Overview

"With the onset of the American Civil War, the Federal Government instituted a massive naval blockade of the Confederacy, dubbed ""The Anaconda Plan."" The northernmost extremity of the blockade, the Potomac River, was known as ""the Anaconda's Tail."" Herein is the untold history of the desperate struggle for control of that strategic waterway and the conflagration that ensued. The story is not only of Union and Confederate naval and military episodes in the contest for command of the river, but of blockade runners, espionage and contraband operations. It reveals the never before published accounts of Jefferson Davis's planned invasion of Southern Maryland, the Union military occupation of the state's lower counties, and the devastating depredations of seaborne rebel guerrillas. In a region where slavery was dominant, it is also a vivid account of societal upheaval and economic collapse, refugee management, emancipation, and the advent of the United States Colored Troops. It is a tale of the ""Andersonville of the North,"" at Point Lookout, Maryland, the desperate effort to free thousands of rebel prisoners of war by combined land-sea assault, and the Confederate attack on Washington itself. Finally, it is an account of that chaos in the words of Everyman, and both the participants and leaders of both sides, played out against the backdrop of the greater war being fought across the entirety of the American landscape. In its glowing review of Shomette's work, Civil War News has declared that Anaconda's Tail, which was awarded the esteemed Brewington Book Prize for Best National Maritime History for 2019 by the Maryland Historical Society, ""is THE text for those who think they know nearly everything about the War."""

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9780578613222

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Reviews

Anaconda's Tail by Donald Grady Shomette rises conspicuously above other books on the Civil War along the Border States. Until now, the pursuit of John Wilkes Booth has dominated the available literature on the Civil War on the banks of the lower Potomac River. In writing this forgotten component of American history Shomette has surpassed just good. He has placed Southern Maryland's significant role in the context of both the major Northern and Southern war efforts, and in the doing has produced a most gripping narrative. Glenn F. Williams, Senior Historian, U.S. Army, author of Dunmore's War: The Last Conflict of America's Colonial Era. Shomette's in-depth research undertaken in producing Anaconda's Tail: Civil War on the Potomac Frontier, 1861-1865 brings to light for the first time both the Union's efforts to deny Southern Maryland's support for the Confederacy and to quell the incredible resilient resistance to Federal occupation. By melding official records, diaries, letters and local traditions, he has unveiled a forgotten story of Southern Maryland and the Northern Neck of Virginia, as well as the U.S. Navy's Potomac Flotilla, that is both compelling and enormously readable. Modern students of military history can find much to guide their studies of asymmetrical warfare and rebellion here. The causal reader will be enthralled by the intrigue, adventure and daring do of seafaring guerillas, spies, and the innumerable heroes and villains hitherto lost to history. Dr. Lawrence E. Babits, Professor Emeritus of Underwater Archaeology, East Carolina University, author of From These Honored Dead: Historical Archaeology of the Civil War. By using the framework of the transportation network, official army and navy accounts, and the uneven intelligence gathering of the military and judicial authorities, including the notorious Pinkerton, Donald Shomette, in his latest work, Anaconda's Tail: Civil on the Potomac Frontier, has woven a narrative of regional resistance, racism, and the brutal military occupation of Southern Maryland that is inevitably long and worthy of multi-volumes but extraordinarily absorbing reading. His balance between what was happening locally and the momentum of the war on a national scale provides an exceptional perspective of the progress of the conflict from the standpoint of Southern Maryland as well as insight into the terrible consequences of a sharply divided state and nation. While the details are starkly different it has a decidedly familiar ring in today's world. Dr. Edward Papenfuse, Maryland State Archivist (Ret.), author of In Pursuit of Profit: The Annapolis Merchants in the Era of the American Revolution, 1763-1805.

Author Information

Donald Grady Shomette is a nationally known maritime historian and for more than two decades a staff member of the Library of Congress. As a cultural resources consultant and marine archaeologist he has been engaged by myriad governments, universities and museums. As a researcher, writer and lecturer he has worked internationally under the sponsorships of the National Park Service, the National Geographic Society, the US Navy, and others. Author of eighteen books, and contributor to many professional journals, encyclopedias and anthologies of history, archaeology and poetry, his writings have also appeared in such publications as National Geographic, History and Technology, and Sea History. He is thrice winner of the prestigious John Lyman Book Award for Best American Maritime History, recipient of the Calvert Prize for historic preservation, and holds an honorary PhD from the University of Baltimore.

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