Rifle Militia Regiment. Pettigrew was later assigned to command the 12th (later renamed the 22nd) North Carolina Infantry. Confederate President Jefferson Davis urged him to accept higher command, but he declined because of his lack of military experience. Despite this inexperience, Pettigrew was promoted to brigadier general by Jefferson Davis during the lead-up to the Peninsula Campaign. Peninsula Campaign During the Peninsula Campaign in the summer of 1862, Pettigrew was severely wounded at the Battle of Seven Pines. He was hit by a Minié ball that damaged his throat, windpipe, and shoulder. Pettigrew nearly bled to death, and while lying wounded, he received another bullet wound in the arm and was bayoneted in the right leg. Pettigrew was left for dead on the field, as his wounds were believed to be mortal. However, he recovered consciousness as a Union prisoner of war. Exchanged two months later, the general recovered from his wounds, spent the fall commanding a brigade in Maj. Gen. Daniel Harvey Hill's division around Richmond, and in the winter commanded a brigade in North Carolina and southern Virginia. He returned to his North Carolina brigade just in time to begin the Gettysburg Campaign in June 1863. Gettysburg Campaign The Confederate War Department had assigned Pettigrew's Brigade to Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, and Pettigrew traveled northward to join Lee's army. Pettigrew's brigade, along with the brigades of James Jay Archer, John M. Brockenbrough, and Joseph R. Davis, was assigned to Major General Henry Heth's division of Lt. Gen. A. P. Hill's Third Corps. Both Heth's division and Hill's corps were new organizations, having been created as part of Lee's reorganization following the death of Stonewall Jackson. Pettigrew's Brigade was the strongest in Heth's division. Freshly uniformed and armed with rifles from state military depots, his regiments presented a fine military appearance during the march through Maryland and Pennsylvania. Some of his regimental officers were also members of the North Carolina planter "aristocracy", including Colonel Collett Leventhorpe leading the 11th North Carolina Infantry and twenty-one-year-old Harry Burgwyn at the head of the 26th North Carolina Regiment, the largest Confederate regiment at Gettysburg. Not having been in serious combat for nearly a year, his brigade mustered a strength over 2,500 officers and men. Pettigrew's Brigade tangled with the Iron Brigade on July 1, 1863, at the McPherson and Herbst farms to the west of Gettysburg, where all