CANTON – Ron Semple will speak on The Monitor & the Virginia: General Scott's Great Snake - the Anaconda Plan at the next Civil War Roundtable Sunday, March 18, 2 p.m. at the St. Lawrence County Historical Association, 3 East Main St.

This Civil War Roundtable is part of the St. Lawrence County Historical Association’s Commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, which was fought from 1861-1865.

Around 7,000 men from St. Lawrence County enlisted to fight for the Union during the Civil War, even though Confederate forces never threatened Northern New York.

Early in the Civil War, the Union General-in-Chief Winfield Scott proposed blockading southern ports from the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic seaboard to isolate the Confederacy, and then wait for the South to give up on secession.

The passivity of the plan was ridiculed at that time and named by the press the Anaconda Plan.

But the blockades were successful in disrupting commerce in the South and limiting the effectiveness of the Confederate Navy.

The battle of the ironclads Monitor and Virginia, on March 9, 1862, illustrated just how important the issue of the Union’s blockades was to both sides.

The program will be presented by Ron Semple, a retired newspaperman, and a member of the board of trustees of the St. Lawrence County Historical Association and the Civil War Roundtable.

He also serves on the association’s Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission.

This will be Semple’s last Civil War Roundtable presentation before moving to North Carolina (most likely as a Union spy).