"The Anaconda Plan is the strategy that won the Civil War."

It wasn't rocket science. There are three places in the border states that make the US economy functional. And the US must either blockade or capture New Orleans, Richmond and Charleston.
Given the significance of New Orleans as a trade center, it is strong preferable to capture it intact, and eventually restore the city to full importance to the national economy.
 
It wasn't rocket science. There are three places in the border states that make the US economy functional. And the US must either blockade or capture New Orleans, Richmond and Charleston.
Given the significance of New Orleans as a trade center, it is strong preferable to capture it intact, and eventually restore the city to full importance to the national economy.
Well, I mean, we should distinguish Scott's Anaconda Plan, the blockade, and the strategy that was actually executed in 1861-2.

Scott's Anaconda Plan was to take control of the Mississippi, blockade, and do nothing else. This would certainly harm the Confederate economy, but it was rejected in favour of a general reconquest.
As for the blockade, well, it's almost impossible to imagine a set of circumstances where the Union's navy both still exists and is not trying to blockade the South.
 
Still not convinced of the significance of New Orleans? Here are the manufacturing statistics from 1860:
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No. 1 is flour and meal, from which the US economy made bread. No. 10 is sugar. Sugar was mainly made in Louisiana and shipped from New Orleans.
 
Well, I mean, we should distinguish Scott's Anaconda Plan, the blockade, and the strategy that was actually executed in 1861-2.

Scott's Anaconda Plan was to take control of the Mississippi, blockade, and do nothing else. This would certainly harm the Confederate economy, but it was rejected in favour of a general reconquest.
As for the blockade, well, it's almost impossible to imagine a set of circumstances where the Union's navy both still exists and is not trying to blockade the South.
Scott's plan in its limited form may appeared to be a 8-10 year plan. It looked slow. In fact, once the US controlled Kentucky and most of Tennessee, and the Mi. River all the way to New Orleans, it was in a position to control the economy and concentrate on the west. But by that time the big battles had produced a war madness on both sides and the killing accelerated.
 
Scott's plan in its limited form may appeared to be a 8-10 year plan. It looked slow. In fact, once the US controlled Kentucky and most of Tennessee, and the Mi. River all the way to New Orleans, it was in a position to control the economy and concentrate on the west.
Well, if you're talking about controlling more than the very western fringe of Tennessee you're not talking about Scott's plan any more. Look at how many men he's talking about needing - it's not many.

The point is that Scott's plan was for effectively a "blockade only" (counting the Mississippi as a blockade by land) and was rejected.
 
Scott's plan was based on the expectation that cooler heads would prevail before the cotton warehoused on both sides of the Atlantic ran short.
But that is not what happened. By October 1862 people began to see it was going to a long and destructive war.
 
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Well, if you're talking about controlling more than the very western fringe of Tennessee you're not talking about Scott's plan any more. Look at how many men he's talking about needing - it's not many.

The point is that Scott's plan was for effectively a "blockade only" (counting the Mississippi as a blockade by land) and was rejected.
Probably true. Perhaps Scott did not want there to be any Waterloos. He also did not want a big land invasion of Virginia, because he was a Virginian.
 
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I think both Scott and Lincoln hoped that the former Whigs in the south would weaken the Confederacy. But that is not what happened. The areas in which there was opposition to secession either did not secede, or were occupied by the US early in the war. That left the Confederacy with a manageable amount of dissent, which the government could silence.
 
I agree that the South's economy was all about exports, but that does not mean that the Anaconda Plan won the ACW for the Union.




The Confederacy embargoed Europe anyway! Europe was the South's main buyer of cotton. Embargo Europe= not exporting cotton from southern ports.

Do you think that a blockade of the Confederacy was more decisive than Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Corinth, the entire Gettysburg Campaign, the Stones River Campaign and the eventual Union occupation of Nashville, Chattanooga, and most of the rest of TN, the Overland Campaign, the Union occupation of the Confederate Capital at Richmond, the Siege of Petersburg, the destruction of the Army of TN, the destruction of the Army of Northern Virginia, the Franklin-Nashville Campaign, the Atlanta Campaign, Sherman's March to the Sea, and the Appomattox Campaign?
No, of course not. Like all straw man arguments it lacks nuance. Without all of these victories & the blockade victory would have taken much longer with much greater loss of life.
 
Like all military plans, it was perfect until the first shot was fired. However, the principles that underlay Scott's proposal were correct & inspired the the strategic actions that brought victory.
The principles that underlay Scott's proposal were "We should fight the South as little as possible, so that they will rejoin us with as little bloodshed as can be managed".

This did not inspire the strategic actions that brought victory. The strategic actions that brought victory involved powerful and bloody campaigns against the Confederate centres of power.
 
The elements of Scott's plan did transfer major elements of the Confederate economy to the US economy. However the willingness of Confederate society to endure extreme dislocation made it only a partial solution. The Confederate economy could not sustain a long war effort. But the parts of the south that were willing to make that assessment largely returned to US control.
 
The Anaconda Plan is not the strategy that won the Civil War. That strategy, as already noted, was a slow, time consuming effort to starve the south into submission with minimal use of military force. Aspects of the Anaconda Plan may have been part of Union war plans (coastal blockade, control of the Mississippi River), but the primary strategy that eventually evolved was to destroy Confederate armed forces and civilian infrastructure.
 
The principles that underlay Scott's proposal were "We should fight the South as little as possible, so that they will rejoin us with as little bloodshed as can be managed".

This did not inspire the strategic actions that brought victory. The strategic actions that brought victory involved powerful and bloody campaigns against the Confederate centres of power.
Except the two things were happening simultaneously. The journalists covered the big battles. But the wives and plantation matrons were confronted with the price of salt and the unavailability of soap.
 
The talk of blockade, and the Confederate embargo response probably had the most effect in Kentucky immediately, and in Louisiana in 1862. Those were two states that had non cotton trade with the northern states which they were not willing to postpone.
 
And the two things are linked by the probability that many of the big killing battles were a Confederate response to the fact that internal and international blockade was very damaging to the 5 Atlantic Confederate states.
 
And the two things are linked by the probability that many of the big killing battles were a Confederate response to the fact that internal and international blockade was very damaging to the 5 Atlantic Confederate states.
Many of the big killing battles were a Confederate response to large Union armies trying to capture parts of their country. The blockade undoubtedly had some impact on Confederate willingness to continue the war, and on damaging the Confederate economy, but if you had to pick which of the two was the more significant I would say that it's easier to imagine the CSA reduced to obedience by "invasions without blockade" than "blockades without invasion".
 
The principles that underlay Scott's proposal were "We should fight the South as little as possible, so that they will rejoin us with as little bloodshed as can be managed".

This did not inspire the strategic actions that brought victory. The strategic actions that brought victory involved powerful and bloody campaigns against the Confederate centres of power.
So you agree with my thesis of this thread that i stayed in the OP?
 
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