I do thank you for your input as I never heard anything of Hacker´s study before (shame on me) and I indeed found it highly intriguing.
After googling and reading what I could find about it (it was indeed a pleasant afternoon) I was a bit astonished
that my lecture (at least in my opinion) didn´t support your interpretation outrightly.
I am somehow relieved now to see that also others as
@Lost Cause are sharing the same idea.
Of course you are right that confederate records weren´t that reliable and many of them were indeed lost.
But as far as I know this bears more on the records of 1864/65 than that of 1862/63.
But even if your interpretation of those numbers should hold - then we still have the fact that several union invasions of Virginia were frustrated by the ANV.
Imagine how we would look on the Civil War if those setbacks hadn´t happened.
Let´s pretend Richmond would have fallen in 1862 (most inevitably leading to an early collapse of the Confederacy)
well I am pretty sure most people would regard the whole matter as just nothing but a kind of inflated Whisky rebellion
- and this forum here wouldn´t maybe even exist.
Regarding the importance of victories in the West
I´d like to note that in the summer / autumn of 1864 many of the western territories were already occupied by Union forces
- and still the fight in Virginia was everything but decided.
I am of the opinion that Virginia, North Carolina and not much more obviously sufficed to support an army of Lee´s of about 70.000 - if though just barely.
And obviously that 70.000 men sufficed
- with a bit of luck
- and supported by Virginia´s topography heavily bolstering her defense against incursions from the North
to pretty neigh frustrate another invasion (pretty much regardless of what happened in the West).
But imagine Lee would have beaten Meade on that July afternoon...
If that really would have happened..well...you may draw you own conclusions.
I think in the end you will have to acknowledge that even southern Confederates (and even southern slave-holding Confederates) were Americans above all - to defeat them took just a hell of a fight - and Lee made this task everything but easier.
But that are of course just my five cents...