This was the union strategy to instigate a complete naval blockade of the confederacy in order to prevent the export of their major cash crop- cotton- or the import of weapons from europe.

This is known as the Anaconda Plan.

This military strategy, developed by Union General Winfield Scott, was meant to starve the Confederacy out of their resources. Essentially, Scott felt that if the Confederacy could not trade for goods with other countries they would not be able to survive. This is due to the Confederacy's reliance on cotton as their main cash crop.

This strategy helps to explain why the US wanted to blockade trade with other countries as well as why the Union wanted to control the Mississippi River, as they knew control of this waterway could negatively impact the Confederacy's ability to transport/obtain resources.

the answer to fill in the blank in this question would be the word resource, it is defined as the money, material or people (since human resource is a very valuable good) that a company or a person has at disposition (meaning they can use the resource as they see fit), to be able to complete a task or achieve a goal.