Meade deserves a lot of credit for outmaneuvering Lee in the days leading up to the battle.
Once battle was joined the Southern Army was effectively trapped into making a frontal assault.
I toured Gettysburg last fall...what an amazing place! The interpretive center and the private guide service is first rate.
It is amazing standing on Cemetery Hill imagining the Confederate troops advancing across over a mile of open terrain and thinking WHY? Why would a general supposedly as intelligent as Lee order an assault on an entrenched army when if he would have listened to Longstreet the southern troops should have by-passed Meade and headed for Philadelphia?
The eventual outcome of the war probably would have been the same, but the immediate slaughter would have been avoided.
I highly recommend everyone visit Gettysburg...stay overnight in town and take in the magnitude of the battle.