The Anaconda Plan was the nickname attached to Lieutenant General Winfield Scott's comprehensive plan to defeat the Confederacy at the start of the American Civil War (1861–1865). Scott called for a strong defense of Washington, D.C., a blockade of the Confederacy's Atlantic and Gulf coasts, and a massive land and naval attack along the Mississippi River aimed at cutting the Confederacy in two. Although United States president Abraham Lincoln immediately instituted a naval blockade, he bowed to political pressure in 1861 and shelved the rest of the plan. In retrospect, Scott's strategy seems broadly prescient, although it aimed at political conciliation and did not anticipate the hard war fought in Virginia and elsewhere.
