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The Union blockade in the American Civil War was a naval strategy by the United States to prevent the Confederacy from trading.. The blockade was proclaimed by President Abraham Lincoln in April 1861, and required the monitoring of 3,500 miles (5,600 km) of Atlantic and Gulf coastline, including 12 major ports, notably New Orleans and Mobile.
Proposed by Union General-in-Chief Winfield Scott, the plan emphasized a Union blockade of the Southern ports and called for an advance down the Mississippi River to cut the South in two. Because the blockade would be rather passive, it was widely derided by a vociferous faction of Union generals who wanted a more vigorous prosecution of the ...
The first ship to evade the Union blockade was the A and A, a bark from Belfast, making its way from Charleston harbor. The General Parkhill, a British ship built in Liverpool, England, was the first blockade runner to be captured by the USS Niagara also at Charleston harbor. [79]
It signed a trade deal with the Union and considered Confederate ships as pirate ships, banning them from entering its waters. The Ottoman Empire stood to benefit from the Union's blockade of the Confederate ports, with the cotton industry of the empire (chiefly Egypt) becoming Europe's largest supplier of cotton as a result. [111]
The Confederate government failed to get Europe involved militarily. Southern leaders needed to get European powers to help break the blockade the Union had created around Southern ports. Lincoln's naval blockade was 95 percent effective at stopping trade goods; as a result, imports and exports to the South declined significantly.
On April 16, 1861, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln ordered a blockade of Confederate ports to weaken the Confederacy's economy. [5] Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet realized the Confederates could not compete economically with the Union because cotton exports served as the primary economic driver of the Confederate economy ...
The strategic importance of blockade was shown during the French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars, when the Royal Navy successfully blockaded France, leading to major economic disruptions. The Union blockade of southern ports was a major factor in the American Civil War.
At the southern coast, the Alabama ports remained open (with Union blockades, but guarded by forts, floating mines, and obstacle paths) for almost 4 years using blockade runners, until the Battle of Mobile Bay (Aug 1864) and the Battle of Fort Blakeley (April 1865) forced Mobile to surrender the last major Confederate port.