The Anaconda had a logical development, both in its origin and the way it played out in the experience of battle. The blockade had already been proclaimed by Lincoln. On April 19, 1861, a week after the bombardment of Fort Sumter that marked the outbreak of the war, he announced that the ports of all the seceded states, from South Carolina to Texas, would be blockaded; later, when Virginia and North Carolina also seceded, their coastlines were added. The executive order was not rescinded until the end of the war and so the blockade existed independently of Scott's plan.