TheCodeBreakers
correspondents ... no doubt much of the cloud which hangs over the
congressional intrigues of that critical period would be removed,"
mourned Francis Wharton in 1889 in The Revolutionary Diplomatic
Correspondence of the United States.
But other scholars looked upon the cryptograms as a challenge. One
of the first of these was a transplanted German whose services to English
historiography were of high importance.
Gustave Adolph Bergenroth was born February 26, 1813, at
Marggrabowa, which his biographer called "an insignificant town in the
remotest and dreariest corner of East Prussia." He attended the
University of Konigsberg, where he was very popular with his fellow
students and where he sustained a severe injury to his right wrist in
duelling. After working in Cologne and Berlin as an assessor, with time
out for a trip to Italy necessitated by his liberal views, he quit his job and
sailed in 1850 for California as a pioneer. The racy style of his first
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