The thing that occurred to me, that might be worthy of discussion, was in the Stuart biography. The chapter was the time in the Fall and Winter of 1863 and the Mine Run, Bristoe Campaigns and the Kilpatrick-Dahlgren raid. I can't remember the ladies name, I don't believe it was Mary Boykin Chestnut, but one of the women in the book recalled a gathering/party in Richmond, at which, many Confederate dignitaries and socialites were present, including Stuart. She seemed to allude to the fact that a sense of foreboding or the feeling of a "Greek Tragedy" had descended over them as a group. She did not relate this to anything specifically, rather it seemed the length of the war, the unrelenting Union pressure, the inability to win a single overwhelming victory, that a series of events had allowed doubt, as to the outcome of the war to creep in.
I'd like to know if in your reading you've determined a time or time period when "the South" began to question their ability to win the war, when a lowered morale became pervasive. Most of us know, that the South and Southern newspapers did not see Gettysburg as "the beginning of the end". It is only in retrospect that we recognize it as "the" pivotal battle, or one of them, at least. The thing I found so interesting about the description of the mood at the party was it was not due to a specific event, battle, etc., it seemed that it was more a combination of a number of things that undermined the Confederate spirit and this book points to the Fall/Winter of '63.
Jim