Union Blockade During the Civil War (2024)

FAQs

What was the Union blockade during the Civil War response? ›

The blockade, although somewhat porous, was an important economic policy that successfully prevented Confederate access to weapons that the industrialized North could produce for itself. The U.S. Government successfully convinced foreign governments to view the blockade as a legitimate tool of war.

-The blockade effectively stopped ships trying to enter or leave Southern ports, and Southerners began to feel the result when store shelves became bare.

The blockade was largely successful in reducing 95% of cotton export in the South from pre-war levels, devaluing its currency and severely damaging its economy. However, it was less successful in preventing war material from being smuggled into the South.

Because the Union navy blockaded the Confederate ports, the Confederacy could not export raw materials such as cotton, nor could it import war supplies. This resulted in the Confederate army suffering from shortages of supplies.

Essentially—and not altogether intentionally—the Union blockade balkanized the Confederate economy into two different non-supporting spheres, physically separating the Southern food supply west of the Mississippi from the financial resources east of the Mississippi.

Frances Harrold explains that the blockade of Savannah and its eventual fall to the Union brought increased trade and manufacturing to Atlanta. A shortage of supplies near the end of the war brought business to Atlanta and led to the city's growth and resurgence in the aftermath.

Not only were the Federal ships outclassed in speed and maneuverability by the professional blockade runners, but the nature of the Atlantic seaboard was such that a fleet of several thousand armed, shallow draft vessels would have been needed to make even a pretense of patrolling it.

What was the purpose of the Union Blockade? The purpose of the blockade was to crush the life out of the confederacy by preventing essential supplies reaching the armies and civilians.

Anaconda plan, military strategy proposed by Union General Winfield Scott early in the American Civil War. The plan called for a naval blockade of the Confederate littoral, a thrust down the Mississippi, and the strangulation of the South by Union land and naval forces.

Lincoln's imposition of the blockade on April 19 without clear guidelines from either the Constitution or the Congress, and with the possibility of legitimizing the Confederacy by suggesting that war existed, was a bold act. And it was a decision that most historians have excused.

When was the Union blockade in the Civil War? ›

1861

Union blockade / Start date

The South's greatest strength lay in the fact that it was fighting on the defensive in its own territory. Familiar with the landscape, Southerners could harass Northern invaders. The military and political objectives of the Union were much more difficult to accomplish.

In less than a week, the Union began its blockade of the southern states in an effort to prevent the trade of goods, supplies, and weapons between the Confederacy and other nations. Prize law is that part of international law which concerns the capture of enemy property by a belligerent at sea during war.

While the British caused the Union troubles by helping build ships for the Confederacy, like the CSS Alabama, the most alarming threat to the Union blockade was the iron-‐plated Merrimack because it sank many Union wooden ships.

Because the blockade would be rather passive, it was widely derided by a vociferous faction of Union generals who wanted a more vigorous prosecution of the war and likened it to the coils of an anaconda suffocating its victim. The snake image caught on, giving the proposal its popular name.

The Union Blockade, nicknamed Scott's Great Snake, made the open harbors of California desirable to the Confederacy. Wikimedia Commons. At the time, the Union blockade of the South was the largest ever attempted in world history.

What was the purpose of the Union Blockade? The purpose of the blockade was to crush the life out of the confederacy by preventing essential supplies reaching the armies and civilians.