To manage the blockade, a commission called The Blockade Strategy Board was created by the United States Navy at the direction of Assistant Secretary of the Navy Gustavus Fox. Other important ports included Norfolk, Charleston, Wilmington and Savannah. The Union Navy had established blockades of all major southern ports, notably New Orleans and Mobile, by July 1861. The blockade was extended to include North Carolina and Virginia on April 27. On ApPresident Abraham Lincoln issued the Proclamation of Blockade Against Southern Ports, putting the Anaconda Plan into effect. Union military commanders were not sanguine about the idea, preferring a rapid attack strategy to a slow suffocation, believing that the war would be rapidly over. US Secretary of State William Henry Seward recommended adopting the blockade immediately following the firing on Fort Sumter. Proclamation and Management of the Blockade All of these would have to be imported to engage in war once those stolen from federal armories in the South had been used. Only one iron works existed that could produce artillery weapons and armaments, and few manufacturing centers of guns and bullets. Moreover, the South in 1861 has limited facilities to produce the weapons of war. This pattern would have to be modified rapidly to stay in the war. The main role of the railroads before the war was to bring goods to port the opposite direction was rarely used for transporting heavy loads from the ports to the cities or countryside. This increased the cost of transporting goods, raising the prices on agricultural products and stressed the Southern economy. The blockade overburdened roads and the railroad system in the South, which were not designed to transport troops north-south where the troops needed to go but rather west-east towards the ocean. The only way to transport these goods to the consumer were by rail. Southern reliance on cotton sales and the absence of manufacturing centers in the region delineated why the prewar Southern economy was dependent on maritime trade. Food was purchased from Texas and Arkansas or the Midwestern states. The revenue from cotton sales were used to purchase finished products and goods. More specifically, southern economy was dependent on exporting cotton to Great Britain and to the Northeastern states, where clothes and other items were manufactured. Before the war, the South relied on coastline ports to ship goods and products to other regions and countries. In addition, the South needed markets to sell its cotton and other cash crops. The South grew crops and raw materials, which were then sold to industrial centers and in return, manufactured goods were purchased. The ante bellum economy of the South relied on bringing manufactured goods from the Northern states and trading raw agricultural products with foreign countries. By blockading the southern ocean ports and the Mississippi River, its military would slowly suffocate as supplies dwindled and the country became isolated from its trading partners.
The two objectives of the blockade were: 1) to prevent war material, manufactured goods, and luxury items from reaching the South to boost their war effort and morale at home and 2) to stop the exportation of raw cotton to foreign manufacturers, which would bring cash to the Confederate economy. Scott expected that a land war would be a long, arduous undertaking despite the general opinion that it would be over in weeks. Scott devised a plan for a naval blockade of the ports of the Confederate Atlantic shoreline, an invasion and occupation down the Mississippi River, and the consequent strangulation of the South by combined Union land and naval forces. Since the CSA trading partners were overseas and there were no land connections, its economy depended on open rivers and seas. He recognized that the seceded states depended on bringing military and consumer imports in, and trading cotton and agricultural exports out. Scott reasoned that the vulnerability of a southern nation was its absence of manufacturing, supplies, and weapons production in the region.
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