The blockade had already been proclaimed by President Lincoln. The Anaconda had a historical development, both in its origin and the way it played out in the experience of battle. Consequently, the Anaconda has been somewhat rehabilitated, and general histories of the Civil War often credit it with guiding President Abraham Lincoln's strategy throughout. The form of the Northern victory thus turned out to look very much like what Scott had proposed in the early days.

Furthermore, the Confederacy was split in two by a campaign based on the Mississippi River, and a consensus has now been established that this Southern defeat was at least as important in the final collapse of the Rebellion as the land battles in the East that had so long attracted both public and historians' attention. In the four years of war, the Federal Navy enforced a blockade that certainly weakened the South, although its effect on the war effort is still debated. The conflict was not the brief affair that Scott's critics imagined. Their stated belief was that if a few strongholds were taken, the Confederacy would collapse. His opponents called for an immediate overland campaign, directed primarily at the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. Hence, Scott's plan was subjected to a great deal of ridicule. It would take time to gather and train the forces needed to carry out the central thrust, time that the critics of the plan were unwilling to concede. Navy was too small to enforce the blockade in the first months of the war. The complete strategy could not be implemented immediately, as no warships of the type imagined for the Mississippi campaign existed.

The culminating battle would be for the forts below New Orleans when they fell, the river would be in Federal hands from its source to its mouth, and the rebellion would be cut in two. They would be followed by a more traditional army, marching behind them to secure the victories. A spearhead consisting of a relatively small amphibious force, army troops transported by boats and supported by gunboats, should advance rapidly, capturing the Confederate positions down the river in sequence. In the early days of the Civil War, General-in-Chief Winfield Scott's proposed strategy for the war against the South had two prominent features: first, all ports in the seceding states were to be rigorously blockaded second, a strong column of perhaps 80,000 men should use the Mississippi River as a highway to thrust completely through the Confederacy.

The anaconda plan