Anaconda Plan

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Image:Anaconda Plan.jpg The Anaconda Plan was proposed in 1861 by Union General Winfield Scott to win the American Civil War with minimal loss of life, enveloping the Confederacy by blockade at sea and control of the Mississippi River.

Major General George B. McClellan, a rising military star in Ohio, proposed an overall strategy for the war directly to President Abraham Lincoln, one that emphasized the part his army could play. Scott, the general-in-chief of the U.S. Army, wrote a letter to McClellan on May 3, 1861, stating in part:

It is the design of the Government to raise 25,000 additional regular troops, and 60,000 volunteers, for three years. ... We rely greatly on the sure operation of a complete blockade of the Atlantic and Gulf ports soon to commence. In connection with such blockade, we propose a powerful movement down the Mississippi to the ocean, with a cordon of posts at proper points ... the object being to clear out and keep open this great line of communication in connection with the strict blockade of the seaboard, so as to envelop the insurgent States and bring them to terms with less bloodshed than by any other plan.Template:Ref

Scott went on to warn against hot-headed demands for a march on the Confederate capital, Richmond.

Scott's plan involved two main parts.

Blockade the coast of the South to prevent the export of cotton, tobacco, and other cash crops from the South and to keep them from importing much-needed war supplies.
Divide the South by controlling the Mississippi River to cut off the southeastern states from the western. Scott considered this an "envelopment" rather than an "invasion", although it would require armies and fleets of river gunboats to accomplish it.

His proposal received considerable public criticism at the time. A famous newspaper cartoon depicted a huge snake squeezing the Confederacy, thus giving the plan its popular name. The United States government never formally adopted it, but President Lincoln did implement the two parts. However, he ignored Scott's warning against direct invasion, and used far more troops (nearly two million), trying repeatedly to capture Richmond.

Lincoln called for a blockade of the South on April 19, 1861, six days after the fall of Fort Sumter (and a few weeks before Scott's letter). The blockade itself, thought to be an impossible task against 3,000 miles of highly irregular coastline, was an unparalleled success within the first six months, and nearly impregnable within the first two years. The blockade accounted for the vast increase in the price of cotton abroad and the extreme scarcity of manufactured goods in the South by the end of the war, contributing to the South's defeat. It was the most successful naval blockade to date, and the first one carried out exclusively by the use of a national navy, without employing privateers. As part of the blockade, a number of Southern ports and coastal forts were captured and held by the U.S. Navy.

The second part of the plan was accomplished as Union armies under Henry W. Halleck, Ulysses S. Grant, and Nathaniel P. Banks, and U.S. Navy fleets under Andrew H. Foote, David D. Porter, and David Farragut, gradually seized control of the Mississippi in 1862, completing the task in July 1863 with the fall of Vicksburg and Port Hudson.

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References

Elliott, Charles Winslow, Winfield Scott: The Soldier and the Man, Macmillan, 1937.
McPherson, James M., Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford History of the United States), Oxford University Press, 1988, ISBN 0-195-03863-0.

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