GDG- Re: Three Lines - Two lines

[Batrinque at aol.com]

In a message dated 8/27/2007 2:19:07 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
Batrinque at aol.com writes:

One  thing that occurs to me is that if Pettigrew's division had been   
deployed in the standard 2-rank line of battle, it would have stretched  an  
awfully 
long ways northwards.  I believe that Mike Priest in  his book (and  North & 
South article) made such a calculation and  reached some unlikely  
conclusions 
about how much the length of the  battleline had shrunk by the time  it got 
to the 
Emmitsburg Road; I  think the numbers and situation make a lot more  sense if 
you start  from an assumption that Pettigrew instead was deployed in a  
double  
line of battle.  




The map on page 100 of Priest's "Into the Fight" indicates Pettigrew's  
division advancing in a single line of battle near the Bliss Farm with a line  some 
1400 yards long (and this does not count half of Brockebrough's brigade,  
left behind).  On page 102, however, Priest refers to "Pettigrew's original  
3,300-foot line".  By way of contrast, in my "Confederate Battle Flags in  the 
July 3rd Charge" article in Issue 21 of Gettysburg Magazine, I use (holding  that 
Pettigrew was in a double line of battle) a length of "about 500  yards".



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