The Blockade Strategy Board of the American Civil War, also known variously as the Commission of Conference or as the Du Pont Board, was a group of four men, meeting in the summer of 1861 at the request of the Navy Department, who laid out a preliminary strategy for enforcing the blockade of seceding states that had been proclaimed by President Abraham Lincoln. Although the board reported to the Navy Department, only half of its members were sailors. These were Captain Samuel Francis Du Pont, who acted as chairman, and Commander Charles Henry Davis. The other two were Major John Gross Barnard of the US Army and Alexander Dallas Bache of the US Coast Survey and the Smithsonian Institution. The board considered the entire coast held by the Confederate States of America, and recommended how b