The Anaconda Plan

Have you ever experienced an event that seemed to define everything else that followed it? In the Civil War, something very similar to this happend with the Union's implementation of the Anaconda Plan. The plan itself was simple, strangle the Confederacy economically by not allowing trade in or out, and exacerbating the damage caused by a lack of industry. The fallout from this plan was immense, since many of the naval developments that occurred were directly related to the blockade. For instance, ironclads were developed to destroy the Union blockade, a direct fallout from the Anaconda Plan. Further, the strategy commerce raiding developed as an attempt to damage Union commerce and draw ships away from the blockade. Theses developments show …show more content…
Although blockade runners achieved some success, the Northern stranglehold proved to be very effective at weakening the Southern states (Golay). Because of this, blockade running became a crucial way for Southerners to get manufactured goods in and cotton shipments out. Blockade running was so profitable, an owner could make immense profit off of each run. Even after two runs, a ship could be captured and the owner still be considered successful. This lack of manufactured good deeply weekend the South and made them dependent on the blockade runners. At its height, running was a dangerous profession, and required special ships that sailed fast and quietly to avoid Union ships. The most dangerous and difficult parts of blockade running was slipping past the inner squadron and getting past rocks with no lights, this is probably part of the reason there was not a ton of blockade runners (Soley). Because it was such a dangerous profession, with there being few captains skilled enough to do it, is why the Confederacy was not able to get enough goods in to defeat the North or render the blockade useless. The diary of the Secretary of the Navy laments how the authorities in the Bahamas allow blockade runners to gather there and make preparation to smuggle supplies, and how the Confederates received some level of support from foreigners. Secretary Welles wanted this to …show more content…
This resulted in attempts to capture Southern ports. Two of the most important naval battles were battles for harbors at New Orleans and Mobile, both operations were conducted by the Union navy because trade was still leaking into theses crucial ports and the North needed to control the Mississippi River. This resulted ambitious attacks to claim the ports (Axelrod), In the battle of New Orleans, the Union commander ran his ships single file through a hole in Confederate defences. They were able to capture the city by getting past the forts with persistence, and then landing in the city resulting in its occupation (Golay). The Battle of Mobile Bay employed a similar strategy. A picture from Harper's Weekly depicted how the Union ran their ships in, past the torpedo traps, and then moved around by Fort Morgan to capture the City (Plan of the battle). Both of these battles took the blockade to the next level by capturing cities so that no suply can get in, serving as an escalation of the Anaconda