Battlefield Pennsylvania: A Guide to The Keystone State’s Most Sacred Ground

Abstract

Brady Crytzer, an award-winning professor at Robert Morris University, presents his overview of thirty Pennsylvania battlefields based upon the first three seasons of his Pennsylvania Cable Network television show, Battlefield Pennsylvania. The book is organized into five sections with thirty concise chapters based upon battlefields as he defines them. Each has four component parts: background, the battle, legacy, and what to see in the present. The text is supported by eighteen enumerated maps, including transposed modern highway routes. Also included are a select bibliography, index, and nearly ninety illustrations, both contemporary and modern, although, for a work of this nature it is strangely sans footnotes or endnotes.Crytzer convincingly argues that Pennsylvania is a battlefield, with each individual site a scar on the landscape, which bears witness to a troubled past. Efforts to preserve these hallowed sites is not just about memories, but also serves as a mirror reflecting human nature in adversity. Depicting its chronology of conflict as a competition of worldviews and precious resources that those who came before us believed were worth fighting and dying for, Pennsylvania now is a living monument to the past. Perhaps the most important point Crytzer makes is no matter how much one studies original sources, there is no substitute for walking and observing the actual sites for a deeper understanding.A particular strength of his book is the “What to See” section that ends each chapter, which offers timely touring advice from the author. However, his view of today’s Paoli is a bit too rosy as the “neatly kept and well-placed signage” (104) is now faded and difficult to read. Additionally, the relatively new visitor center complex at Fort Necessity may be visually and technologically impressive, but Crytzer (and no doubt others) overlook the lost charm of the previous visitor center that was a familiar school field trip site for those growing up in western Pennsylvania (26). These are admittedly minor quibbles. Crytzer’s efforts to promote continued tourism of these treasured but often obscure historic sites is commendable.The aforementioned five sections, focus on the Seven Years’ (French and Indian) War, the American Revolution, the Early Republic, the Civil War, and the Modern Era. They contain thirty events identified by Crytzer, which depict Pennsylvania’s evolution from a pacifistic Quaker colony (or “Peaceable Kingdom”) of the eighteenth century, through the tumult of the Revolution, Civil War, and industrial era strife, into the twenty-first century era of global terrorism. The selected events include many famous incidents, such as young George Washington’s defeat by the French at Fort Necessity in 1754, Washington’s presence during Braddock’s epic defeat at the Monongahela in 1755, the Civil War’s cataclysmic Battle of Gettysburg (“the most studied battle in human history” [225]) in 1863, the controversial labor battle at Homestead in 1892, and the crash of Flight 93 near Somerset during the 9/11 terror attack in 2001.Crytzer presents a compelling catalog of events, but one must question his list of both included and excluded events. His definition of a battle is open-ended at best, especially for minor affrays with little or no loss of life—for example, George Washington’s courier mission from the Governor of Virginia to the French forts in western Pennsylvania in 1753, or the shenanigans of the “Black Boys” in harassing the British at Fort Loudon in 1765 in the Conococheague Valley. There are also inconsistencies by including the shameful massacre of twenty peaceful Christian Susquehannock (Conestoga) by the infamous Paxton Boys in 1763, but not including the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 where nineteen striking immigrant coal miners were ruthlessly gunned down by a sheriff’s posse. The notorious 1892 labor Battle of Homestead between Pinkerton agents and striking steel workers is covered, yet the numerous bloody confrontations across the state from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia during the Great Railroad Strike of 1873 are completely overlooked. Being simply a horrific accident, the deadly 1862 explosion of the Alleghany Arsenal is not a battle and has no place in this book.Additionally, chapters 8, 9, and 10, covering events of the Conestoga Massacre, Battle of Bushy Run, and the Black Boys Rebellion, 1763–1765, are inexplicably placed in the section on the American Revolution, 1775–83, rather than the correct Seven Years’ War era, 1753–65. Finally, it would have been more useful if casualty statistics would have been applied consistently for each event as they are often absent. It should be noted however, the criticism expressed in this review should not substantially detract from the overall quality of this book as an invaluable reference tool for anyone interested in Pennsylvania’s unique battlefield history and preservation. A revised and corrected second edition is encouraged and would be most welcome.