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."