarah Emma Edmonds was a Great Pretender. At one point she was a girl, pretending to be a man in the Union army, pretending to be a female slave in the Confederacy! Amazing.

We had a great time writing secret messages to each other using cipher squares. You can find instructions on this here. The concept is simple, but the codes are surprisingly effective!