Anaconda Plan

The Anaconda had a logical development, both in its origin and the way it played out in the experience of battle. The blockade had already been proclaimed by Lincoln. On April 19, 1861, a week after the bombardment of Fort Sumter that marked the outbreak of the war, he announced that the ports of all the seceded states, from South Carolina to Texas, would be blockaded; later, when Virginia and North Carolina also seceded, their coastlines were added.[3] The executive order was not rescinded until the end of the war and so the blockade existed independently of Scott's plan.

In the early days of the secession movement, the status of the border states Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware, all of which allowed slavery, was unclear.[4] All except Delaware had strong pro-Southern interests. Missouri was torn by internal conflict that mimicked in miniature the larger war that was convulsing the nation, Maryland was kept in the Union by jailing many of the opposition faction, and Kentucky tried to keep the peace by proclaiming its neutrality by aiding neither the North nor the South if both would agree to leave the state alone.

Because Congress was not in session to authorize presidential initiatives to suppress the rebellion, the burden of raising troops for the war fell on the loyal state governments. Ohio was particularly active in doing so and early acquired the services of George B. McClellan, who was to serve as the commander of its militia, with rank Major General of Volunteers. In a few weeks, as the state militias were incorporated into the national service, the militias of Indiana and Illinois were added to his command. From this power base, he felt enabled on April 27, 1861, to write a letter to General Winfield Scott outlining his strategy.[5] He proposed an immediate march on Richmond, by now the capital of the Confederacy, directed up the Kanawha River. Alternatively, if Kentucky were to leave the Union, a march directly across that state should take Nashville, and then, he would "act on circumstances."

Scott's endorsement of McClellan's letter, which he submitted to the President, shows that he considered it but not favorably. Firstly, the Kanawha was not suited for water transport and so the march on Richmond would have to be overland and thus subject to breakdowns of men, horses, and equipment. More seriously, western Virginia (West Virginia had not yet parted from Virginia) was still very much pro-Union; according to Scott's estimate, its populace stood five out of seven opposed to secession. An invasion as proposed would alienate many of them and subject both enemies and friends to the ravages of war. The same argument could be applied to Kentucky. Perhaps most damagingly, the war as proposed would subjugate the Confederacy piecemeal, with by necessity the border states bearing most of the burden, "instead of enveloping them all (nearly) at once by a cordon of ports on the Mississippi to its mouth from its junction with the Ohio, and by blockading ships on the sea board."[6]

The germ of Scott's Anaconda Plan for suppressing the insurrection is seen in the endorsement. After giving the plan more thought he submitted his own proposal in a letter to McClellan on May 3, 1861. A second letter, dated May 21, was his final outline of the plan.

Scott was not able to impose his strategic vision on the government. Aged and infirm, he had to retire before the end of the year. He was replaced as General-in-Chief by McClellan.

Battle of Vicksburg, by Kurz and Allison

Under McClellan and his eventual successor in the West, Maj. Gen. Henry Halleck, the Mississippi became a somewhat neglected theater for operations in the West. Halleck, with McClellan's approval, believed in turning the enemy's Mississippi River strongholds rather than attacking them directly, so he moved away from the river.[7] As he saw it, the Tennessee rather than the Mississippi was the "great strategic line of the Western campaign."[8]

The Navy Department, however, remained committed to the idea of opening the Mississippi. In the person of Assistant Secretary of the Navy Gustavus Vasa Fox, it decided early on the capture of New Orleans by a naval expedition from the Gulf of Mexico, after which all other towns bordering the river would fall rather than face bombardment.[9] The task of taking New Orleans was entrusted to Captain (later Admiral) David Glasgow Farragut, who followed his own plans for the battle; running his fleet past the forts that defended the city from the south on the night of April 24, 1862, he forced the city to surrender.[10] After repairing his ships from the damage they had suffered while passing the forts, he sent them up the river, where they successively sought and obtained the surrender of Baton Rouge and Natchez. The string of easy conquests came to an end at Vicksburg, Mississippi, however, as the Confederate position there occupied bluffs high enough to render them impregnable to the naval gunnery of the day.

Following the loss of Island No. 10 shortly before Farragut took New Orleans, the Confederates had abandoned Memphis, Tennessee, leaving only a small rear guard to conduct a delaying operation. In early June, this was swept aside at the First Battle of Memphis by the gunboats of the Western Gunboat Flotilla (soon thereafter to be transformed into the Mississippi River Squadron) and the United States Ram Fleet, and the Mississippi was open down to Vicksburg. Thus that city became the only point on the river not in Federal hands.[11]

Again, the Army under Halleck did not grasp the opportunity that was provided. He failed to send even a small body of troops to aid the ships, and soon Farragut was forced by falling water levels to withdraw his deep-draft vessels to the vicinity of New Orleans.[12] The Army did not attempt to take Vicksburg until November, and then the Army was under the leadership of Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, after Halleck had been called to Washington to replace McClellan as General-in-Chief.[lower-alpha 1]

By the time that Grant became commander in the West, the Confederate Army had been able to fortify Vicksburg and Port Hudson to the south. This 130 mile (210 km) stretch – measured along roads, somewhat longer on the river – including the confluence of the Red River with the Mississippi, became the last contact between the eastern Confederacy and the Trans-Mississippi. Having no doubt of its importance, the government of Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Richmond strengthened both positions. Command at Vicksburg in particular passed from Brig. Gen. Martin L. Smith to Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn to Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton; the size of the defending army increased in step with the advancing rank of its commander.[13]

The campaign for Vicksburg eventually settled into a siege, which terminated on July 4, 1863, with Pemberton's surrender of all the forces under his command. At that time, his army numbered approximately 29,500 men.[14]

When word of the loss of Vicksburg reached the garrison at Port Hudson, Maj. Gen. Franklin Gardner, the commander there, knew that further resistance was pointless. On July 9, 1863, he surrendered the post and its garrison to the Federal Army of the Gulf and its commander, Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks.[15] Henceforth, in the phrase of Abraham Lincoln, "The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea."

USS Kanawha cutting out a blockade runner at the entrance to Mobile Bay

The Anaconda Plan as proposed by Scott relied on the blockade, as he stated it, "so as to envelop the insurgent States and bring them to terms with less bloodshed than by any other plan."[16] Insofar as he foresaw direct combat, it was to be more or less confined to the central thrust down the Mississippi River. Almost surely he did not anticipate the level of violence that it provoked. For that matter, the blockade itself had to be modified by events, provoking much of the bloodshed that he hoped to avoid.

Scott's proposal for the blockade was not properly a strategy although it is often referred to as such by historians. It did not estimate the forces that would be needed to guard the at least 3000 mi (4800 km) of coastline in the seceded states. It did not consider an allocation of resources. It did not set out a timeline or even name points of particular concern. Much of that was later done by the Blockade Strategy Board, a group meeting at the request of the Navy Department but also with representatives from both the Army and the Treasury Department (Coast Survey).[lower-alpha 2] During the summer of 1861, the board issued a series of reports recommending how best to maintain the blockade, taking into account the topography of the coast, the relative merits of the various southern ports, the opposition likely to be encountered, and the nature of the ships that would be used by both sides. The board recommendations concerning the Gulf coast were rather rudimentary and largely ignored, but the blockade on the Atlantic coast followed their plan reasonably closely.[18]

Although a century and a half has elapsed since the end of the Civil War, the importance of the Anaconda Plan remains to some extent a matter of debate. Clearly, the war was not the relatively bloodless affair that General Scott promised in his original proposal. Most historians regard this as merely a modification of the basic strategy in the course of events. At least one historian, however, denies that there ever was anything like a coherent strategy for subduing the South. Rowena Reed[35] contends that the central government in Washington was unable to impose its will on the field commanders, so that the war was a series of independent campaigns, each of which was conducted according to the whims of whatever general happened to be in charge. According to her view, the Anaconda is a later conceptual imposition on events for which order did not exist at the time that they took place.

For the historians who contend that a rational plan existed, the debate, like the plan itself, has two parts. The importance of the campaign to capture the Mississippi River and thereby lop off the Trans-Mississippi is acknowledged. Virtually all present-day historians agree that the Union's Western campaign was at least as significant as that in the East. To the extent that fighting in the West before mid-1863 can be regarded as preparing for or culminating in the capture of Vicksburg, the Anaconda has been validated.

The worth of the Union blockade, however, remains controversial. No one seriously contends that it alone would have won the war for the North. But while it is conceded not to have been sufficient, the question remains if it was necessary, i.e. whether the South would have endured had the blockade not sapped the strength of the Rebel armies beyond the tipping point.

Those who deny the importance of the blockade advance two principal arguments. First, it was never very effective. Over the course of the war, more than three quarters of all attempts to evade the blockade were successful. The one quarter that did not get through can be written off as operational losses. That was because the blockade runners were small and built for speed, rather than capacity.

Second and perhaps more important, the Southern armies were not hamstrung for lack of material, at least owing to the blockade. The supply problems they did face were most often caused by the poor condition of Confederate railroads. However much of the deterioration of the Southern railroads was caused by overloading due to the blockade disrupting normal coastal sea traffic and control of inland waterways by the Union Navy.[lower-alpha 5]

Those who believe that the blockade was decisive argue that the Southern forces were strangled at the end. They point out that the collapse of the Army of Northern Virginia, which in 1865 was virtually all that remained of the Confederacy, followed soon after the loss of Wilmington to the Union. The timing, they contend, was not merely coincidental. Furthermore, the defeat of its armies was not the only way that the South lost.

The blockade was not only to capture the ships that attempted to evade it but also to discourage others. The blockade runners may have been numerous, but they were built for speed rather than the ability to carry cargo. The more conventional cargo vessels, and their spacious holds, went elsewhere. As a result, Southern exports of cotton fell by 95% from pre-war levels, devaluing its currency, and wrecking its economy. Additionally, the blockade disrupted coastal trade, overloading the marginal Southern railroads and prevented importation of salt, necessary for preserving food and tanning leather. Unable to sell goods (particularly cotton) on the world market, the Confederate government was already strained financially as early as 1862. As its economy steadily degenerated, it suffered from a general loss of confidence on the part of its citizens.[37]

However, the blockade was less successful in preventing arms and money from being smuggled into Southern ports by blockade runners consisting of lightweight shallow draft steamships built in and operating from British shipyards, mostly in Liverpool[38] and Glasgow.[39][40] Historians estimated that 2,500–2,800 attempts were made to run the blockade, with at least an 80% success rate. It was estimated the Confederates received thousands of tons of gunpowder, half a million rifles, and several hundred cannons from British blockade runners.[41] As a result, the blockade runners operating from Britain escalated the war by two years and killed 400,000 additional soldiers and civilians on both sides.[42][43][44]

• Postage stamps and postal history of the Confederate States § Blockade mail
• List of ships captured in the 19th century § American Civil War
• Bibliography of early American naval history § American Civil War

• Anaconda Plan in Encyclopedia Virginia