[DiogenesLamp]

Blockade runners got the guns through. The Union ships weren't really there for the guns. They were there for the cotton.

It was a war over that European money stream.

[Bull Snipe]

The South decided not to ship cotton for two years. The North knew this. The South could only manufacture 60 percent of the artillery, rifles and powder used by the army. The Union navy interdicted what they could. But the blockade did not really become effective until 1864.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Blockade runners got the guns through.
The Union ships weren't really there for the guns.
They were there for the cotton.
It was a war over that European money stream."

And so with DiogenesLamp, the nonsense never ends...

Civil War blockade runners used small fast ships to transport their most valuable cargoes, i.e., guns and luxury items for Southern elites.
So most of them made it through, most of the time.
But cotton normally shipped on large slow & easily captured ships, many Northern owned and so withheld from 1861 on.

It didn't matter though, because Confederates adopted a "cotton diplomacy" policy hoping to win support from European countries.
Then Confederates also shifted from growing cash crops to supplying food for their armies.

The net results were: 1) unshipped cotton bales piled up, and eventually 2) were replaced by Confederate food production.

As for General Scott's Anaconda Plan, it was likely first developed when Jefferson Davis was US Secretary of War and so cannot have come as a surprise to him.
Indeed, the Brits had blockaded enemy ports for centuries, including ours in the Revolutionary War and War of 1812.
So it had to be expected.