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Thanks for your replies and the link.

Reading through the Wikipedia links and a short link on Cashtown, the understanding I have is that, as you wrote Kenny Bunk, Lee intended to fight a defensive battle on favorable ground at Cashtown but allowed a subordinate, A.P. Hill to become decisively engaged at Gettysburg and allowing that decision to stand (i.e. not ordering A.P Hill to immediately disengage and follow the plan to concentrate for battle at Cashtown) consequently permitted the battle strategy to shift from one to be fought on favorable defensive terms to one that was fought on unfavorable offensive terms.

Longstreet's recommendation to convert the situation to a defensive battle at the end of Day One (1 July 1863), as you note in the citation from the link Flag_This, has two problems: 1) considerable Confederate blood already has been shed in achieving the ground gained on Day One and 2) exactly where was this defensive position across Meade's lines of communication that Longstreet wanted to move the Army of Northern Virginia to? Even had Lee wanted to follow Longstreet's advice, he had no way of quickly obtaining detailed knowledge of the terrain and the enemy situation to the south of Gettyburg thanks to the absence of J.E.B. Stuart. The only place he had prepared for defensive battle at was back up at Cashtown. Passing over the practical problems of actually shifting the entire Army of Northern Virginia across the front of Mede's entrenching and swelling forces, taking up a defensive position to the south of Gettysburg would have put Lee in the difficult position of being attacked by Union forces from up to three directions at once: from the North, the South, and the East.

In one way, I think Meade "out-staffed" the Confederates. He had some very good people giving him suggestions in his frequent "councils of war," and he was smart enough to winnow his way through their input and take a good idea when offered. I always marvel that he had only taken the army over from Hooker in the last week! (Hooker should get some credit for his reorganization of the army, in particular the cavalry, and the smooth work of his staff people during the transition!)

Lee, OTOH, was not very well served on this occasion by his subordinates. A.P. Hill, Early, Ewell, Longstreet, and of course JEB Stuart, not to mention his artillery, were all tried and found wanting at crucial points in the battle.

Captain, Sir: as hardened Yankee and an amateur historian of this period, I must voice a complaint! These books written about Confederate generals read more like the medieval lives of the saints with their endless lists of miraculously brilliant strategies and the impossible virtues of the "Knights of the Olde South." What really is impossible is trying to figure out what the heck really happened!