Reaping History's Harvest

Most people probably don't recognize the name of Cross Keys, Virginia, as a place of any significance in American History. Even among historians of the Civil War, the battle which took place there on June 8, 1862, was a relatively minor event, especially when compared with epic battles at places like Antietam and Gettysburg. Cross Keys seems like just one of thousands of places where Northerners and Southerners fought and died in America's bloodiest war.

In Battlefield: Farming a Civil War Battle-ground, author Peter Svenson illuminates the importance of this small patch of land in the Shenandoah Valley of northwest Virginia. Svenson does not try to argue that Cross Keys was in some way the most important battlefield of the Civil War. Rather, he reveals how the very elements that make Cross Keys like so many other battlefields also make it unique. In his narrative, Cross Keys becomes a place where the "great themes" of American History were fought out by individuals with their own historical identities on a Sunday in June, 1862. The land where they fought had its own history long before the battle and continued to do so even after the guns fell silent. This recognition of history as more than just a series of famous people and momentous events, of history as a continuum of real people and their experiences, makes Svenson's narrative compelling.

Battlefield is the story of one man's communion with the land and with history. The book begins with Svenson's purchase of a forty acre farm at Cross Keys in the mid 1980s. Svenson, a professional artist, bought this rural plot as a place where he could regenerate himself and provide a home for his wife and two children. The land itself and its history did not much interest him at first. But when Svenson realizes that the focus of the Battle of Cross Keys took place on his 40 acres, what began as a casual interest in the battle becomes a quest for a real understanding of what had actually happened there. At the same time, Svenson's interest in his land grows from that of an inhabitant to that of a cultivator, as he realizes the significance not only of the events of 1862 but also of the place where they occurred. What follows is a dual narrative, covering Svenson's exploration of the Battle of Cross Keys and the 40 acres he shares with history.

Svenson provides an intriguing account of the battle. He gradually reveals its specific details through powerful firsthand accounts and battlefield reports. One of his most striking sources is the diary of a Confederate Major, who narrates the events up to the middle of the battle when he himself is shot and killed while writing. Others include the memoirs of Confederate General Isaac Trimble, the 68-year-old unlikely hero of the Confederate victory and General John Fremont, the Union commander whose miscalculations and lack of offense caused his army to lose the battle to a Confederate opponent half its size. The battle was neither particularly large nor particularly small by the standards of the Civil War. None of the imfamous military leaders immortalized in Civil War chess sets was present at Cross Keys. It was in many ways an average battle in the war. But as Svenson successfully argues, the insight of General Trimble, the defeat of the much larger Union army and the individual experiences of the Confederate Major and thousands of other soldiers, both Union and Confederate, made the Battle of Cross Keys significant. For those who fought and died at Cross Keys, the battle was just as important as many of the more famous events of the Civil War.

The battle itself forms only about half of Svenson's narrative. Battlefield is, after all, not the story of a single event but the story of a place. As Svenson builds his new house there, successfully harvests a crop of hay, and tries to eliminate the rampant groundhog population, he comes to recognize that his land, like the battle which took place there, is unique. His farm and the surrounding land have their own historical evolution, like any other part of the American landscape, which happens to have been punctuated by the military confrontation which took place there in June, 1862. In addition to the Battle of Cross Keys, Svenson's land appears as the site where he combats chemical and noise pollution, takes on corporate America (in the form of the utility company, and eventually defeats the groundhogs. Sometimes, this aspect of Svenson's narrative reads a little like an introductory guide to life on a hay farm. But it becomes clear by the end of the book that Svenson's interaction with the land firmly establishes him in the continuum of history at Cross Keys. He becomes as much a part of the environment as General Trimble and the groundhogs.

Peter Svenson's Battlefield fulfills its image in the preface as "one small niche of Americana, peopled with real individuals and placed in a real setting." Splitting his narrative between the 1860s and 1980s, with several historical stops along the way, Svenson creates a personal and historical reflection. He tells essentially two stories while uniting them behind one central idea. Battlefield reminds us that real history exists beneath the "polemics." It may not put Cross Keys on the popular map of American History, but it does restore a sense of that history as a continuum of past, present and future.