No Anaconda Plan (ACW)

What if Winfield Scott died prior to the outbreak of hostilities in 1861 and never gets to implement his Anaconda plan? How would this affect Union Strategy?
 
I thought the North disregarded the Anaconda plan? :confused:

Well...not really.

McClellan who succeeded Scott as General in Chief prefered a direct strategy, striking towards important cities and capturing them, but failed in the end to implement this strategy (though not entirely his own fault - which should placate 67thTigers if he comes on this thread:rolleyes:)

The Anaconda Plan was never really scrapped, it was just sort of...put on the shelf. Elements of it were continually employed. Naval blackade and gaining control of the Mississippi being the main ones but still under McClellan and his successor Henry Halleck the major cities and strongholds were targeted as priorities.

The main problem with the plan of course was that McClellan's ratification of it to focus on major cities and strongholds in stead of being the relatively passive type of war Scott envisioned meant that the war was split into three different theaters of independent actions rather than possible three different theaters of a combined and organised overall strategy.

That's not to say McClellan was wrong to shift the focus of the war away from blockade to taking the important cities and strongholds as that probably shortened the war itself but McClellan's changes did make break the overall strategies apart and force the Armies to fight independently for different strategic aims in their own individual theaters.
 
They didn't disregard it so much as resorted to it after they couldn't decisively defeat the Confederacy in the field.

Everyone was expecting a quick war in 1861. The plan was disregarded because it didn't offer a quick victory, it slowly strangled the target to death, hence it's name. When neither side rolled over and died, basiclly the Union was drawn into a long war with the Confederacy, the plan pretty much initiated itself.
 
They didn't disregard it so much as resorted to it after they couldn't decisively defeat the Confederacy in the field. (snip) When neither side rolled over and died, basiclly the Union was drawn into a long war with the Confederacy, the plan pretty much initiated itself.


Lothaw,

That's pretty much exactly what happened. It's also good to remember that parts of the Anaconda Plan were strategic no-brainers. It isn't as if Scott's plan was the pinnacle of out-of-the-box strategic thinking.

Little or no industry in the South? Then using a blockade to cut the South off from industrial imports is a no-brainer. Exports are critical to the South's economy? Then preventing exports is a no-brainer. Lots of horses and food come from the CSA's trans-Mississippi states? Then cutting them off from the rest of the CSA by controlling the Mississippi is a no-brainer. The Mississippi and it's tributaries can act as highways and railroads that can't be destroyed? Then seizing control of the same for use and denying it to the enemy is a no-brainer.

Much of the Ananconda Plan consisted of no-brainers. Once it was realized that the war wasn't going to be over in 90 days, anyone in uniform with a room temperature IQ would have begun a blockade, cleared the Mississippi, and all the rest.


Bill
 

Hyperion

Banned
Ironically, some of the actions that resulted from it, such as blockade actions like Burnside's North Carolina expidition in 1862, where actually fairly successful operations, given the limited amount of men on both sides that where involved.

Some operations like Roanoke Island where pretty good in netting a whole lot of prisoners, with relatively low casualties all around.
 
Top