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U.S. Interior Secretary brings federal contribution toward preserving hallowed ground at Slaughter Pen Farm

Date published: 10/23/2006

Saving the Pen

A soldier's descendant brings a $2 million gift to save hallowed ground

FOR THOSE who appreciate seeing glad tidings in the newspaper, coverage of the Oct. 16 gathering at Slaughter Pen Farm, at which the U.S. secretary of the interior announced his department's $2 million contribution to help preserve that hallowed ground, fills the bill.

The property, also known as the Pierson farm, was bought for $12 million last February by Tricord Cos., an area real estate developer. Tricord magnanimously pledged to hold the property until the Civil War Preservation Trust raised the funds to buy it. In June, the trust obtained a loan and paid Tricord; it's now raising funds to pay off the loan--the largest sum ever spent by a private group for the preservation of a Civil War battleground.

The federal contribution puts the trust more than a third of the way toward its goal. The CWPT membership and the Central Virginia Battlefields Trust have each ponied up $1 million. The General Assembly has kicked in $500,000.

Appropriately, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne himself made the presentation: His great-grandfather, a Union soldier, was wounded in Maryland at the Battle of Antietam, or Sharpsburg as it was known on this side of the Potomac. Joining Mr. Kempthorne was a host of dignitaries plus some 160 onlookers at the 205-acre site off Tidewater Trail near Shannon Airport.

So what makes the tract so special? During the Battle of Fredericksburg on Dec. 13, 1862, and the days leading up to it, the the blood of thousands of Union and Confederate troops soaked it. Had the Rebels failed to blunt the Federals' momentum at Slaughter Pen, Union Gen. Ambrose Burnside might have had options other than repeated suicidal charges toward the stone wall at Sunken Road. It was the carnage at the farm, National Park Service historian Frank O'Reilly points out, that prompted Gen. Robert E. Lee to famously say, "It is well that war is so terrible, or we would grow too fond of it."

That is something Slaughter Pen Farm, forever preserved, will always remind us.

Date published: 10/23/2006