• The original enciphered and deciphered congressional instructions to the American peace commissioners, attested by Benjamin Franklin and John Adams
• The exact directions used in negotiating the Treaty of Paris with Great Britain
• The classified documents that paved the way for the independence of the United States
  

On 15 June 1781, Congress sent these instructions to the five commissioners it had appointed to negotiate the peace with Great Britain: John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, Henry Laurens, and Thomas Jefferson (who immediately declined). Laurens effectively refused to honor his appointment as a commissioner despite Congress's repeated insistence that his participation "could not be dispensed with”; his participation was largely disengaged (and clouded by a conflict of interest, given that his former business partner in the slave trade, Richard Oswald, was one of the British negotiators). That left but three of the appointed men, and they did not form a cohesive nor harmonious group.

Franklin did not like Adams. Adams and Jay did not much like the French. Adams was suspicious of Jay. Robert H. Ferrell has written "The three American commissioners … were unlike in temperament and outlook. Franklin was full of equanimity and hope, trusting to time and the advantages of history. Adams was irascible, pugnacious, eager to force his presence upon the French court, desirous of defending every shred of American rights against France and all other powers on earth. Jay was distrustful, suspecting intrigue” (American Diplomacy, p. 42).

Adams felt he had a special responsibility for negotiating peace, having been appointed to the position by the Continental Congress in 1779, the delegates then believing that Adams would have the courage to stand up to both France and England. Franklin, meanwhile, held a valuable position in France as American representative, and he had worked diligently to get French support for the Americans. When the Congressional instructions arrived, Adams objected to having to share the role, and was equally displeased with the terms of the instructions. "The instructions drawn up by the Continental Congress for the guidance of American peace plenipotentiaries could hardly have been more favorable to France had they been written by Vergennes himself,” argues historian John C. Miller.

Adams’ annotation on the document—“Ultimately to govern ourselves by their advice & opinion”—cuts to the quick of his disapproval of French intervention. He cites the unequivocal directive to the Commissioners to seek France’s intimate participation: "You are to make the most candid and confidential communications upon all subject to the ministers of our generous ally, the King of France; to undertake nothing in the negotiations for peace or truce without their knowledge and concurrence; and ultimately to govern yourselves by their advice and opinion, endeavouring in your whole conduct to make them sensible how much we rely on his Majesty's influence for effectual support in every thing that may be necessary to the present security, or future prosperity, of the United States of America.” Adams’ repetition of the Instruction’s insistence on compliance with France illustrates how noxious a pill this was to swallow.

Political scientist Jack Rakove speculates that the instructions "had been drafted under heavy, perhaps improper pressure from France, and which were meant to limit the very judgment and discretion for which Congress had presumably appointed them. In effect, for a few months the three diplomats were responsible for determining the national interest of the United States” (Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America, pp. 246-247). Franklin held closely to the instructions from Congress that the Commissioners should maintain confidential relations with French ministers and that they were “to undertake nothing in the negotiations for peace or truce without their knowledge and concurrence,” and were ultimately to be governed by their “advice and opinion.”

Jay and Adams disagreed with Franklin, believing that France intended to impede the territorial aspirations of the Americans to its own benefit and that of its ally Spain. Jay and Adams outvoted Franklin and dealt directly with British Commissioners, did not consult the French, and eventually obtained “one of the two most advantageous treaties ever negotiated for the United States” (Richard B. Morris, The Peacemakers, p. 438).

Benjamin Franklin, nearly 70 when the war for independence broke out in April 1775, was the most prominent—and internationally famous—member of the Committee on Secret Correspondence when it was founded that Fall. Franklin’s early communications with the French scholar Charles William Frederick Dumas asked him to serve as an American agent—and Dumas accepted with a ciphered letter on 30 April 1776. Franklin soon was named one of the three commissioners to obtain French aid and traveled abroad to so. There he adopted Dumas’ ciphers in his own dispatches. The need to conceal communications was immediately understood by Congresss, as the Committee wrote to Dumas: “We pray you to have frequently your news; and if you make use of cipher, the Doctor [Franklin] has conveyed the key to one of our members” (24 October 1776).

Various ciphers were employed throughout the Revolutionary period and those in the United States were pioneered by the Harvard-educated orator James Lovell. One of the founders of American crypt-analysis, Lovell was a delegate to the Continental Congress and a member of the Committee for Foreign Affairs. In this capacity he deciphered Dumas’ letters. Lovell’s own cipher system was based upon the first two or more letters in a keyword, and was far more rudimentary than Dumas’s (his was based upon consecutively numbering letters and punctuation marks in a passage of text—for an extensive survey of the codes and ciphers used in the Revolutionary era, see Ralph E. Weber, United States Diplomatic Codes and Ciphers 1775-1938, Chicago: Precedent Publishing, 1979, and the expansive investigations by
Tomokiyo Satoshi in his “Cryptiana” blog). Franklin preferred Dumas’ cipher, but it was still relatively simplistic, and intercepted documents were more likely to be broken. The alternative to these alphanumeric or polyalphabetic schemes were so-called book ciphers, refined by John Jay himself.

Samuel Huntington’s enciphered document illuminates new information about how the instructions were sent to the American commissioners. Ralph E. Weber states that all copies of the instructions used the same cipher, and details John Adams’ difficulty with it: “Adams could not read his enciphered dispatches. Indeed, the Instructions to the Honble John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, Henry Laurens, and Thomas Jefferson ministers plenipotentiary on behalf of the United States to negotiate a Treaty of Peace sent after June 15, 1781 by the President of Congress, Samuel Huntington, were enciphered in the CR cipher which Adams found unreadable!” (Weber, p. 31).

The CR cipher was advanced by James Lovell of the Committee of Foreign Affairs. It was a polyalphabetic cipher shifting the letters in the plaintext according to an algorithm, resulting in different letters in the ciphertext (this provided more security than a simple monoalphabetic substitution cipher). Lovell’s cipher was notorious, though, for confusing his correspondents, among them John Adams. Lovell wrote to Adams: “ If you receive any Thing from me in Cyphers it will be upon the same Mode as that which I have communicated to Doctr. Franklin and which will serve great Numbers with equal safety. It is the Alphabet squared as on the other Side and the key Letters are the two first of the Surname of the Family where you and I spent the Evening together before we sat out from your House on our Way to Baltimore” (Lovell to John Adams, 4 May 1780). Problems arose, though, with Lovell’s own errors with his code (one enciphering error could corrupt all the subsequent deciphering).

Adams’ own copy of the instructions for peace negotiations were sent in the CR cipher and puzzled Adams to the extent that he could only decipher the first few lines – in large part because the cipher had been erroneously used. The present enciphered document, however, did not use the CR cipher as Weber stated: it used a book code preferred by Jay and Franklin, both of whom were more adept at handling the tasks of encrypting and decrypting.

Dictionaries are most useful in designing book ciphers because they provided easy sources of words and are relatively easy to procure. In a book code, the writer enciphers a word by page number and line number. When the page consists of more than one column they use a letter (“a”, “b”, etc.), or add underlines, overdots, overlines so that the word position can be mapped on the page without referencing the columns. Correspondents often employ an offset that is added to page or line numbers to further complicate the procedure.

The book ciphers preferred by Jay and Franklin were far less prone to the transpositional errors Adams faced in the CR cipher. Analysis of the enciphered document reveals that its source was the 1771 third edition of Abel Boyer’s English-French Dictionary. Jay had been using this for some time, as he wrote in a letter to Livingston on 19 February 1780:

“The cipher I sent you has become useless & must be omitted. Take the following. The second part of Boyer's Dictionary, in which the English is placed before the French. It is not paged. You will therefore number the pages, marking the first page with No. 1 and so on. In each page, there are three columns. Let c denote the first, a the second and b the third. Count the number of the words from the top to the one you mean to use inclusive, & add seven to it. Thus for instance, the word absent is the third word in the third column of the second page, and is to be written in cipher as follows - 2.b.10. The dictionary I have was printed in London in 1771 and is called the thirteenth edition with large additions.”

Given that the instruction at the end of the document—“Mr Jay has the key”—was presumably added for Franklin’s benefit, the book cipher is confidently identified as Weber’s WE079, a favorite of Jay. The bars over and below some figures are consistent with this cipher as worked out between Jay and Charles Thomson in correspondence dating from February 1780:

"If I could have written to you in cypher you should have received a very long letter from me by this opportunity. That this obstacle may be removed I propose the following cypher viz. The The second part of Boyers Dictionary where the English is placed before the French. It is not paged. You will therefore number the pages, beginning with Page Letter A and so on regularly. When you write, add five to the number of the page. There are three columns. To distinguish them, let a - under the first figure denote the first, a - under the second the second, & a - under the third the third. Count the words from the bottom, including the one you use and to the amount add 10. Thus, the word abased is the sixth word from the bottom in the third column of the first page and is to be written as follows 16.6. The word abhorrent is the fifth word in the second column of the second page. Add ten to the place of the word. Add five to the number of the page, and put the - under the second figure. Thus 15.7. The Dictionary I have is the thirteen Edition & was printed in London in the year 1771.

"There are names which it may be necessary to use, and which you will not find in the dictionary. distinguish them as follows—

"A

"Gen. Armstrong XIII

"Mr. Allee XII

"S. Adams XI"

The manuscript of Thompson’s reply of 7 June 1780 (now at Mount Vernon), proposed an improvement to Jay’s system: "I recd. your favor of 29 Feby. Would it not be convenient to count down as well as up distinguishing the former thus 186 and the latter 166” (i.e. while "16" in Jay's example 16.6 refers to the sixth line from the bottom (augmented by ten), one might also count the word from the top and write 186, with the overline designating the counting down from the top).

In the present document, the page offset used with enciphering the plaintext was +5, but the line offsets vary, indicating that there may have been other private communication that helped guide Franklin’s efforts to read the text. Positive identification of the type of cipher, the book used, and the means of decoding sheds new light on the transmission of these secret documents during the Revolutionary period, particularly illuminating how different codes were used for different recipients, each in some way reflecting the preferences and skills of their recipient.

John Jay did not stay with this exact cipher for long: “Although Jay briefly used the three-column Boyer’s Dictionary for his correspondence with Livingston and Samuel Huntington, he turned to another book for encoding dispatches he wrote to his secretary of legation, William Carmichael … Entick’s Spelling Dictionary (London, 1777)” (Weber, p. 50). Jay’s own letterbook, located at the Huntington Library, covering the period from 24 December 1779 to 17 November 1782, contains the first letter in code which Jay sent to Carmichael in Madrid, dated 21 February 1780. Jay continued to create, abandon, and adopt new codes throughout this period.

[June 15, 1781]

"Instructions to the honourable John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, Henry Laurens and Thomas Jefferson, Ministers Plenipotentiary, in Behalf of the United States, to negociate a Treaty of Peace.

"Gentlemen,

"You are hereby authorised and instructed to concur in behalf of these United States with his most christian Majesty, in accepting the Mediation proposed by the Empress of Russia and the Emperor of Germany.

"You are to accede to no Treaty of Peace which shall not be such as may 1st effectually secure the Independence and Sovereignty of the Thirteen United States according to the Form and Effect of the Treaties subsisting between the said United States and his most christian Majesty; And 2dly. in which the said Treaties shall not be left in their full Force and Validity.—

"As to disputed Boundaries, and other Particulars, we refer you to the Instructions given to Mr John Adams dated 14 August 1779, and 18 October 1780, from which you will easily perceive the Desires & Expectations of Congress. But we think it unsafe at this Distance to tye you up by absolute & peremptory Directions upon any other Subject than the two essential Articles abovementioned.— You are therefore at liberty to secure the Interest of the United States in such manner as Circumstances may direct, and as the State of the belligerent—and the Disposition of the mediating—Powers may require. For this purpose you are to make the most candid and confidential Communications upon all subjects to the Ministers of our generous Ally the King of France; to undertake nothing in the Negotiations for Peace or Truce without their Knowledge and Concurrence; and ultimately to govern yourselves by their Advice and Opinion; endeavouring in your whole Conduct to make them sensible how much we rely upon his Majesty's Influence for effectual support in every thing that may be necessary to the Peace, Security, and future Prosperity of the United States of America.

"If a Difficulty should arise in the Course of the Negociation for Peace, from the Backwardness of Great Britain to acknowledge our Independence, you are at liberty to agree to a Truce, or to make such other Concessions as may not affect the Substance of what we contend for, and provided that Great Britain be not left in Possession of any Part of the United States.—

REFERENCES:
Ralph E. Weber. United States Diplomatic Codes and Ciphers 1775-1938. Chicago: Precedent Publishing Inc., 1979; Richard B. Morris, editor. John Jay: The Making of a Revolutionary. Unpublished Papers 1745-1780. New York: Harper & Row, 1975

PROVENANCE:
Helen Fahnestock Hubbard, collection formed by David M. Newbold (Parke-Bernet, 22 May 1956, lot 9, comprising the deciphered Instructions in the hand of William Temple Franklin, offered with related letters) — The Elsie O. and Philip D. Sang Foundation (Sotheby Parke Bernet, 26 April 1978, lot 16 (the same collection) — Sotheby’s New York, 26 April 1983, lot 85F (undesignated consignor, part of "The Treaty of Paris Collection": a collection of eighteen manuscripts and printed documents relating to efforts to end the American Revolution by diplomatic negotiations; offered were the enciphered document and the deciphered document by William Temple Franklin) — This portion of "The Treaty of Paris Collection" subsequently acquired by the present owner