Civil War battles and strategy

The Union entered the war with real advantages -- more people, more factories, more railroad track, and a stronger navy -- while the Confederacy's main advantage was fighting a defensive war on familiar home ground, needing only to survive rather than conquer. The Union's early strategy, nicknamed the Anaconda Plan, aimed to squeeze the Confederacy by blockading its coastline and gaining control of the Mississippi River, cutting off supplies and splitting the South in two. The First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861 shattered any hope of a quick war, as green, poorly trained Union troops were routed by Confederate forces just miles from Washington, D.C.

Several later battles proved decisive. The Battle of Antietam in September 1862 remains the bloodiest single day in American history, with roughly 23,000 casualties; it was militarily close to a draw but counted as enough of a Union success that Lincoln used it as the moment to announce the Emancipation Proclamation. In July 1863, two battles turned the tide for good: at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Union forces repelled General Robert E. Lee's last invasion of the North, and at Vicksburg, Mississippi, General Ulysses S. Grant's siege finally gave the Union full control of the Mississippi River, splitting the Confederacy in two just as the Anaconda Plan had intended. In 1864, General William Tecumseh Sherman marched his army from Atlanta to the sea, deliberately destroying railroads, factories, and farms across Georgia to break the South's ability and will to keep fighting -- an early, harsh example of what is now called total war.