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Within weeks after being sworn in as President, Abraham Lincoln and aging war hero and current General-in-Chief Winfield Scott had envisioned a blockade of all southern ports and points west, to be followed by an advance down the Mississippi River to cut the Confederacy in two. Opponents widely derided the plan as overly passive—they mockingly named it the “Anaconda” plan after the large constrictor snake. At the onset of the war the plan was also impractical, given the lack of Union naval vessels needed to enforce it. Ultimately, it would mirror the eventual means by which the North won the war.
Before the plan could be implemented, the first battle caused shock waves in the capital. On July 21, 1861, the first Battle of Bull Run (sometimes called the Battle of Manassas) was fought between Union and Confederate forces merely 25 miles from Washington, D.C. Incredible though it seems today, hundreds of carriages carrying picnickers streamed out from the city to observe what both sides expected to be a quick and decisive end to a short-lived war. After initial gains by Union forces under General Irvin McDowell, Confederate forces led by General P.G.T. Beauregard and reinforced by General Joseph Johnston counterattacked, stimulating a panicked retreat of McDowell’s forces back to Washington. Confederate General Thomas J. Jackson famously stood his ground, forever earning his sobriquet, Stonewall Jackson.
With Union forces in disarray and proximity to the capital a grave concern, Lincoln was understandably apprehensive. But Confederate forces were also shocked by the brutality and casualties of battle and could not further attack the city. Both sides realized it would be a long and drawn-out war.
[Adapted from my book, Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America]
David J. Kent is a science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity (2013) and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (2016) and two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.
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Hot White Snow 
I’d like to read more about Winfield Scott. There is a Forest Service recreation area in North Georgia named after him. That is near the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. When the adults in our group would get too tired from walking/hiking, that is where we would hang out. That is when I first came across the name. It is a confusing mish/mash of names in that area, but I think the prettiest place is Blood Mountain named after a Creek/Cherokee battle, both of whom Scott helped remove.
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I don’t know that much about Scott myself. He was a war hero going back as far as the War of 1812 but really made his name during the Mexican American War. He also had been the Whig nominee for president in 1852, but lost pretty badly to Franklin Pierce. By the time of the Civil War he was both physically and mentally well beyond his prime, and begged to get out of the General-in-Chief position not long after the first Bull Run.
I see there are several biographies of him and his own autobiographical memoirs. I haven’t read any of them so don’t know which to recommend.
Most of my time on the Appalachian Trail has been in the middle portions and up in Maine. Blood Mountain sounds intriguing, and yet another area of history that I wish I understood better.
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Interesting to see details of his interactions with Jackson. That would be timely.
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Seems to be the common theme of most warfare, especially of the civil variety. Made me recall something from a high school US-History class, where the teacher had us looking up and plotting out the casualties from successive Civil War battles. I remember being astounded at how they went from none at all to over 40,000 dead in a single confrontation. I guess he was a pretty good teacher if I recall that all these years later. But up to that point, I’d never really understood the magnitude of the consequence of waging civil warfare.
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Many of the battles were really uncontrolled melees. Someone yelled “Charge!” and thousands of soldiers ran at each other firing (mostly one shot because they were usually still using musket type rifles, especially early on) and then using bayonets while cannon balls sometimes fell randomly into the mix. Now of course we can kill thousands of people without ever seeing them, which doesn’t seem much of an improvement.
There’s a famous graph used by Edward Tufte in his visualization courses (one of which I took many years ago) showing the depletion of men during Napoleon’s ill-fated march to Moscow in 1812. War is Hell, as they say. Too bad some people find it easy to send other people’s kids into it while staying away from it themselves.
Here’s the link to the graph:
https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/posters
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