Anaconda Plan
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.
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.
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.
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 the rank of Major General of Volunteers.
Firstly, the Kanawha was not suited for water transport so the march on Richmond would have to be overland and thus subject to breakdowns of men, horses, and equipment.
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 seaboard.
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.
[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.
10 shortly before Farragut took New Orleans, the Confederates had abandoned Memphis, Tennessee, leaving only a small rear guard to conduct a delaying operation.
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.
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.
[b] 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.
However, it was transformed into an incursion and led early in the next year to a full invasion, the so-called Burnside Expedition, which included the capture of Roanoke Island and established the Union Army permanently in eastern North Carolina.
Following the Confederate defeats at Forts Henry and Donelson in Tennessee and Roanoke Island in North Carolina, the War Department in Richmond decided to concentrate its armies in vital interior areas, removing them from much of the coast.
Rather early in the war, the Federal Navy tried to block the harbor entrance by sinking ballast-laden hulks in the channels, but this proved ineffective or worse.
Extensive efforts to break the blockade included the use of torpedoes (mines) and armored ships to sink or otherwise render inoperative the Federal vessels.
The port retained its primacy until near the end of the Rebellion, when Fort Fisher, at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, was captured by Union forces in January 1865.
The same decision by the Confederate War Department led to the abandonment of most of the Atlantic coast except for the major ports applied to the Gulf as well, with the result that only Mobile, New Orleans, and Galveston were defended.
It remained accessible to blockade runners for the rest of the war but, like all of the Trans-Mississippi, was rendered worthless to the Rebellion when the loss of Vicksburg completed Federal control of the Mississippi River.
[32] Almost immediately, however, the island was transformed from a base and coaling station to a more important function; it became the staging area for the approaching attack on the Mississippi River forts that shielded New Orleans.
[34] In July 1862, U.S. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, wrote a letter to the commanders of both Gulf blockading squadrons that they would need to start recruiting freed blacks to keep up with labor demands.
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.
Rowena Reed[35] contends that the central government in Washington was unable to impose its will on the field commanders so 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.
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.
Additionally, the blockade disrupted coastal trade, overloading the marginal Southern railroads and preventing the importation of salt, necessary for preserving food and tanning leather.
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 prolonged the war by two years, killing 400,000 additional soldiers and civilians on both sides.
