Download Scott`s Great Snake: From scraps to the battle field

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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.