Lee did what he needed to do to win. He took risks when he had to, as did Grant. He threw his soldiers against enemy positions when he had to, as did Grant. The men had more in common than most people realize.
Basis Lee's piety versus Grant's hard drinking (costing him rank in 1854), I would say a pure war of bloody attrition was not something Lee would do.
Piety and drinking have nothing to do with it. Lee would have done what he needed to in order to win. If you don't think so then you misjudge the man.
His campaign into PA was to get a decisive victory - getting France to recognize the South - and end the war.
That ship sailed the year before when Lee lost at Antietam and Lincoln announced his Emancipation Proclamation. There was no chance of European recognition following that.
Grant was on the offensive Lee on the defensive. Grant should lose 3-4 times as many troops. Lee’s tactics actually cost the South a greater portion of their troops then Grand did. Lee is the single greatest “butcher” of the war.
Grant the “hard drinking butcher” was a political myth manufactured after the war by political foes and mindlessly repeated by faux historians.
Grant’s Vicksburg campaign is the greatest military campaign on US Soil. Nothing Lee did came even close.
Grant forced the surrender of 3 Confederate armies. Nothing Lee did was even close to what Grant accomplished. Lee’s opponents handed Lee his victories
Sorry the historic fact upsets the romantic notions of American History the ignorant have absorbed at Grand pappies knee.
Grant was within a few thousand casualties in three months that it took Lee three years to accumulate. Had the war continued another year, I believe the North would be fighting another insurrection within itself as a result of the bloodbath Grant was bringing them.