This is as much as we get from those historians who write past Appomattox and it leaves much to the imagination. The clarifying explanations are in the record, however.
As early as the fall of Vicksburg, Davis wrote to BG Reuben Davis (emphasis added):
I hoped that the popular confidence in Genl. Johnston would have given him large reinforcements by the uprising of the people. Why was it not so? [...] Let every man who can bear arms rush to the rescue. Regard the army as a nucleus, not as the force on which the country depends solely for defense.Very helpful text and no great burden on the reader's comprehension, considering the light it sheds on this topic.
It seems a peculiar ask of Johnston, though, to have him organize a mass uprising. IIRC, he and Beauregard, with "large reinforcments" of Virginia militia at their disposal, had them dig trenches at Centreville. This particular "armed uprising of the people" finished Bull Run as laboring bystanders.
It also seems odd that Davis, whose government by 1863 relentlessly drafted state-enrolled militiamen, could envision any armed uprising of the populace. What people, with what arms? The design of the CSA war machine made this impossible.
That tiny residue of militia husbanded by Gov. Joe Brown against the depredations of Davis' government gave good service against Sherman's march and a glimpse into a potential revolutionary war that might have survived April 1865 had the Confederate military been organized on a completely different basis.
[Quote from Jefferson Davis, Confederate President by Hattaway and Beringer]
