Kids" Page During the Civil War both sides used spies and messengers to send information through enemy lines. Some spies like southerner Rose Greenhow of Washington, D.C. sent secret coded messages which were concealed in small bundles, placed in food baskets and carried by innocent-looking agents posing as farmers or servants. Rose’s message about the position of Union forces just before the Battle of First Manassas is said to have contributed to this early victory for the South. A coded message might look something like this: MARBLES HQW TVJQWU CPFG PGOA VTQQRUYK NNET QUUVJG To understand this message, you would have to know that the word "MARBLES" meant that you should replace each letter with the one two letters before it in the alphabet. Try to translate this message. *Remember that sometimes spies would change the spacing of the letters to make it more difficult for the enemy to crack the code. Click here for the answer. One of the more complicated codes used a chart like this: The letter would be indicated by drawing the angles of the box it was in, with a dot to show whether it was the right or left letter in the box. For instance, if the dot meant it was the left letter in the box, the word NURSES would look like this: Try to write the phrase "ATTACK AT DAWN" using this code. Click here for the answer.