Yes that was the strategy, in a word - stalemate. Any historian will tell you that. 9 million are not going to conquer 32 million. If the North had fully mobilized the war would have been over in a year. South didn't have a chance. It's only chance was to make it prohibitory expensive in blood and treasure to force the South back into the Union. Lincoln, being the sublime butcher, there was no amount of blood deemed to to great to subdue the South.
When debating with you I assumed you knew all of this but it appears you know so little.
Central_va: “ It’s only chance was to make it prohibitory expensive in blood and treasure to force the South back into the Union.
Lincoln, being the sublime butcher, there was no amount of blood deemed to to great to subdue the South. “
Actually, there was another way, that was to ask for peace and in the war’s early years they could have negotiated MUCH better terms than Unconditional Surrender.
But slave-holders preferred to fight on until there were no poor Southerners left to die for them.