Anaconda Plan

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1861 Cartoon map of Scott's plan
1861 Cartoon map of Scott's plan

The Anaconda Plan is the name widely applied to an outline strategy for subduing the seceding states in the American Civil War. Proposed by General-in-Chief Winfield Scott, the plan emphasized the blockade of the Southern ports, and called for an advance down the Mississippi River to cut the South in two. Because the blockade would be rather passive, it was widely derided by the vociferous faction who wanted a more vigorous prosecution of the war, and who likened it to the coils of a snake suffocating its victim. The image caught on, giving the proposal its popular name.

Contents

[edit] The plan and its critics

In the early days of the Civil War, General-in-Chief Winfield Scott's proposed strategy for the war against the South had two prominent features. First, all ports in the seceding states were to be rigorously blockaded. Second, a strong column of perhaps 80,000 men should use the Mississippi River as a highway to thrust completely through the Confederacy. A spearhead consisting of a relatively small amphibious force, army troops transported by boats and supported by gunboats, should advance rapidly, capturing the Confederate positions down the river in sequence. They would be followed by a more traditional army, marching behind them to secure the victories. The culminating battle would be for the forts below New Orleans; when they fell, the river would be in Federal hands from its source to its mouth, and the rebellion would be cut in two.[1]

The complete strategy could not be implemented immediately, as no warships of the type imagined for the Mississippi campaign existed. (For that matter, the U.S. Navy was too small to enforce the blockade in the first months of the war.) It would take time to gather and train the forces needed to carry out the central thrust, time that the critics of the plan were unwilling to concede. Hence, Scott's plan was subjected to a great deal of ridicule. (See the associated political cartoon.) His opponents called for an immediate overland campaign, directed primarily at the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. Their stated belief was that if a few strongholds were taken, the Confederacy would collapse.

The conflict was not the brief affair that Scott's critics imagined. In the four years of war, the Federal Navy enforced a blockade that certainly weakened the South, although its effect on the war effort is still debated, with no consensus in sight. Furthermore, the Confederacy was split in two by a campaign based on the Mississippi River, and a consensus has now been established that this Southern defeat was at least as important in the final collapse of the Rebellion as the land battles in the East that had so long attracted both public and historians' attention. The form of the Northern victory thus turned out to look very much like what Scott had proposed in the early days. Consequently, the Anaconda has been somewhat rehabilitated, and general histories of the Civil War often credit it with guiding President Abraham Lincoln's strategy throughout. As commonly happens, however, the truth is much more complex than this simple analysis would have it.

[edit] Origin of the plan

The Anaconda had a historical development, both in its origin and the way it played out in the experience of battle. The blockade had already been proclaimed by President Lincoln. On 19 April 1861, a week after the bombardment of Fort Sumter that marked the outbreak of the war, he announced that the ports of all the seceded states, from South Carolina through Texas, would be blockaded; later, when Virginia and North Carolina also seceded, their coastlines were added.[2] This executive order was not rescinded until the end of the war, so the blockade existed independently of Scott's plan.

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.[3] All except Delaware had strong pro-Southern interests. 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, whereby it would aid neither the North nor the South if they 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 Brinton McClellan, who was to serve as the commander of its militia, with rank Major General of Volunteers. In a few weeks, as the state militias were incorporated into the national service, the militias of Indiana and Illinois were added to his command. From this power base, he felt enabled on 27 May 1861, to write a letter to General Scott outlining his strategy.[4] He proposed an immediate march on Richmond, by this time the capital of the Confederacy, directed down the Kanawha River; alternatively, if Kentucky were to leave the Union, a march directly across that state should take Nashville, after which he would "act on circumstances."

Scott's endorsement of McClellan's letter, which he submitted to the President, shows that he considered it, but not favorably. First, 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. More serious was that western Virginia (West Virginia had not yet parted from Virginia) was still very much pro-Union; according to Scott's estimate, its populace stood five out of seven opposed to secession. An invasion as proposed would alienate many of these people, and would subject both enemies and friends to the ravages of war. The same argument could be applied to Kentucky. Perhaps most damaging, 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 sea board."[5]

The germ of Scott's Anaconda Plan for suppressing the insurrection is seen in the endorsement. In a few days, he had given it more thought, and he submitted his own proposal in a letter of 3 May 1861, to McClellan.

[edit] Development

General Scott was not able to impose his strategic vision on the government. Aged and infirm, he had to retire before the year was out. He was replaced as General-in-Chief by none other than George B. McClellan.

Under McClellan and his eventual successor in the West, Maj. Gen. Henry Wager Halleck, the Mississippi became a somewhat neglected theater for operations in the West. Halleck, with McClellan's approval, believed in turning the enemy's Mississippi River strongholds rather than attacking them directly, so he moved away from the river.[6] As he saw it, the Tennessee rather than the Mississippi was the "great strategic line of the Western campaign."[7]

The Navy Department, however, remained committed to the idea of opening the Mississippi. The department, in the person of Assistant Secretary of the Navy Gustavus Vasa Fox, early decided that New Orleans could be captured by a naval expedition from the Gulf of Mexico, and then all other towns bordering the river would fall rather than face bombardment.[8] The task of taking New Orleans was entrusted to Captain (later Admiral) David Glasgow Farragut, who followed his own plans for the battle; running his fleet past the forts that defended the city from the south on the night of 24 April 1862, he forced the city to surrender.[9] 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.

Following the loss of Island No. 10 shortly before Farragut took New Orleans, the Confederates had abandoned Memphis, Tennessee, leaving only a small rear guard to conduct a delaying operation. In early June, this was swept aside by the gunboats of the Western Gunboat Flotilla (soon thereafter to be transformed into the Mississippi River Squadron) and a collection of War Department rams, and the Mississippi was open down to Vicksburg. Thus that city became the only point on the river not in Federal hands.[10]

Again, the Army under Halleck did not grasp the opportunity that was provided. 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.[11] The Army did not attempt to take Vicksburg until November, and then it was under the leadership of Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, after Halleck had been called to Washington to replace McClellan as General-in-Chief.[12]

By the time that Grant became commander in the West, the Confederate Army had been able to fortify Vicksburg and Port Hudson, Louisiana, 130 miles (210 km) to the south measured along roads, somewhat longer on the river. The waterways were of great strategic importations, even though the North had a well developed railway system. This stretch, which included the mouth of the Red River, became the last contact between the eastern Confederacy and the Trans-Mississippi. Having no doubt of its importance, the government of Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Richmond strengthened both positions. Command at Vicksburg in particular passed from Brig. 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.[13]

The campaign for Vicksburg eventually settled into a siege, terminated on 4 July 1863, with Pemberton's surrender of all the forces under his command. At that time, his army numbered approximately 29,500 men.[14]

When word of the loss of Vicksburg reached the garrison at Port Hudson, Maj. Gen. Franklin Gardner, the commander there, knew that further resistance was pointless. On 9 July 1863, he surrendered the post and its garrison to the Federal Army of the Gulf and its commander, Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks.[15] Henceforth, in the phrase of Abraham Lincoln, "The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea."

[edit] Conclusion

Although the war, including some of its most vicious fighting, would continue for almost another two years, the Confederacy was clearly in decline after the loss of Vicksburg and its nearly simultaneous defeat at the Battle of Gettysburg. Recognition of the Southern cause by the European powers, never very likely, was from then on impossible. The Trans-Mississippi, now cut off, was incapable of sustaining itself, and was left by the Federal government to wither on the vine. Not subjected to active campaigning, it managed to survive until after the fall of Richmond, but then collapsed as expected.

In light of the sequence of events, historians have been willing to rehabilitate the Anaconda. Because it in a way prefigured a major success of the war, one that ultimately led to the demise of the Confederacy, it is regarded as either a consistent element of Lincoln's military policy throughout the war, or as a strikingly prescient offering proposed by General Scott. Their approval should be tempered by a measured evaluation, taking into account these points:

The blockade, the real core of the Anaconda, had an independent existence, and indeed preceded Scott's proposal.
Both Generals-in-Chief who succeeded Scott prior to the opening of the Mississippi followed a different strategy.
The failure of McClellan and Halleck to support the threat to Vicksburg presented by Farragut's fleet shows that freeing the Mississippi was not important to the Army at that time.
The campaign for the Mississippi did not follow Scott's outline, but was actually inverted when Farragut took New Orleans and then proceeded up the river.

No matter what the final judgment may be concerning the importance of the Anaconda as strategy, it has entered the national vocabulary, where it is likely to remain.

[edit] References

  • Dufour, Charles L., The Night the War Was Lost. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1960, ISBN 978-0803265998.
  • Elliott, Charles Winslow, Winfield Scott: The Soldier and the Man. Macmillan, 1937.
  • McPherson, James M., Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford History of the United States). Oxford University Press, 1988, ISBN 0-19-503863-0.
  • Shea, William L., and Winschel, Terrence J., Vicksburg Is the Key: The Struggle for the Mississippi River, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 2003, ISBN 978-0803293441.
  • U.S. Navy Department, Official records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion. Washington: Government Printing Office
  • U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1880–1901.

[edit] Notes

Abbreviations used in these notes

ORA (Official records, armies): War of the Rebellion: a compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate Armies.
ORN (Official records, navies): Official records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion.
  1. ^ ORA I, v. 51/1, pp. 369–370, 387.
  2. ^ ORN I, v. 4, pp. 156–157, 340.
  3. ^ Virginia, also a border state, had already seceded by the time the Anaconda was proposed.
  4. ^ ORA I, V. 51/1, pp. 338–339.
  5. ^ ORA I, v. 51/1, p. 339.
  6. ^ ORN I, v. 22, pp. 700–701.
  7. ^ ORA I, v. 10, p. 24.
  8. ^ Gideon Welles, "Admiral Farragut and New Orleans: with an account of the origin and command of the first three naval expeditions of the war," The Galaxy, v. 12, pp. 669–683, 817–832 (November and December 1871).
  9. ^ Dufour, The night the war was lost, pp. 265–286.
  10. ^ ORN I, v. 23, pp. 118–140.
  11. ^ Shea and Winschel, pp. 17–18.
  12. ^ Halleck was called to the East to become the new General-in-Chief in mid-July, about the time that Farragut had to leave Vicksburg.
  13. ^ Shea and Winschel, pp. 20, 36.
  14. ^ Shea and Winschel, p. 178.
  15. ^ Shea and Winschel, p. 200.