If confederate leaders really believed, including Lee, they certainly did not conduct their war to fit that strategy.
For such a strategy to be viable, the war had to be seen as being unsuccessful by all observers. Such was not the case in reality. In fact, the very opposite was true. The confederacy's war for independence was in a state of continuous collapse, from the very first days of the conflict.
Within the first year of the war, the South was blockaded and the outlet of the Mississippi was lost, vital land bases had been secured on the Carolina Coasts, New Orleans was secured. A band of slave states was kept within the Union, securing the headwaters of the great River Invasion routes into the southern heartland. Confederate access to its Trans-Mississippi lands was soon reduced to Vicksburg.
The South for all practical purposes was cut off from the rest of the world, great invasion routes into the South were secured.. All of this , as noted being accomplished within almost the first year of the war.
I have noted on other threads, through the years, that any person with a map and pins could track the course of the war on the map almost mo. by mo. and see a stead progress of the Union pins steadily move south and East, tracking the slow but, more or less, steady collapse of confederate authority over time. The only place that this was not true, was in the East, where the ANV and AoP fought sterile battles that led only to stalemate.
Many people then and now, pay too much to the stalemate battles between the Rapidan and Rappahannock , that they ignored the true scope of the war and what was really going on, right before their eyes.
It was no accident, IMO, that in the 3d year of the War(1864), the first glimmers of the end of the war was seen, and it was seen in the West First. Where southern resistance had reached a critical phase and began its final collapse and in the process, helped reelect Lincoln.
In truth, the war was not being lost, in reality, there was only a stalemate in the East, i.e., the South was not winning, it was merely holding its own. While the war was being won in the West from almost the very first days of the War.