Civil War Paper
...in others. At the start of the war, General Winfield Scott proposed the "Anaconda Plan" to defeat the South by imposing a blockade, opening up the Mississippi River and capturing the Confederacy's capital, Richmond (Robotham). Although these events did have an important role in the eventual Union victory, they did not threaten the South's heartland.
The North fared much better in the first year of the war, because it had maintained control over the Border States. The Border States were Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri. Keeping these States in the union was a critical part of the North's plan if they wanted to win the war (Robotham). In the begging of the Civil War President Lincoln was very careful not to rub these states the wrong way, because he knew if he did not have these states on his side he would have no chance in winning the war and preserving the Union.
The Union would have to think of a strategy that could overcome the strength of the South's defense. The strategy they thought of was to preserve the territorial and governmental places they had already had in the Union. This meant that they wanted the United States as it was before the war. It was going to take military force if they wanted to try and preserve the nation. Their plan was to defeat the southern armies and arrest their leaders, in order to enable the Unionists (whom Northerners in 1861 assumed to be the silent majority in most Southern states) to regain control and bring the states back into the Union (Ward). This strategy worked well in the Border States with the aid of military force despite the Confederate allegiance of a substantial minority of their citizens. It worked also in Virginia west of the Alleghenies, where Northern troops helped the Unionist majority form the new state of West Virginia.
But elsewhere the silent majority of Unionists remained largely a myth....
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