<P> As the Confederate government lost control of territory in campaign after campaign, it was said that "the vast size of the Confederacy would make its conquest impossible". The enemy would be struck down by the same elements which so often debilitated or destroyed visitors and transplants in the South . Heat exhaustion, sunstroke, endemic diseases such as malaria and typhoid would match the destructive effectiveness of the Moscow winter on the invading armies of Napoleon . </P> <P> Early in the war both sides believed that one great battle would decide the conflict; the Confederate won a great victory at the First Battle of Bull Run, also known as First Manassas (the name used by Confederate forces). It drove the Confederate people "insane with joy"; the public demanded a forward movement to capture Washington relocate the Confederate capital there, and admit Maryland to the Confederacy . A council of war by the victorious Confederate generals decided not to advance against larger numbers of fresh Federal troops in defensive positions . Davis did not countermand it . Following the Confederate incursion halted at the Battle of Antietam in October 1862, generals proposed concentrating forces from state commands to re-invade the north . Nothing came of it . Again in early 1863 at his incursion into Pennsylvania, Lee requested of Davis that Beauregard simultaneously attack Washington with troops taken from the Carolinas . But the troops there remained in place during the Gettysburg Campaign . </P> <P> The eleven states of the Confederacy were outnumbered by the North about four to one in white men of military age . It was overmatched far more in military equipment, industrial facilities, railroads for transport, and wagons supplying the front . </P> <P> Confederate military policy innovated to slow the invaders, but at heavy cost to the Southern infrastructure . The Confederates burned bridges, laid land mines in the roads, and made harbors inlets and inland waterways unusable with sunken mines (called "torpedos" at the time). Coulter reports: </P>

How many states made up the confederate states of america