Union anaconda plan8/28/2023 It would be followed by a more traditional army, marching behind to secure victories. A spearhead, a relatively small amphibious force of army troops transported by boats and supported by gunboats, should advance rapidly, capturing the Confederate positions down the river in sequence. Secondly, a strong column of perhaps 80,000 men should use the Mississippi River as a highway to thrust completely through the Confederacy. First, all ports in the seceding states were to be rigorously blockaded. In the early days of the Civil War, Scott's proposed strategy for the war against the South had two prominent features. The snake image caught on, giving the proposal its popular name. Because the blockade would be rather passive, it was widely derided by a vociferous faction of Union generals who wanted a more vigorous prosecution of the war and likened it to the coils of an anaconda suffocating its victim. Proposed by Union General-in-Chief Winfield Scott, the plan emphasized a Union blockade of the Southern ports and called for an advance down the Mississippi River to cut the South in two. The Anaconda Plan was a strategy outlined by the Union Army for suppressing the Confederacy at the beginning of the American Civil War. Grant, validated Scott's foresight about the importance of the Mississippi River.1861 cartoon map of Scott's plan with caricatures Later events, namely the seizure of Vicksburg by Ulysses S. Perhaps more importantly, the presence of the blockade was one of the elements that ultimately convinced the United Kingdom from either trading with the South or recognizing it as a sovereign entity. However, the sheer size of the two coasts proved problematic for Union ships hoping to seize any and all Confederate blockade-runners. The blockade was somewhat successful at interrupting Southern imports and exports. Lincoln did like the idea of a naval blockade and signed off on that part of the plan. President Abraham Lincoln wanted a quick strike against the enemy, not a long or drawn-out buildup of troops and so didn't endorse the part of the Anaconda Plan that called for a large-scale force seizing control of the Mississippi River. The plan was ambitious and far-reaching and required a large amount of money and manpower to work properly. As well, if the Union had control of the Mississippi River, then attacks on Tennessee would be easier to achieve and Kentucky might be more convinced to keep its neutrality. The goal of this part of the plan was to split the Confederacy into two spheres, with Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, and Texas cut off from the more numerous eastern sphere. The other primary goal of the plan was to seize control of the Mississippi River, both the waterway itself and the areas around it. Scott anticipated a gradual realization by the people in the South that the rebellion was pointless, especially once shortages of food and other goods began, and that the only resort was to return to the Union. One of the primary elements of the plan was to institute a naval blockade of both the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, preventing the South from importing goods and weapons and, perhaps more importantly, preventing the export of goods like cotton, the South's major crop export. Newspapers of the day, picking up on the metaphorical nature of the strategy, dubbed it the Anaconda Plan. The multifaceted plan involved both military and economic elements and aimed to squeeze the operating life out of the Confederacy, moreso by denial of vital resources than by wholesale attack. Scott, long the Army's chief officer, proposed the plan in early 1861. Army commander Winfield Scott to bring the Southern states back into the Union. The Anaconda Plan was a wartime strategy devised by U.S. The Anaconda Plan: Civil War Blueprint for Success
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