Decode cipher 2 yourself
Below is the second Beale cipher, 762 numbers, with the Declaration of Independence as its key, numbered the way the decoder in the story numbered it. Each number counts words through the Declaration, and the first letter of each word spells the message. The steps list every number and its word, and the key panel marks the words used.
Show the steps
- 115 → word 115 "instituted" → I
- 73 → word 73 "hold" → H
- 24 → word 24 "another" → A
- 807 → word 807 "valuable" → V
- 37 → word 37 "equal" → E
- 52 → word 52 "decent" → D
- 49 → word 49 "entitle" → E
- 17 → word 17 "political" → P
- 31 → word 31 "of" → O
- 62 → word 62 "should" → S
- 647 → word 647 "independent" → I
- 22 → word 22 "them" → T
- 7 → word 7 "events" → E
- 15 → word 15 "dissolve" → D
- 140 → word 140 "is" → I
- 47 → word 47 "Nature's" → N
- 29 → word 29 "the" → T
- 107 → word 107 "Happiness" → H
- 79 → word 79 "evident" → E
- 84 → word 84 "created" → C
- 56 → word 56 "opinions" → O
- 239 → word 239 "usurpations" → U
- 10 → word 10 "necessary" → N
- 26 → word 26 "to" → T
- 811 → word 811 "fundamentally" → Y
- 5 → word 5 "of" → O
- 196 → word 196 "for" → F
- 308 → word 308 "Britain" → B
- 85 → word 85 "equal" → E
- 52 → word 52 "decent" → D
- 160 → word 160 "foundation" → F
- 136 → word 136 "of" → O
- 59 → word 59 "requires" → R
- 211 → word 211 "disposed" → D
- 36 → word 36 "and" → A
- 9 → word 9 "becomes" → B
- 46 → word 46 "of" → O
- 316 → word 316 "usurpations" → U
- 554 → word 554 "the" → T
- 122 → word 122 "from" → F
- 106 → word 106 "of" → O
- 95 → word 95 "unalienable" → U
- 53 → word 53 "respect" → R
- 58 → word 58 "mankind" → M
- 2 → word 2 "in" → I
- 42 → word 42 "Laws" → L
- 7 → word 7 "events" → E
- 35 → word 35 "separate" → S
- 122 → word 122 "from" → F
- 53 → word 53 "respect" → R
- 31 → word 31 "of" → O
- 82 → word 82 "men" → M
- 77 → word 77 "be" → B
- 250 → word 250 "under" → U
- 196 → word 196 "for" → F
- 56 → word 56 "opinions" → O
- 96 → word 96 "Rights" → R
- 118 → word 118 "deriving" → D
- 71 → word 71 "separation" → S
- 140 → word 140 "is" → I
- 287 → word 287 "now" → N
- 28 → word 28 "among" → A
- 353 → word 353 "necessary" → N
- 37 → word 37 "equal" → E
- 1005 → word 1005 "been" → X
- 65 → word 65 "causes" → C
- 147 → word 147 "alter" → A
- 807 → word 807 "valuable" → V
- 24 → word 24 "another" → A
- 3 → word 3 "the" → T
- 8 → word 8 "it" → I
- 12 → word 12 "one" → O
- 47 → word 47 "Nature's" → N
- 43 → word 43 "of" → O
- 59 → word 59 "requires" → R
- 807 → word 807 "valuable" → V
- 45 → word 45 "and" → A
- 316 → word 316 "usurpations" → U
- 101 → word 101 "Life" → L
- 41 → word 41 "the" → T
- …and 682 more.
The key, with the words used marked
What it says
It begins "I have deposited in the county of Bedford, about four miles from Buford's, in an excavation or vault, six feet below the surface of the ground", and goes on to list gold, silver and jewels, says they're packed in iron pots in a stone-lined vault, and that paper number 1 gives its exact location. A handful of letters come out wrong, such as consistcd and varlt. Those are mistakes in the numbers as printed, not in the method.
The story
The ciphers come from a pamphlet, The Beale Papers, published by James B. Ward in Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1885. It tells of Thomas J. Beale, who in 1822 left a locked box with a Lynchburg innkeeper, Robert Morriss, and never came back for it. The box held three ciphers. According to the pamphlet, a friend of Morriss worked out that the second used the Declaration of Independence as its key, but could never read the first or the third.
Why the Declaration had to be miscounted
Cipher 2 doesn't decode against the Declaration as it's usually printed. Its maker used a slightly different text and miscounted it: a word is added in one place, ten words are missing from another, a few single words come and go, and two words are read as a Y and an X. This page rebuilds that numbering from the National Archives text by locating each change by the words around it, and a test checks that cipher 2 decodes to the pamphlet's message.
Ciphers 1 and 3
Put the same key to cipher 1 and it produces nonsense, apart from one striking thing: stretches of the alphabet in order. In 1980 Jim Gillogly published an analysis in the journal Cryptologia showing these runs, such as ABCDEFGHIIJKLMMNOHPP, which you can see by loading cipher 1 above with the same key. Runs like that are vanishingly unlikely by chance, and they suggest the numbers were picked from a numbered Declaration without a real message behind them.
That is one strand of the case that the whole thing is a hoax. Others note that the pamphlet's language resembles the supposed letters of Beale, and that no treasure has ever been found. The case isn't closed, but no solution to cipher 1 or cipher 3 has ever stood up.
Questions
Has the Beale treasure been found?
No. No treasure has been found, and many think it never existed.
What is the key to the Beale ciphers?
Cipher 2's key is the Declaration of Independence, numbered with a few changes. Ciphers 1 and 3 have no known key.
Can I decode ciphers 1 and 3 with this tool?
You can run them against any key text, but nobody has found one that turns them into a message.
Where do the numbers come from?
The 1885 pamphlet, as transcribed on Wikisource from its scan. Cipher 1 has 520 numbers, cipher 2 762, and cipher 3 618.
Sources
- The Beale Papers (1885), Wikisource transcription
- Wikipedia: Beale ciphers
- National Archives: Declaration of Independence, a transcription
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