In the summer of 1861, Davis must have looked at a map and wondered where to put his troops. I propose that he needed to put troops as listed below. He did not have enough men and did not have enough weapons for the ones he did have, but this is the deployment he needed to make to protect against the thrusts listed:
Thrust 1. South on the Mississippi River -- targets: Memphis, Vicksburg -- CS need a field army of 75,000
Thrust 2. North on the Mississippi River -- targets: New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Vicksburg -- CS need a field army of 30,000
Thrust 3. South on the Tennessee/Cumberland Rivers -- targets: Corinth, Nashville, Chattanooga, Atlanta -- CS needed a field army of 75,000
Thrust 4. North out of Mobile/Pensacola -- targets: Montgomery, Atlanta -- CS needed a field army of 30,000
Thrust 5. West out of of Charleston/Savannah/Port Royal -- targets: Macon, Augusta, Atlanta, Columbia -- CS needed a field army of 40,000
Thrust 6. West out of the NC Sound -- target: Raleigh and the main supply line to Virginia -- CS need a field army of 30,000
Thrust 7. South from DC -- target: Richmond -- CS needed a field army of 80,000
Thrust 8. North up the Peninsula -- target: Richmond -- CS needed a field army of 30,000
Thrust 9, South through the Valley of Virginia -- targets: Charlottsville, Lynchburg, Richmond -- CS needed a field army of 30,000
Thrust 10. South from Cincinnati -- target: Knoxville and the supply line to Virginia -- CS needed a field army of 30,000
So, Davis needed to PLAN for about 450,000 men in field armies, plus another 50,000 in garrisons, the Navy, Florida and the Trans-Mississippi --- 500,000 men. (The CS army never reached 400,000)
Thanks to Lee, Jackson, McClellan, Lincoln, etc. some of these lines of advance were not used and others required fewer men than should have been anticipated. Advances by forces of 30,000 Union troops from Pensacola, Port Royal and the NC sound would have proven unstoppable by Confederate forces that were too thin for the lines of attack the Union actually did use.
I wonder how Davis stood up to the demands for troops everywhere when he had so few. I also wonder why Lincoln missed such obvious high-payoff, low risk possibilities.
How could Davis have met his perceived needs? He needs men and weapons far beyond what he has.