Talk:Anaconda Plan

NPOV?

This is a very nice and interesting article, but is it entirely NPOV? It seems to lay a very heavy emphasis on the Western theater and on the Tennessee Valley in particular.

Three points might be made (and hopefully can be, by editors who know their Civil War better than me):

• Richmond, I believe, was the location of the "Tredegar Iron Works", an important weapons factory, so it wasn't entirely a symbolic target.
• Northern morale was a major factor in the war--would they manage to keep going long enough for the Anaconda Plan to work? And the long string of failures in the East did indeed take Northern morale very low.
• Lastly, I believe the size of the contending armies was generally somewhat larger in the East.

Might these points serve as the basis for making the article a bit more balanced? Opus33 03:12, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Blockade Successful?

The most successful blockade to date? That's a pretty bold statement. While I'm not a Civil War expert, I believe that the blockade was initially unsuccessful. The Union navy only had about thirty ships to block about 190 southern ports. In 1862 nearly all Confederate ships made it through the blockade. It took about two years for the Union navy to build up enough ships to be effective. By 1865 when the blockade was most successful, the Union navy was still only blocking about half of the Confederate blockade runners. While this still severely hindered the south, I wouldn't call it the most successful blockade to date.

I'm also fairly certain that the price of cotton overseas went down instead of up during the war. Britain and France refused to recognize the Confederacy of the southern states and as a result the south refused to sell cotton to them. But this tactic was unsuccessful and Britain and France instead turned to Egypt and India as their source of cotton. By the time the south realized that their tactic was not effective and lifted the embargo, Britain and France would no longer buy their cotton. When the Civil War was over the South found that their cotton wasn't worth as much as it used to be.

Skiguy330 18:17, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, of course the blockade was initially porous. However, note that you refer to "blockade runners" rather than "cargo ships," which implies that the blockade had an effect even early in the war. One of the problems the Confederacy had was that the blockade runners concentrated on high-dollar-value luxury items rather than arms for import or cotton for export. Early in the war, Jefferson Davis and the Confederate government deliberately withheld cotton exports, in the hope of compelling Great Britain to break the blockade. This turned out to be a grave strategic error because by the time they realized their strategy was not working, the Union blockade had tightened and such exports were impossible. There's a good discussion of cotton exports and the blockade in James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom. Hal Jespersen 18:43, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Recent changes

User:Rjensen is making major changes to this article without discussion? Could you discuss first, especially since you are deleting large portions of the original article? --JW1805 (Talk) 04:40, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

If I asked for discussion before I made major changes to articles, my work would probably grind to a halt. Wikipedia doesn't do well at prepublication reviews of submissions. Jensen's mod was actually pretty good, focusing on the actual content of Scott's plan, rather than a larger discussion of overall Union strategy. Hal Jespersen 18:08, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

What about "On to Richmond"?

I'm currently taking AP US History and was taught that the 3rd part of the plan was to capture Richmond in the East, which was unsuccessful (until the end of the war) due to the skill of Lee and Jackson.

I realize this is contradictory but I'm just throwing it out there for review.

Thehebrewhammer 07:44, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Although Richmond was a key objective through most of the war, it was not part of Scott's letter to McClellan, and thus not part of what was derided by the press as the Anaconda Plan. Hal Jespersen 02:49, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip. Thehebrewhammer

Implementation

The statement that "Lincoln did implement the two parts" oversimplifies the development. The Mississippi was opened only because the Navy, against explicit opposition of General-in-Chief McClellan, captured New Orleans and thereby inverted Scott's strategy. A thorough evaluation of the original Anaconda strategy would show that the Army fought only one major battle (Vicksburg) on the river. Columbus and Memphis were outflanked and ceded without fighting, and Island No. 10 would have been likewise (the victory was as much due to the gunboats there as the conventional army units, anyway). The real author of the naval strategy was Gustavus V. Fox, and it is a shame that historians neglect his contribution.PKKloeppel (talk) 14:25, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

MILHIST template?

Forgive me if this is a dumb question, but I am new to Wikipedia and do not know many of its policies. Is there a reason for this talk page not to include the WP:MILHIST template?PKKloeppel (talk) 19:01, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Rewrite

I have taken my own advice (see two comments above) and have rewritten the article. For better or for worse. PKKloeppel (talk) 16:47, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Very nice job. I have to admire one of the very few members of the Wikipedia ACW community who understands what the "Show preview" button does and is able to commit a large change in a single edit. A few constructive comments:

• I don't understand why you removed the quotations from Scott's letter in the previous draft. You also removed the links from the footnotes that point to the full online text of the documents.
• You are making heavier use of primary sources -- the ORA and ORN (which abbreviations you do not explain in your citations) -- than secondary sources, often in those places where judgments or historical insights are offered. Your Conclusion section should be based entirely on secondary sources, for example. See WP:PSTS.
• You go into great detail about the campaigns on the Mississippi, but give no corresponding details of the part of the plan that you consider "core" -- the blockade. I am inferring that you did this because you believe that, since the idea of a blockade preceded Scott's letter, that it was not a legitimate part of his plan. In fact, selecting/validating a course of strategic action as being sufficient (and omitting other courses of alternative actions) is just as valid as originating the idea.

Hal Jespersen (talk) 23:49, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, Hal, for your constructive criticism. I will try to reply to each point in turn.

1. I removed the quotes only because of style-I mean, that's the way I write. It's mostly a matter of making things concise. As for removing the links, that was unintended and I will try to restore them.
2. The Official Records (both services) are a special case. They may be primary sources, but they are actually more widely available than most secondary sources. Since the secondary sources are often redirects (when it comes to facts, and not interpretations), I see no reason not to refer to them (the Official Records) when they have the needed information. As for explaining the abbreviations--that was an oversight, pure and simple. I meant to do so.
3. You are correct in interpreting my reasoning for emphasizing the Mississippi campaign, but your point about Scott's plan validating the blockade is well taken. I should at least give a nod to the blockade. The article could support a section devoted to it. It will take me time to put my materials in order, but I will do it, if no one else does so first.

So long as we are at it, do you think it is possible to point out that BOTH "Anaconda" and "On to Richmond" were used to bring the Confederacy down? Their relative merits are a judgment call, and I don't know how to state it in an article devoted to one side without injecting my own POV. PKKloeppel (talk) 04:09, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

The availability of the official records is not really an issue. Whenever it is reasonably possible to find a secondary source to provide factual information for a Wikipedia article, you should attempt to do so. It is well-known that the official records contain information that is sometimes incomplete and sometimes modified to meet the political or legacy requirements of its authors, often long after the fact. Even things that seem cut and dried, such as casualty figures, can benefit from the attention that a professional historian will apply in evaluating multiple sources of information. I have found a number of battles in which the modern interpretation of casualty figures has been modified from those in the official records. (The battle of Gettysburg is one very significant example.) About the only thing I would accept with 100% assurance from the official records would be that the texts of military correspondence are accurately recorded (whether the content of those dispatches represent the truth or not is another matter).

It is possible to include information about other aspects of the Union military strategy beyond the Anaconda plan, although I would not spend a lot of time on it. The "On to Richmond" strategy is worth mentioning simply because many people do not understand that it was not part of Scott's plan. However, it would be simplistic to say that the war was won as a combination of Anaconda plus Richmond. Many historians (including an amateur one, me) would suggest that the Union efforts in Tennessee and Georgia were of equal significance to anything going on in Eastern theater, except in terms of public relations. Your article about the Anaconda plan essentially denigrates anything that did not happen on the Mississippi River -- such as Halleck's and Grant's interest in the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers -- which I think is misleading.

The really interesting aspect of your article that I had not considered previously was pointing out that Scott planned to go strictly from north to south to New Orleans, which did not turn out to be the case. This is another instance of where you should get a secondary source to make that evaluation because I, for one, did not interpret the contents of his letter as meaning that literally. Another area you should get a secondary source would be to describe Scott's retirement. You portray it as a matter of his being old and infirm, whereas the political maneuvering of George B. McClellan had a lot more to do with it. It is difficult to determine that sort of thing only from primary sources. Hal Jespersen (talk) 15:59, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Sorry I have taken so long to reply. My system was hacked, literally. A backhoe cut the cable, and we were down for a little while, along with the rest of the county.

Now, as for the Official Records as opposed to secondary sources: I do not disagree that the records need both interpretation and adjustment on occasion, but many times they remain better then anything else. Consider for example orders of battle. If a secondary source says that Unit A was at Battle B, and as evidence has a footnote pointing to the OR, I see no reason not to cut out the middleman. That is verification of sources, not original research. Let's grant that the OR is sometimes just plain wrong; a case in point is that the Confederate reports refer to 'ironclad' gunboats at Shiloh, although the two gunboats there were not armored. (But what the hell, I think I've seen the same statement in secondary sources—I'm relying on my memory, and it may be incorrect, but the point is that secondary sources can be wrong, too.) My original statement was meant to apply to uncontested facts, and to that extent I stand by my remarks: so long as secondary sources do not disagree with the OR's, the greater availability of the latter would make them the preferred source even if everything else were equal. But they are not equal, by arguments that can be based on the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

As for the inversion of the Mississippi River campaign, i.e. from south to north: That does appear in a secondary source, in the Galaxy article referred to in the notes. The Galaxy is not often found even in libraries now (although I did find it, which is why I knew about it), but it is available online in Cornell Univ.'s Making of America collection:

cdl.library.cornell.edu/moa/browse.journals/gala.html.

The question is not whether Scott would have allowed his plan to be altered in this way. It is that the strategy of dividing the South along the line of the Mississippi had been abandoned, if it had ever been seriously considered, until Fox (and of course Farragut) forced the issue. Fox was not simply carrying Scott's baggage for him after he retired. His hidden agenda was actually to bring the Navy out from under Army domination. That was the motivation behind Port Royal, New Orleans, and the failed attack on Charleston. (Sorry I can't lay my hands on a source for that statement, but I think it is pretty commonly accepted.)

Mentioning Scott's retirement brings me to the next point. There may have been (weasel words, those; actually, I KNOW there was) some political maneuvering that forced him out, but I do not see where it is relevant to the article, which is concerned with how the plan was or was not implemented over the course of two years of the war.

Finally, I'm sorry that my contrast of the Anaconda with "On to Richmond" was opaque. What I meant to imply was that the Anaconda was an effort to avoid pitched battles of the sort that were associated with the campaign against Richmond. Obviously, they were not confined to the Richmond area, and Shiloh, Vicksburg, Stones River, Chickamauga, Franklin, etc., were cumulatively as important as were, also cumulatively, Antietam, Gettysburg, Chancellorsville, Spotsylvania, etc. Only Vicksburg in this list can be conceived to be part of the Anaconda as commonly interpreted. I could add many more to the list, and the fundamental point would be unchanged: the thought of dividing the Confederacy was not an underlying strategy of the Federal military establishment. The Anaconda is remembered because it happened that way, more or less; but the Mississippi River part of it came about because of the coming together of any number of circumstances, and was not the result of adhering to a grand plan. PKKloeppel (talk) 05:10, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

One more try on primary sources and the official records: in any case where information is available in secondary sources and in the ORs, you should cite the secondary source. This is not a matter of a middleman, it is a matter of verifying primary sources. If you go directly to the primary source, the Wikipedia reader has no way of knowing that the information is verified by a secondary source. Your example of orders of battle is appropriate because virtually all notable battles of the Civil War have secondary sources in which orders of battle are listed, and occasionally corrected. Why should the reader be left wondering about whether he is reading a corrected order of battle or the raw data? Other examples of data in the ORs that would seem to be immutable, but aren't always, are casualty figures, number of effective combatants, number of artillery pieces, times of day, geographic names, accounts of the actions of individuals and units, etc. As I think I said previously, the only data I would consider to be gospel in the ORs would be the text of correspondence sent during the war, which is presumably transcribed correctly, although the accuracy of the contents of the correspondence needs verification.

As to your other comments, one of my methods of reviewing material is to pose questions for the author where I think that the material is unverified, incomplete, or could be improved. The intent of the question is to prompt modifications to the source document and its citations, not to receive answers on the talk page. Hal Jespersen (talk) 00:53, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Dates

Hi Pkkphysicist. I wanted to thank you for the hard work you done on this article. Honestly, I was very surprised and happy to see you emphasis on the role of Scott and George McClellan. In fact, I remember being very pissed when my book (in contrast to wikipedia) for AP US History in 2003 actually had the arrogance to say Grant came up with the Anaconda Plan. Anyways, as I was ready your article, I felt like you are suggesting that General Scott, during the Civil War, came up with the Anaconda plan after Fort Sumter in response to McClellan letter sent on 27 May 1861. However, I recall from my knowledge learning about how in fact this conversation of war strategy between McClellan and Scott began (though clearly not in the level detail as in May) slightly before Fort Sumter; therefore, I implore you to double check the dates on you primary sources and specifically mention a letter from Scott to McClellan found in the National Archives around Annapolis Maryland area. The reason I implore you to look into this is because my father, along with a colleague, found part of the letters you mentioned between Scott and McClellan while he was stationed in Annapolis Maryland from 1995-1997. (When I asked him about it again today, he mentioned again how one letter from Scott to McClellan was dated before 19 April 1861). If it helps, I did a quick search of the national archives under phrases "Annapolis" and "Winfield Scott" and found "393.2 RECORDS OF DIVISIONS 1837-1907, 1911-13" under "Records of the Headquarters of the Army".

128.61.43.160 (talk) 02:43, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the kind words. I share your distaste for textbooks that can't get even elementary facts right.

As for the possibility you raise that Scott may have come up with something like the Anaconda Plan even before Fort Sumter, I'm afraid that I can't help you. It seems quite possible. Certainly the government was doing something in the six weeks between Lincoln's inauguration and the bombardment, and the rapid proclamation of blockade suggests that it could have been thoroughly considered beforehand, as a sort of contingency plan. Unfortunately, it would require some original research to find just what Scott was doing at that time. It is not only Wikipedia policy that keeps me from doing the research necessary to find out (see my discussion with Hal Jesperson above); it is also that I am not a historian, either professional or amateur. There is a hint here: As you seem already to have access to some relevant records, you might wish to try your own hand at it. Or point them out to a real historian, if you would rather not. — As for McClellan's early (i.e pre-Fort Sumter) contributions, I am more skeptical. He wasn't even in the Army at the time, and I can't imagine that Scott would have any reason to discuss strategy with him until he was more or less forced to do so by M's letter. I can be proved wrong, but again it would require original research. PKKloeppel (talk) 14:01, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

New study of strategy

A history of Civil War strategies, both Northern and Southern, has recently been published: Donald Stoker, The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S. Civil War (Oxford, 2010). ISBN 978-0-19-537305-9. It is worth pursuing because Stoker asserts that it is the first history devoted to its topic. (So far as I know, the claim is correct.) I do not believe that it contravenes anything written in the article, but it provides fresh insights. Certainly anyone who wishes to rewrite or otherwise extensively modify the article should first read Stoker. PKKloeppel (talk) 01:29, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Check your words.

1st paragraph Derived /= Derided I presume that was the intended meaning. Please for an editor to double check/change

western campaign equal in significance to eastern

"Virtually all present-day historians agree that the Union's Western campaign was at least as significant as that in the East"

Is this true? All present day historians? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.142.0.105 (talk) 16:06, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Merge?

Should this be merged with Union Blockade? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 04:35, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

I am in favor of merging and will start drafting out how that might look. Amscheip (talk) 01:28, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

Did you end up drafting this? I agree this would be good to do TokenByToken (talk) 22:44, 27 June 2024 (UTC)