<p>The glass vial stopped with a cork contained a coded missive to Lt Gen John C Pemberton, who was besieged in the Mississippi city by Union forces led by Ulysses S Grant. After six weeks, people in Vicksburg had resorted to eating cats, dogs and leather, and making soup from wallpaper paste.<br /><br />The encrypted six-line message was dated July 4, 1863, the date of Pemberton's surrender, and would have offered no hope to him. It said: "You can expect no help from this side of the river," 'The Daily Telegraph' online reported.<br /><br />The source of the message is thought to have been Maj Gen John G Walker, of the Texas Division. Pemberton had also held out hope that General Joseph E Johnston, and his 32,000 Confederate troops camped south of Vicksburg, would eventually come to his aid, but message said that's not going to happen.<br /><br />Catherine Wright, collections manager at the Museum of the Confederacy, said: "He's saying, 'I can't help you. I have no troops, I have no supplies, I've no way to get over there.' It was just another punctuation mark to just how desperate and dire everything was."<br /><br />The bottle also contained a bullet, which was thought to have been to weigh it down if the messenger was caught and had to throw it in a river.<br /><br />It had been kept in the museum since 1896 before being opened. The message initially appeared to be a random collection of letters but was deciphered after several weeks by David Gaddy, a retired CIA code breaker.<br /><br />It had been drawn up using the Vigenere cipher, which involves shifting letters of alphabet a set number of places.</p>
<p>The glass vial stopped with a cork contained a coded missive to Lt Gen John C Pemberton, who was besieged in the Mississippi city by Union forces led by Ulysses S Grant. After six weeks, people in Vicksburg had resorted to eating cats, dogs and leather, and making soup from wallpaper paste.<br /><br />The encrypted six-line message was dated July 4, 1863, the date of Pemberton's surrender, and would have offered no hope to him. It said: "You can expect no help from this side of the river," 'The Daily Telegraph' online reported.<br /><br />The source of the message is thought to have been Maj Gen John G Walker, of the Texas Division. Pemberton had also held out hope that General Joseph E Johnston, and his 32,000 Confederate troops camped south of Vicksburg, would eventually come to his aid, but message said that's not going to happen.<br /><br />Catherine Wright, collections manager at the Museum of the Confederacy, said: "He's saying, 'I can't help you. I have no troops, I have no supplies, I've no way to get over there.' It was just another punctuation mark to just how desperate and dire everything was."<br /><br />The bottle also contained a bullet, which was thought to have been to weigh it down if the messenger was caught and had to throw it in a river.<br /><br />It had been kept in the museum since 1896 before being opened. The message initially appeared to be a random collection of letters but was deciphered after several weeks by David Gaddy, a retired CIA code breaker.<br /><br />It had been drawn up using the Vigenere cipher, which involves shifting letters of alphabet a set number of places.</p>