You are an absolute idiot to think the South wanted to or even could conquer the North. What an embarrassment you are. Turn in your historian card. At one time I thought you had a brain but really you know nothing.
I am not even sure I can find anyone at that time that even remotely thought that that Northern conquest was a possibility.
The war was first sold in the North as keeping the Union together then it was repackaged as a war to end slavery. Never was the war sold as "we in North are going to be conquered by the South". That is simply preposterous.
Find one newspaper article from the time period that even insinuates that. Find one letter.
The war was going to have on of three possible outcomes from the start AND EVERYONE KNEW IT.
Notice I didn't say "North defeated and occupied" because that was NEVER going to happen. NOBODY in the entire USA at the time thought that a real possibility. It's absurd.
No argument there. I know of no one who believes that the CSA would (could?) defeat and occupy the entire north - or had any interest in doing so. But jeff davis certainly wanted his mortal enemy (the United States government) defeated. He knew that in violently breaking away from the commitment and the compact, he had set himself and his would-be confederacy as existential enemies and competitors. There could never be peace between them.
And REL made two attempts at realizing this goal, once in 1862 and again in 1863.
Again, you're playing word games because the difference between "conquer" versus "defeat", "destroy", "vanquish", "dismember" "demolish" & "ruin" are all fine points of definition, and they all mean the same thing: downfall of the United States.
Lincoln himself said Kentucky was the difference between Union victory & defeat.
Lose Kentucky, and Union also loses Missouri & Maryland.
Lose those and the Confederacy has a powerful argument that mid-western states like Iowa, Illinois & Indiana should secede & join to use Mississippi river transportation.
Consider: in early 1861 Democrats in New York City cheered on their Southern brethren, and wanted to join them.
A victorious Confederacy could reopen that discussion.
So the United States would be defeated, carved & dismembered.
And war would never end until the Confederacy was the dominant military power in North & Central America.
For central_va to suggest otherwise is simply not to understand the mindset of leaders like Jefferson Davis in early 1861 and beyond.
central_va: "Never was the war sold as "we in North are going to be conquered by the South".
That is simply preposterous.
Find one newspaper article from the time period that even insinuates that.
Find one letter."
Many Northerners turned defeatist whenever Confederate armies invaded Union states, which happened frequently.
I count 14 of 30 remaining Union states & territories invaded by Confederate military forces.
For a discussion of Confederate strategy, I suggest:
Steven Hardesty: Confederate Origins of Union Victory, Culture & Decisions in War
You may remember Jefferson Davis' 1862 preparations to invade Illinois were set aside when Grant defeated Confederates at Forts Henry & Donelson.
Well, as late as 1864, Davis' strategic plan was for Confederate John Bell Hood to defeat Union George Thomas in Tennessee and then march on to... Chicago!
Davis wanted to split up the Union and bring mid-western states into the Confederate orbit.
Hood had a somewhat different idea.
He wanted to first defeat Thomas then march to Richmond, join Lee and defeat Grant.
As it happened, such dreams were extinguished at Franklin (Schofield) & Nashville (Thomas), but they demonstrate Confederate leadership was not short of big ideas.
Try Harpers Weekly, June 27, 1863, pg 403. Here: http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/civil-war/1863/june/lee-invasion-north.html
Look for "DOMESTIC INTELLIGENCE. THE INVASION OF THE NORTH." You'll find it towards the bottom of the third column.
Please stop replacing the word "invade" with "conquer". That is just an obvious dodge by you.