[central_va]

Now, based on reports like this one, FR posters like central_va have long argued the Confederacy was on the "strategic defensive" and did not actually threaten the Union itself.

Which is totally true.

"The strategy of the Civil War for the Confederacy (the South) was to outlast the political will of the United States (the North) to continue the fighting the war by demonstrating that the war would be long and costly."

Part of that was pressuring DC, maybe even capturing it as a negotiating tool when a peace was reached. Which never happened.

You do not understand the difference between "tactics" and "strategy". You appear to have no military background or training at all.

[rockrr]

All in all it proved to be a piss-poor “strategy”.

[BroJoeK]

central_va: "You do not understand the difference between "tactics" and "strategy".
You appear to have no military background or training at all."

It's true I have no personal experience whatever in mid-19th century warfare, strategy or tactics.
I did, however, play a small role in the Cold War, in Europe.
That war was based on something called "Mutual Assured Destruction" and remained "cold" based on firm orders of "no first use of force".
A first use of force in the Cold War was understood to result in massive retaliation.

And massive retaliation is, more-or-less, what eventually happened after the Confederates' first use of force against Union forces in South Carolina, Missouri, New Mexico, Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia.
Of course, you may well call those "defensive first strikes", but I'm not sure whether that falls under the category of operations, tactics, strategy or just bovine excrement, to use the technical military term.