The Anaconda Plan proposed by General Winfield Scott during the American Civil War suggested blockading Confederate ports and advancing up the Mississippi River to split the Confederacy in two. The plan was not implemented, but elements of it resurfaced later in the war. The plan called for a force of about 80,000 men to push the entire Mississippi River, from Illinois to its mouth into the Gulf of Mexico. While the Anaconda Plan was not approved, some of its features manifested themselves in the actual course of the war.
The Anaconda Plan was a proposed strategy to defeat the Confederacy during the American Civil War. In May of 1861, Winfield Scott, a general in the Union Army, suggested blockading Confederate ports and advancing up the Mississippi River to split the Confederacy in two. The plan was generally criticized as too passive and was not implemented. Elements of the plan, however, resurfaced later in the war as part of Union strategy.
General Winfield Scott had participated in the War of 1812 and in the Mexican-American War. Scott briefed President Abraham Lincoln in the early days of the Civil War, serving as general-in-chief. He didn’t believe the Union could secure a quick victory; his plan was to expand the Navy considerably over several months. Scott’s slower plan was derided by opponents who favored an immediate ground assault. The press later dubbed the scheme the “Anaconda Plan.”
The plan called for a force of about 80,000 men to push the entire Mississippi River, from Illinois to its mouth into the Gulf of Mexico. Amphibious forces supported by gunboats would take key Confederate positions along the river. A more traditional army would then follow and occupy the captured territory. Confederate ports along the Atlantic coast would be strictly blockaded. Scott believed that dividing the Confederacy in two and isolating it from Atlantic trade would prompt the Confederacy to capitulate without unnecessary bloodshed.
While the Anaconda Plan was not approved, some of its features manifested themselves in the actual course of the war. President Lincoln officially ordered a blockade of the Confederate coasts only weeks after the war broke out. The Union Navy did not have enough ships at the time to make this blockade effective, but it has steadily expanded its fleet. The Union eventually advanced up the Mississippi River from both ends, finally liberating it from Confederate control in mid-1863. In 1864, General Ulysses S. Grant implemented an aggressive blockade of Atlantic ports in the Confederacy.
Nearly 150 years after the Civil War’s conclusion, there has been no consensus among historians on the merits of the Anaconda Plan. The war did not turn out to be the bloodless deal Scott had originally proposed, although it is impossible to know what would have happened if Scott’s plan had been implemented from the start. Most historians argue that Union operations in the Western Theater are at least as important to the outcome of the war as those in the East. Campaigns in the West prior to the capture of Vicksburg, Mississippi would suggest that a Union presence in the West, a key feature of the Anaconda Plan, was important to a Union victory. The effectiveness of the coastal blockade, however, remains controversial.
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