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Lee made a huge error trying to invade the north

My take on that has always been that he did it because his army was just about done from the years of defense. He saw that he was running out of men, and the invasion was the last gasp effort for victory.

Lee had just won the Second Battle of Manassas (Bull Run) in 1862 when he went north into Maryland and fought to a draw at Antietam in mid-September of 1862. Antietam was a bloodbath for both sides; however, it was a bid demoralizer for the South. All of the major battles up to that point had gone to Lee. Gettysburg was the "last gasp" you are talking about.

For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two oclock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it's all in the balance, it happened yet, it hasn't even begun yet, it not only hasn't begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it's going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn't even need a fourteen-year-old boy to think THIS TIME. MAYBE THIS TIME....

---William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust (1948), pp. 194-195.

(And doesn't take a Southron these days, either...)