3. The Union Blockade and Southern Strategy

Tariffs were generally favorable for the North and unfavorable for the South. They were a key political battle for forty years. The Union General Scott developed the anaconda plan to squeeze the breath out of the South. The Union Blockade was the first part of that plan. This battle at sea won the war for the Union. The land battle was a stalemate.

The South’s King Cotton strategy was to get the Europeans to intervene on the South’s behalf, but there was no real push for the Europeans to do so. The South should have aggressively exported their cotton into Europe, but they did not.

Lecture 3 of 8 from Mark Thornton’s The Economics of the Civil War, presented to the Auburn University Academy for Lifelong Learners.