age when advances in weaponry, especially the rifle with its long range and in artillery, had made the defense stronger. It also benefited from its ability to make use of its shorter interior lines well served by its good rail net. The North had a much larger free manpower base (a four to one edge), a far superior navy and six times as many manufacturing establishments (Hattaway and Jones 6). According to Catton, a key vulnerability of the Confederacy was its dependence on seaborne trade-to import arms and to sell cotton to pay for them (22).
Catton says that "the odd thing about the beginning of the war was that nobody had made any plans . . . Each side expected to win it . . . quickly" (19). General-in-Chief Winfield Scott advised Lincoln to follow Scott's Anaconda Plan designed to bleed the South dry, which emphasized a naval blockade and offensives in the West which would split the South and ruin its rail network and military supply system. Although he was attracted by many features of Scott's plan, Lincoln, most of the Congress and a considerable segment of the public were uncomfortable with its seeming lack of aggressiveness toward the enemy at the gates of Washington, D.C., the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. According to Jones, "Lincoln . . . found himself caught between the professional soldiers' views of military reality, and the civilian perspective, which tended to see war almost exclusively in terms of battles" (49).
Lincoln and Scott therefore approved t
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