- Joined
- Apr 4, 2017
- Location
- Denver, CO
And up until October 1862 the administration was putting a good deal of effort into controlling the far west and the Mississippi as far down as possible, and not having an army on the York or James peninsula where the end of the US Revolutionary war could be re-enacted.Lee never placed much trust in foreign intervention, AFAIK. He wrote to Davis about this back in 1862, before Antietam. I see no evidence that he was any different than that earlier. I would think that Lee felt that foreign intervention would only come about because of proven Confederate success. In Lee's mind, a sucessful invasion of MD-PA in September 1862, combined with success for Bragg/E. Kirby Smith in Kentucky and Van Dorn/Price in Kentucky, might have been the excuse the British and French needed, but it woud have been the result of Confederate victory, not the cause of it.
The war proceeded as if there was an understanding between the British Ambassador Lyons and Sec'y Seward that if the US controlled the Mississippi, and the railroads of the Midwest were paying their investors, the British would wait out the war.
General Lee did everything he could to influence opinion with his east coast victories. But General Lee was very aware that the struggle was continental in scope. The Confederacy simply did not the resources to contend on that scale.