Poor Winfield Scott has to do it all. Mexican War solutions he would have applied if the politicians like Polk actually did, allowed during the Civil War.
   Recruiting.
   You might as well grab the Irishman and German straight off the boat and enlist him before he  has time to criminalize up, and become a disgruntled $300 bountyman. You still have the same problems teaching him how to soldier, but if you catch him before he turns Gangs of New York on you, you can train him to love the Army instead of hate it. Its what Scott did in 1848.
    You might also try to use the recruit replacement method that the Confederates had. Elite Yankee units like the Iron Brigade or the Irish Brigade were almost wiped out because they never had casualty replacement  to keep their ranks properly filled after a major battle.  If those units were handled more like Berdan's Sharpshooters with suitable recruits [volunteers] plugged in after each battle and maintained at full strength, then the miserable decline in Federal infantry that occurred after Gettysburg would not have been so pronounced  Veteran Federal infantry was ferociously good.  There wasn't just enough of it, passing on their experience to the new draftee scum............er recruits. Scott never faced this problem in the short Mexican War. He did recommend that the Regular Army be expanded to eight times its current size and that it form the core of the federal armies using this kind of recruiting. Lincoln for political reasons had to overrule the FOB.
     Sergeant's schools  are obviously a good thing to set up in bivouack. Get the Regulars to teach the Volunteers. Do you know how many  US Civil War dead could have been spared if the average sergeant just learned two simple skills? Keeping his soldiers well fed and clean could have gone a long way to halving the disease rate. Never mind teaching the sergeant how to shake out a skirmish line; how to read and use ground; or how to teach soldiers how to shoot properly and march without straggling.  Only 190,000 of the half million DEAD were shot to death . The rest were carried off by DISEASE.  Just good cooking and proper camp hygiene could have saved tens of thousands of lives. Can you see to what Army benefit that must have led, as far as recruitment, unit end strength, and combat power; if the soldiers were healthy? Once again, Old Fuss and feathers used this method to train his "volunteers" before he sailed for Vera Cruz. McClellan remembered it, and tried to apply something like it  himself. As for Grant, in 1864, he INSISTED on it for the Army of the Potomac.. 
      As for the officers, doggone.  If ever a bunch of nitwits needed  indoctrination and constant schooling, it was the  collection of  overeager types who politicked for commands or raised their own regiments. Those "gentlemen" often  couldn't get their uinits to where they were needed or  organize a properly supported attack to save their lives or the lives of their men. And in this case, that was EXACTLY what they had to do.
      This was patently a case of several thousand would be Napoleons, not having a clue as to how to  handle a latrine detail much less, a regiment. It doesn't help that as I pointed out earlier, that you have about  300 Regular Army Officers who could barely handle a regiment and most of them were Captains and Majors who were going to become your Generals. Where are you going to get the 1000 Colonels, 3000 Majors, 3000 Captains and 12,0000 Lieutenants you need? 
      You can turn a civilian railroad engineer into a military logistician easily, but you are a little short in the combat arms department. Gunners, cavalrymen, infantry platoon leaders, staff officers??????   Those clowns are  for the most part local businessmen, political hacks, schoolteachers, college professors, idiot sons of millionaires, and friends of Abe.
      You are Winfield Scott. What would you do? HMMMMMMMM? He never solved it.  It was a strictly OJT  field grade Officer Corps in the Union Army with the predictable disastrous results. It took the survivors two to four years to learn their jobs. And if George Custer is any guide of the standard cumulative results, most of the nitwits were lucky instead of good. No wonder Meade was always cursing and swearing at his staff. Snapping Turtle indeed!

Herald
   
 
          

The heavy part of the gatling gun was the wheeled gun carriage originally used to mount it. A 50 caliber Model 1863weighed all up 110 pounds [50 kg] without the carriage.Put the thing on a sled as diagrammed  above and  you can get it in around 100 kg,  with the sledge. THAT is a full function MMG [300-1000 meters effective range]as we know the term today. You don't have to cut it down to SMG size to make it a four man lift per say. A shorter barrel of say 40 calibers might be necessary if you want to make it less awkward, but that still gives you 300-500 meters.

Herald

The ammunition of the provisional Model 1863 Gatling gun would be identical with the expected ammunition of the  possible general issue Spencer Model 1863 breechloading rifle, on the quite sensible principle that the machine gun should fire standard rifle bullets. So we would be using the 56-56 copper cartridged bullet that was used in the 1863 Spencer and Sharps rifles. That is most definitely not a  pistol bullet  as it was  extremely lethal to well beyond 750 yards.

A 40 caliber barrel would be  22.5 inches long. The 50 caliber version would be 28 inches long. You still have the feed mechanism , the rotating gear, the magazine guide [hopper in the first versions] the cam drive with the ram feed, the firing pin and the shell extractor-that very complicated hand-cranked clockwork adding another foor to the gatling gun's length. Chopping off eight inches of barrel doesn't affect the ballistics all that much with a black powder charge, so you get a manageable three foot length 50 kilogram gatling gun you can put on a 50 kilogram sledge. If four men can't carry a 220 pound litter load at a trot for 500 yards then there is something very wrong with those four men..

This is doable. It puts a  recognizable machine gun into Federal hands by 1863. As I mentioned above it would be very expensive.  Putting 400 Gatling guns into the Army of the Potomac for example would cost $4MUS.That costs more than all of Sheridan's cavalry horses!  And in 1863 money that is a serious dent in the war budget. Then you have to add the 2000 men specially trained to handle the gatling guns, the wagons, the horses, the huge amounts of ammunition etc.

And Stanton thought the cavalry was expensive. Wait until he gets the bullet bill!

Herald
     

With regards to the naval part of Anaconda, the choice of the "90 day" steam powered gunboats, such as the USS Katahdin which was launched  in October 1861, at 507 tons and armed with 2 - 4 guns, was probably the best option available to the North to get enough ships on station to keep the blockage functioning.  Particularly after they'd gotten every other servicable ship still in their possession and suitable civilian vessel available and converted them for naval service.  A lot of these vessels were built with the war duration in mind, being built with un-seasoned lumber.  A problem that the USN at the beginning of the war, like the Army, was a lack of men immediately available.  Look at the number of ships at Norfolk that had to be burned to keep them out of the hands of the Confederates because there weren't enough sailors available to get them out of the base.