To expand a little on my earlier post, I think one thing worth considering is that battles didn't suddenly start with soldiers fifty yards apart, or even a hundred and fifty. Maneuvering, sending out skirmishers, and testing the enemy, were all part of the war, the biggest part actually, so most soldiers spent most of their time outside of enemy range or at the edge of it.
It made no sense from the point of view of either the men or their commanders to keep advancing until both sides were fifty yards apart and killing the majority of the enemy, if that would be the obvious predictable outcome. Ideally, you wanted to present that long impressive front to show you could dominate the enemy, who would soon recognize your superiority and surrender or retreat, rather than stand to be slaughtered in the vain hope of defeating you. Or, on the defensive side, you wanted to present fortifications and artillery so impressive no one would charge it, or you wanted to avoid getting in a situation where you were placing your own battle line against hopelessly superior numbers.
Unfortunately, battle reenactments usually present the war exclusively as close combat, and since those moments were most exciting, brief histories of the war focus on them, but in real life, the game of chicken, where both sides charged or at least stood their ground and neither side backed down, was extremely rare, compared to days of maneuvering, or building/digging fortifications. All that marching, living in camps and digging in the mud took a health toll, hence the greater death from disease than bullets.
That's the extent of my knowledge of military tactics, and I'm not even sure I have that right, so hopefully someone who actually knows the philosophy of warfare in the period will come along and pick apart my post, and point out the few things I got right, if any, LOL!
Bringing the