After 16-year marketing campaign, nonprofit declares victory at Spotsylvania’s Slaughter Pen Farm | Local News

“When we began this journey, the goal was beyond audacious,” Trust President David Duncan stated in a observation. “It was orders of magnitude beyond anything we had attempted, but the unparalleled historic significance of this land demanded that we stretch beyond what had then been considered possible. This is a milestone moment in the historic preservation movement.”

The Battle of Fredericksburg is very best identified for the doomed Union assaults on Marye’s Heights downtown, as hundreds of holiday makers to the town’s National Park Service websites alongside Sunken Road would attest.

But the battle was once made up our minds farther south, as Union troops faced Confederate commander Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s defenses on Prospect Hill. When that Union attack failed on Dec. 13, 1862, infantrymen and native citizens named the website “the Slaughter Pen Farm.”

The box is important to working out the struggle, stated National Park Service historian Frank O’Reilly, creator of “The Fredericksburg Campaign: Winter War on the Rappahannock.”

“The Slaughter Pen is the very heart and soul of the Fredericksburg Battlefield. Without it, nothing makes sense,” O’Reilly wrote in his definitive learn about. “This is the point where the battle was won and lost.”

But in 2005, the battlefield—the place 5 Union infantrymen’ heroism earned them the Medal of Honor, the country’s absolute best award for valor underneath hearth—was once simply some other chess piece within the Fredericksburg space’s suburban sprawl. It was once advertised as essentially the most fascinating belongings for commercial construction in Virginia.

But then-Trust President Jim Lighthizer and his board—with lend a hand from historical past enthusiasts and open-space advocates—prevented construction of the 208-acre tract.

Early on, the Central Virginia Battlefields Trust, a neighborhood nonprofit, pledged $1 million. In 2011, CVBT fulfilled its dedication.

“The preservation community is strongest when we work together,” CVBT President Tom Van Winkle stated. “It is what allows us to take on the most meaningful work and what ensures we leave a permanent legacy.”

Ultimately, just about part of the $12 million to shop for Slaughter Pen got here from non-public price range, most commonly donations from Battlefield Trust individuals.

The accept as true with’s mortgage required annual bills of $400,000. So, many donors scheduled habitual items to lend a hand pay down the stability, understanding that till the debt was once settled, the land wouldn’t in reality be preserved.

The accept as true with was once because of end its fundraising in 2024. But an established, nameless supporter challenged the crowd. If particular person donors may cough up the following $400,000 annual fee, he would give a contribution the entire $800,000 last at the mortgage, paying it off two years early. Trust individuals spoke back the decision and the general debt fee was once made in May.

Now that Slaughter Pen Farm is owned loose and transparent, preservationists can flip towards celebrating the milestone. A Twilight Tour is scheduled for mid-July, with a bigger tournament deliberate for the autumn, the accept as true with stated.

Since obtaining the farm, the accept as true with has labored so as to add interpretive options and repair the panorama to its Civil War look. It got rid of numerous derelict outbuildings and constructed a 2-mile tutorial strolling path. Since 2009, that circuit has been well-liked by households, canine walkers, novice historians and armed forces gadgets finding out management and techniques.

Some nine,000 males had been killed, wounded or disappeared right through the serious, see-saw preventing at Slaughter Pen, which Jackson’s artillery and infantry swept with shell and shot. The Union’s one likelihood of successful the miles-long struggle alongside the Rappahannock River was once shooting Prospect Hill, key to the Confederate proper. Casualties at Slaughter Pen had been about equivalent to the losses at its different finish, at the undeniable beneath Marye’s Heights.

Here, two Union divisions of about eight,000 troops attacked about 10,000 Confederates. Troops led by means of Brig. Gen. George Gordon Meade, who would later grow to be the hero of Gettysburg, punched via Jackson’s line, however couldn’t hang the bottom for loss of well timed reinforcement.

Today, that land close to the Slaughter Pen is occupied by means of retail provider idX Corp., which redeveloped a defunct GM Powertrain manufacturing unit. The accept as true with attempted time and again to shop for the Meade-breakthrough website, however couldn’t protected a freelance at the GM Powertrain belongings after discussions with native officers and General Motors. The outdated GM plant is reverse the Fredericksburg Country Club, the website the place Meade organized his command for the assault.

In the 1930s, the Confederate line alongside Prospect Hill was once added to Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. The Slaughter Pen, the open undeniable beneath, stayed a dairy farm. As time handed, it was once hemmed in by means of a railroad, a small airport and Routes 2 and 17.

In the 2000s, builders sought to construct a sanatorium and an fundamental college at the farm, proposals adverse by means of the accept as true with.

When the farm’s longtime proprietor died in September 2005 at 86, his niece deliberate to promote it. Trust leaders anxious she would possibly reject their money be offering.

They reached out to Tricord Homes, a neighborhood builder with which they’d crafted a preservation compromise on Spotsylvania’s Chancellorsville battlefield. Tricord agreed to shop for the farm and promote it to the accept as true with at price.

The accept as true with’s marketing campaign gained important governmental improve, together with a $2 million matching grant from the American Battlefield Protection Program—nonetheless probably the most greatest awards ever made by means of that National Park Service entity. Virginia contributed $300,000, which in 2006 led it to create the country’s first state matching-grant program for battlefield preservation.

SolarTrust (now Truist), the accept as true with’s longtime banker, agreed to fund the entire transaction. But SolarTrust may reap land-preservation tax credit in Virginia, a program begun within the 1990s. By holding their belongings in box or woodland, landowners can get tax credit price a proportion of the land’s price, which they are able to promote to others to offset state source of revenue taxes.

Once the accept as true with put a conservation easement on Slaughter Pen Farm, its price plummeted, growing $five million in tax credit the accept as true with bought over the following 3 years to lend a hand pay down its mortgage. As a nonprofit, the accept as true with additionally tapped tax-exempt financing and refinanced its debt as a long-term bond factor.

Created by means of a handful of historians and advocates in Fredericksburg 35 years in the past, the accept as true with has secure 54,000 acres from the Revolutionary War, War of 1812 and Civil War.