Replies

Somehow America’s greatest general, Winfield Scott, didn’t make that list.

When I taught my 7th graders about the Civil War, I’d always tell them that at the beginning of the war, he was the US Army’s commander. He had fought in the War of 1812 and by the time of the Civil War was old and too fat to mount a horse. After the kids’ laughter died down I’d tell them that it was Scott who came up with the North’s strategy for winning the war—the Anaconda Plan. Blockade the Confederate coasts, take control of the Mississippi River, thus dividing the South and attack Richmond.

I’d tell them that it was Scott who came up with the North’s strategy for winning the war—the Anaconda Plan.

When I was in Junior High learning about the Civil War, the first time I heard the "anaconda plan" it made absolutely no sense to me. Weren't the vast majority of all the battles fought on land? How are you going to take the land with Navy ships? Don't you need an Army?

The South seemingly had enough guns and soldiers to put up quite a fight, so I wasn't getting the purpose of the blockade. What was it blockading that mattered to the armies fighting on the land?

Took me years to understand it's value, and now that I understand it, I realize that it was absolutely the most important thing that could have been done.

It stopped European countries from making a profit through their natural trade with the South. Without that blockade, European merchants and shipping would have made greatly increased profits over what they had been making with New York, and it would have given their governments incentive to interdict on the side of the South.

By stopping those profits, Lincoln kept the Europeans from having a reason to side with the South.

Once European trade had been normalized with the South, it would have been over for the North. Lincoln's wealthy backers in New York would have been seriously hurt if not bankrupted by the loss of all that trade.

The War was over that trade. It was over that economic shift which would have occurred if the South had been able to establish significant low tariff trade with Europe. Stopping that commercial trade was absolutely essential to winning the war.