Seward's Other Folly: America's First Encrypted Cable

On the early morning of 26 November 1866, a secret encrypted cable from Secretary of State William Seward began arriving in the Paris telegraph office. The dispatch's last installment was completed at 4:30 the following afternoon. "I immediately discerned," wrote American minister to France John Bigelow, "that it was written more for the edification of Congress than for mine, for Mr. Seward knew full well at the moment of writing it that the Emperor (of France] and his Cabinet were all more anxious than any citizen of the United States to hasten the recall of their troops from Mexico, and that they were doing everything that was possible to that end." News and rumors about the lengthy encoded telegram spread rapidly through the French governmental departments and the diplomatic corps: legation representatives flooded Bigelow's office with inquiries. Bigelow maintained a determined silence. The first steamer from New York to arrive in France after the dispatch was written brought a reprint of the confidential cable in the pages of the New York Herald. A confident Bigelow smiled: the reprint "confirmed my first impression that it was written for Congress rather than for the Tuileries."