If i am not mistaken Lee still was healed very highly since I think neither army saw it as a loss more like an antitem. The next year Grant has a great quote when his generals kept telling him to worry about Lee.
“Oh, I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do. Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault, and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time. Go back to your command, and try to think what we are going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do.”
Lee still had a great army, no doubt there - but it was never the same. He had heavy casualties, the South could never replace men very well at all, but the defeat made an impact on the troops. Undefeated (decisively anyway!) until then. Now they knew it could happen again.
Grant had an excellent attitude and his good buddy Sherman marveled at it. "Grant don't give a damn what the enemy does outside his sight. It worries hell out of me!" Grant was in no way intimidated by Lee - almost all his predecessors were in some degree, even Mr F J Hooker though he claimed he wasn't. He wasn't scared by having not met Bobby Lee because Bobby Lee hadn't met Sam Grant! Lee had a long and distinguished pedigree, had been stamped the second greatest soldier in the US army by none other than the first greatest, Winfield Scott. He was arguably the most aggressive general the US has ever produced and he meant every action he took. He had no fear (and sometimes no respect) for any Union general - he knew he could take them all - except Meade. "He will not make a mistake before me, and I had better not make one before him!" No, Lee had not come up against Grant - or anyone like him. Grant, at that time, was all alone in a class he made for himself. The Wilderness campaign following Gettysburg showed Lee he definitely had an unusual opponent this time - and one who might beat him. We must remember, by the way, it was Meade who commanded the AoP. Sherman and Grant was the team that won in the west, but the winning team in the east was Meade and Grant.