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| A Signal tower before Petersburg, Va. |
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on shipboard, and, in one instance, Lieutenant Brown told me that through the information he imparted to a gunboat off Suffolk, in 1863, regarding the effects of the shot which were thrown from it, General Longstreet had since written him that the fire was so accurate he was compelled to withdraw his troops.
The signals were made from the tower of the Masonic Hall in Suffolk, whence they were taken up by another signal party on the river bluff, and thence communicated to the gunboat.
Not long since, General Sherman, in conversation, alluded to a correspondent of the New York Herald whom he had threatened to hang, declaring that had he done so his “death would have saved ten thousand lives.”
The relation of this anecdote brings out another interesting phase of signalcorps operations.
It seems that one of our signal officers had succeeded in reading the signal code of the
enemy, and had communicated the same to his fellowoffi-cers.
With this code in their possession, the corps was enabled to furnish valuable information directly from Rebel headquarters, by reading the Rebel signals, continuing to do so during the Chattanooga and much of the Atlanta campaign, when the enemy's signal flags were often plainly visible.
Suddenly this source of information was completely cut off by the ambition of the correspondent to publish all
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