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Ben Washington History 305 Dr. Carlson Scott’s Great Snake: From scraps to the battle field Sun Tzu once said “There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare”, and that was exactly the message the union sent (intentional or not) in implementing Winfield Scotts Anaconda Plan in an effort to blockade southern ports and advance down the Mississippi river cutting the south in two. Knowing that blockades of this type take years to be truly effective one can ask the following questions why did Winfield Scott choose this strategy, was the union army planning for a prolonged war by implementing this strategy? And was the use of this strategy pivotal to the success of the union army? First, In order to understand the possible reasoning Winfield Scott thought this strategy would be advantageous to the union army, one must understand why blockades have been used so frequently throughout history. As far back as 457 BCE, when the Athenians used a blockade on the island of Aegina during the First Peloponnesian War to the American revolution when the Kingdom of Great Britain adopted this strategy against the colonies. Blockades unlike embargos and Ben Washington History 305 Dr. Carlson sanctions are not political moves, rather military ones. The essential function of a blockade is to cut off an enemy’s supplies, food, war material and communication, all things in which are vital in a long war because without food your men starve, without supplies such a socks, boots and other essential items; the health of the soldier’s starts to suffer. Another key element is to cut off war material which includes the arms and ammunition that are being used because if you have no guns and bullets to fight against an opponent with stockpile of them, the odds are not very good. Also, the confederacy had very strong Generalship and the union not always so much and interrupting the communication between the confederate generals was a goal of the union to split the south virtually in two. For a successful blockade to be implemented, the forces of that blockade must be equally or greater than the opposing force and in this case, the U.S. Navy was far more powerful than the C.S. Navy and was more equipped to achieve their goal of splitting the south in half. The C.S navy was playing catch up from the very beginning and was forced to find ways around the blockade of southern ports such as ironclads, submarines, torpedo boats, and naval mines to gain advantages in areas in which their navy was weaker. Even though the C.S. navy found ways around the blockades through innovation, the U.S. navy blockade using the anaconda plan must have caused enough problems to the confederacy because they had to address the problem and provide resources to counteract. Another factor that might have played into Winfield Scott and the union’s decision to adopt this strategy was the value of the items being blockaded. Like mentioned previously, food and other war time supplies are vital to in every aspect of a soldier’s life whether it is on the battle field or not. Letters from confederate soldiers tell the story of just Ben Washington History 305 Dr. Carlson how quickly tides can change during a war and the hardships that have to be overcome. Private Henry H. Dedrick is the best example of this writing at the beginning of his time with the confederate forces to his wife in September of 1861, “Dear Lissa you wanted to know what we had to eat. We have plenty of good beef and some bacon and flour, sugar and coffee and rice. We have plenty to eat we get some butter at times as we can get it, and as to the sleeping part sometimes we have a very good place to sleep and sometimes we haft to sleep on the ground wet or dry.” As one can see at the beginning, confederate soldiers were eating and living pretty well for the circumstances in which they were in and spirits were still pretty high. In November 1861 however, we start to see a change in tone from Private Dedrick’s letters as the war draws on. He writes “We have had some hard times here. We have had some snow here; it is a snowing here now. We have rain or snow every two or three days and it is most impossible to get provisions here for all the soldiers.” Whether or not the scarcity of provisions was due to union blockades or the natural blockade of snow and rain, the problems were already starting for the confederacy and would only grow as the war progressed. In May of 1863, Henry Writes to his father in law and wife talking about the death of Stonewall Jackson and the “great loss” to the confederacy his death was. If the death of one of the confederacies strongest generals wasn’t enough to contend with, the increased lack of food to go around the confederacy sure was. Private Dedrick writes “If we stay here I wish you would come down and bring me something to eat for we don't get half enough and I can't stand it. If you do come you can bring something along and make more off of it [than] you can make any other way.” He also writes about how many of the men are deserting or going awhile because of the lack of food they are receiving and because the quality of their clothes is starting to decline and because of that, Private Dedrick asks his father in law if he could also bring him his two overcoats and blanket since everything he has is now in poor Ben Washington History 305 Dr. Carlson conditions. Other confederate soldier also shared similar hardships that they were going through with their wives through letters. Zachariah H.J. Benefield writes to his wife Jane on April 4, 1864 “Jane we ar faring verry bad for something to eat we git flour with the brand in it & it is half oats & man cant hardly eate it we dont git half A nuf if it we steal a little & prearsh a little we can’t by nothing our money ant no count.” The situation for many of the men like Private Dedrick and Zachariah Benefield were often times bleak because they had to suffer through periods of abundance and then periods of extreme need leaving many soldiers foraging for fresh vegetables while marching, one soldier even writes “Our men get a vegetable diet by cooking up polk, potato tops, May pop vines, kurlip weed, lambs quarter, thistle and a hundred kind of weeds I always thought poison. I thought it trash…but the boys call it ‘long forage”, which was kinder way of saying that soldiers were stealing crops to make up for the rations they were not receiving. Even the clothes and blankets were essentially stolen property because often times the supplies of captured union soldiers were confiscated and used by the confederacy to make up for the lack supplies they were receiving. The anaconda plan played a role in the devastation of the southern supply lines and gave the union army a big advantage in fighting a war in unfamiliar territory. President Abraham Lincoln had a goal of preserving the union and not allowing the institution of slavery to expand into the territories but before tensions were already reaching their head before Lincoln was elected in 1860 and South Carolina issued their “Declaration of the Causes of Secession” because it was believed that Lincoln was both anti-slavery and Ben Washington History 305 Dr. Carlson invested in northern interests, before Lincoln even enters the office as President, 7 states decide to succeed from the Union. Even then Lincoln is still looking for a short and peaceful resolution that will appease both northern and southern interests but the perception of Lincoln being antislavery and anti-south still persists even though he is very sympathetic to the south and proves himself to be even after the war has been one for the union and he is looking to forgive the south for seceding and reconstruct the vast territory in which has been devastated economically and socially by the war, but if Lincoln did not want or plan for a long war, then why did he allow a strategy that takes a long time to be effective as a tactic in a war that was expected to be short? First of all Lincoln makes a huge mistake very early in this conflict which might have been the driving force for this eventual decision to be made. On April 12, 1861 confederate soldiers under the command of General Pierre Beauregard fire cannon on Fort Sumter and thus sparking the civil war. Lincoln in response calls for 75, 000 militia men to Fort Sumter and orders a special meeting of congress, a mistake on Lincoln’s part because what did he expect to happen when the troops arrived when the Fort had already been fired upon, although Lincoln had previously done everything in his power to appease the southern states early, the attack on Fort Sumter left Lincoln with very little very other options. South Carolina viewed this situation as an international border dispute even though the united states government did not share that sentiment, inevitably it had to come to war but Lincoln Ben Washington History 305 Dr. Carlson severely underestimated the south and did not view there cause as a legitimate threat rather to the union rather, they believed the south were a bunch of complaining slave owners who were angry over the election of President Abraham Lincoln in 1860. So one can see by how a few troops Lincoln sent to Charleston in order to protect Fort Sumter, he fully expected his troops to calm the insurrection and end the confrontation swiftly which was not the outcome he received. Lincoln at first believes this is going to be a speedy war but does not anticipate the insurrection in South Carolina to go array like it did, miscalculation of insurgent forces and underestimation of the South’s dedication to the cause, force Lincoln to accept the strategy of the anaconda plan once he realizes this war was going to be prolonged whether he wanted it to be or not but it would prove to be successful even if it was not the initially strategy. The first Anaconda plan in which was drafted by Winfield Scott was a failure but not because it was not a good strategy to end the war before it began or even very quickly if war were to suddenly break out but because top U.S. Generals such as Ulysses S. Grant and Sherman thought it was too complacent of a strategy and never was fully implemented because both sides at this point wanted blood and diplomatic solutions such as the Scott’s anaconda plan were scrapped for be too passive. In the end both sides wanted the war to happen and rational decisions went by the way side very fast, the true failure was not in Scott’s strategy but with Ben Washington History 305 Dr. Carlson the top leaders not seeing the implications of not deciding to make the decision of implementing a blockade in the south a lot sooner than they did which could have saved a lot of lives and ended the war faster. Instead as mentioned previously, Lincoln and top generals decided not to implement the plan in place of a more active approach to the war which proved to be the wrong tactic until it was revisited and tweaked to more fit the union agenda 3 years later. Scott’s plan was divided into four parts; blockade south, take the Mississippi River to divide the south, take points of the Tennessee River Valley, marching through Georgia to further divide the south and then eventually to capture Richmond. Grant and Sherman’s plan in which was implemented in the summer of 1864, was virtually the same as Scott’s except bloodshed was required. As one can see by the dismissal of the initial anaconda plan and then the eventually adaptation of the old plan to include war supports the theory that tensions between north and south reached a level that was beyond a peaceful solution, the confederacy tugged, poked and pushed the into bloodshed and the union obliged, causing this plan to be doomed until it incorporated the kind of bloodshed and fighting that both sides were after at the time. The question still remains did the anaconda plan help the union defeat the confederacy? The answer is simply yes, without the initial anaconda plan that was drafted by Scott, Grant and Sherman might not have used the original plan and tailored it to fit the blood style of war both sides were fighting. The reimplementation of essential elements of the anaconda plan under Grant Ben Washington History 305 Dr. Carlson and Sherman proved in the end to be the missing ingredient to a union victory in this prolonged war. Control of the Mississippi river for the union proved key to union victories and the true brilliance of the plans effectiveness was seen when Sherman made his famous march to the sea. The union was fighting a war of attrition from the beginning because they did not believe the south had the stomach for war and would eventually stop fighting, once that was not the case, the union army in attempts to wear down the confederacy sent waves and waves of soldier to fight the struggling confederate army who did not have the man power, supplies and resources available to match the union forces. By taking advantage of the disparity in numbers between the union and confederate armies, blockades of southern ports would only help destroy what was left of the army, weakening it more and more than before. The anaconda plan laid a framework for how the union was going to win the war and finally once it was implemented for a second time, did the progress being made by the union army firmly and almost rapidly start changing the tide of the war in a way in which the confederacy had no chance because the few advantages they did have dwindled away once their resources were depleted and Grant and Sherman started laying siege across the confederate states. In hindsight, all of these events that led to the union eventually regaining full control and changing the tide of the war and eventually destroying the confederate forces enough to have one of the most respected generals of his time and even today say this in his first correspondence with Grant Ben Washington History 305 Dr. Carlson discussing the terms of confederate surrender “The result of the last week must convince you of the hopelessness of further resistance on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia in this struggle. I feel that it is so, and regard it as my duty to shift from myself the responsibility of any further effusion of blood, by asking of you the surrender of that portion of the C. S. Army known as the Army of Northern Virginia.” Lee knew he had been defeated prolonging the war even further was pointless for the confederacy so avoiding further bloodshed for his army and to protect them from possible punishment became paramount. Although the last of the confederate forces did no surrender until June 23, 1865; April 9, 1865 the day Robert E. Lee formally surrendered, is seen as the true end of the American Civil War. Without the anaconda plan being in General Sherman and Grants back pocket, the war might have continued on the path for longer even though the confederate forces were starting to dwindle significantly and the union armies were gaining more control all over the south. The union might have eventually won the war anyways because of the overwhelming advantages they had, the war of attrition might have been the only strategy that needed to be implemented ultimately but even the war of attrition was not producing the swift results leaders in the union were anticipating. So the anaconda plan was just the strategy needed to compliment the war of attrition because where it at holes, the anaconda plan filled them in. For Ben Washington History 305 Dr. Carlson example, in a war of attrition the side with the most resources is looking to drain the side with the least of as much personnel and material as they possible can but the problem is supplies can still make their way through to the people you are trying to keep them from which is problematic if you are looking to drain the other side of resources. So by having the anaconda plan cut off those supplies coming in that were helping forces resupply the confederate forces once they were depleted, now there was virtually nothing coming in making the war of attrition truly effective. The anaconda plan itself did not singularly win the Civil war even though it fairly well could have if given a proper chance by the union at the beginning of the war. But it is not by coincidence that everything started to run smoother and seem to fall into place for the union leaders and their war efforts after they decided to re implement the strategy that Winfield Scott drafted 3 years prior with their minor tweaks.