Jackson's Secret Code

[Quaama]

A while ago I was reading 'Mapping for Stonewall: The Civil War Service of Jed Hotchkiss' by William J. Miller. In that book Miller describes some of the roles undertaken by Hotchkiss as Jackson's cartographer. One such incident was the following:
On the morning of 30 April 1862, Jackson sent Hotchkiss (with a bed sheet) to climb to the peak at the southern end on Massanutten Mountain. At 0100 that day Hotchkiss (and Company E, 10th Virginia Infantry) set off to climb the mountain. He reached the summit at 0500. From there he could observe the movements down in the valley and the Federal positions near Harrisonburg.
Hotchkiss waved the sheet, according to a prearranged code he and Jackson had decided upon, to inform Jackson of what was happening in the Valley. [Based upon Hotchkiss' information there was no battle and Jackson marched away to later appear at McDowell, and we know what happened there on 8 May.]

The other day while looking around at various things I discovered what I am sure must have been the code that Jackson and Hotchkiss used on that day and, presumably, on other occasions as Hotchkiss made the effort to record it. It was recorded upside down in the back of one of Hotchkiss' notebooks (see p44 of 45 here [I've flipped the image so you should see the code the right way up]). Interestingly, the simpler 'semaphore' movements were reserved for the more common letters (e.g. 'e' is moving the flag just once to the left whereas 'q' requires a move to the right then left and then two more to the right).

 

[Lincoln56]

Very interesting, thanks for posting. Sure looks like you've found the code.

Appears there were no words with 'Z' in them at the time as there is no written entry for this letter that I see.

To me it appears easy to make a mistaken identification of a letter or number if the transmission pace was hurried and didn't adhere to a prescribed cadence, even under excitement or stress. Though of course they were used to doing these signals in a prescribed manner and understood how vital it was to execute it properly.

Impressive they were able to send and receive the correct messages with signals systems such as this. Inattentiveness for a split second on either either the sender or receiver could completely change the meaning.

Feel similarly about morse code.

 

[Quaama]

The missing 'Z' is odd. All I can think of is that there were less words then that used z then compared with current American English (i.e. 'ise instead of 'ize (such as customise), 'yse instead of 'yze (such as analyse). Still, it does seem strange to omit it.

 

[NedBaldwin]

Luckily he didn't have to report on the movements of general Zook