McPherson describes the war along the South's strategic inland waterways, the Mississippi, Cumberland and Tennessee rivers. And, McPherson points out, not only were Rebel ships breaking through the blockade, Confederate commerce raiders also wreaked havoc upon Union merchant shipping.
Five out of six made it through the blockade. Fast, nimble, shallow-drafted Confederate ships - designed to evade the big, slow, steam-powered Union frigates - were immediately deployed. No sooner was the Union's blockade put into effect, however, than the Confederacy found ways to avoid it. President Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles went along with this strategy. Its purpose was to strangle the Confederacy by closing it off from trade with the rest of the world by coastal blockade and by control of the Mississippi River. Winfield Scott outlined his famous Anaconda Plan.
The author informs us that it was in May 1861, one month after the battle at Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, S.C., that U.S.
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