Blockade Strategy Board (Union, 1861)

The Blockade Strategy Board was a Union planning commission, convened by Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles on 25 June 1861, that studied how to enforce President Lincoln's blockade of the Confederate coast and recommended its geographic design and force allocation. It is an early documented example of a specialist body combining hydrography, military planning and commercial geography for blockade operations.

Role

The board, often called the Commission of Conference or the Du Pont board, brought together naval, military and scientific expertise: Captain Samuel Francis Du Pont as chairman, Commander Charles Henry Davis as secretary, Major John G. Barnard of the Army Corps of Engineers, and Alexander Dallas Bache, superintendent of the Coast Survey. Bache's inclusion mattered; the Coast Survey held the hydrographic data without which a 3,500-mile blockade could not be rationally allocated. Between 5 July and 19 September 1861 the board delivered seven reports assessing the Atlantic and Gulf coasts harbour by harbour, ranking ports by commercial importance, identifying channels a blockading squadron must watch, and recommending which points should be seized as coaling and supply bases for the blockading fleets.

Significance

The board's recommendations informed the Union's opening campaigns. Port Royal Sound was taken in November 1861 and became a principal base; Ship Island supported later Gulf operations; commanders modified other recommendations. Planning influence should not be converted into sole authorship of operational results. President Lincoln's blockade proclamations supplied the public legal act, naval commanders executed operations, and prize courts adjudicated captures. The board's reports supplied reconnaissance, geography and force-allocation advice for the Union blockade of the Confederacy (1861-1865), while Confederate policy, including Confederate cotton withholding and King Cotton diplomacy (1861-1863), shaped the economic outcome independently.

See also

Union blockade of the Confederacy (1861-1865) · Union blockade proclamations (US, 1861) · Naval blockade · Confederate cotton withholding and King Cotton diplomacy (1861-1863) · Prize law and prize courts · Economic warfare · Economic Kill Chain (EKC) · Economic statecraft

Sources

• US Naval History and Heritage Command, Civil War resources and blockade history.
• The American Presidency Project, Proclamation 81, blockade of ports in rebellious states (19 April 1861).
• University of Virginia Press, Kevin J. Weddle, *Lincoln's Tragic Admiral*.
• Oxford University Press, Craig L. Symonds, *Lincoln and His Admirals*.