American Battlefield Trust

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The American Battlefield Trust stands between a bulldozer and the ground where soldiers fell. On the 31st of May, 2018, the organization reached a milestone that had taken more than three decades to build: 50,000 acres of American battlefield land preserved. That final acre was a 13-acre parcel at Cedar Creek in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. The number sounds abstract until you understand what it replaces: shopping centers, casino floors, housing developments, and a Walmart Supercenter, all proposed for ground where men died.

  The Trust began life in 1987 under a different name, focused on a single war. It has since grown to nearly 200,000 members and expanded its mission to cover three American conflicts. What drives an organization like this? How does a nonprofit outbid developers for $12 million farms and convince Walmart to donate 50 acres to the Commonwealth of Virginia? And why does preserving a patch of Virginia woods matter to anyone living outside it? Those are the questions that shape this story.

• 2. Three Wars, One Mission

  ›

  When the organization first took shape in 1987, it called itself the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites, and its sole focus was the Civil War. A separate nonprofit, the original Civil War Trust, formed in 1991 and worked parallel to it, acquiring roughly 6,700 acres over eight years before the two groups decided a merger made more sense than competition.

  On the 19th of November, 1999, the two organizations merged into the Civil War Preservation Trust. On the 11th of January, 2011, that name was shortened to the Civil War Trust. Three years later, on Veterans Day 2014, the Trust partnered with the Society of the Cincinnati to launch "Campaign 1776," a new subsidiary project aimed at Revolutionary War and War of 1812 battlefields. Congress enacted federal matching grants for the program in December 2014.

  The final name change came on the 8th of May, 2018, when the organization became the American Battlefield Trust, serving as an umbrella for two divisions: the Civil War Trust and the Revolutionary War Trust, the latter the successor to Campaign 1776. The expanded name reflected what had quietly become the organization's true scope: three centuries of American armed conflict, from Lexington and Concord to the final engagements of the Civil War.

• 3. How Land Gets Saved

  ›

  The Trust acquires land at fair market value from private owners, or accepts it by donation. Once it holds title, the organization handles stewardship and interpretation, sometimes with help from local governments and other preservation groups. When a landowner wants to keep the deed, the Trust can arrange a conservation easement, a legal instrument that prohibits development while leaving ownership intact.

  Federal money plays a central role. The Civil War Battlefield Preservation Program, administered by the American Battlefield Protection Program within the National Park Service, offers competitive matching grants for qualifying preservation opportunities. The Transportation Enhancement program and the Farm and Ranch Protection Program provide additional federal avenues. State and local governments contribute as well.

  The result is a layered funding model where the Trust's donated dollars are stretched by government matches. More than 10,000 acres were acquired and preserved between 2014 and 2018 alone, a pace made possible by that combination of private fundraising and public partnership. In all, the Trust and its partners have preserved land in 25 states at more than 160 battlefields.

• 4. The Most Expensive Acre

  ›

  The Slaughter Pen Farm sits on the Fredericksburg Battlefield in Virginia and covers 208 acres. It was the largest remaining unprotected portion of that battlefield and the only place where a visitor could still trace the entire Union assault from start to finish. In 2006, the Trust, working with Tricord, Inc., SunTrust Bank, and the Central Virginia Battlefield Trust, purchased the property for $12 million. The Department of the Interior provided a $2 million grant from the Civil War Battlefield Preservation Program to support the effort. The purchase remains the most expensive private battlefield preservation effort in American history.

  Gettysburg presented different challenges. In July 2014, the Trust launched a $5.5 million campaign to acquire a 4.14-acre site that witnessed some of the heaviest fighting on the 1st of July, 1863, including the Mary Thompson house, where General Robert E. Lee made his headquarters during the battle. Earlier Gettysburg acquisitions included the 145-acre Daniel Lady Farm and the former Gettysburg Country Club at 95 acres, along with 283 acres at East Cavalry Field and 114 acres at Fairfield. Combined, the Trust's Gettysburg work has led to the protection of 943 acres.

  At Shiloh in Tennessee, the Trust completed a $1.25 million fundraising campaign to purchase a 504-acre property that included significant frontage on the Tennessee River. That land was then deeded to Shiloh National Military Park, making it the largest addition to the park since its founding in 1894.

• 5. Fighting Casinos and Walmart

  ›

  In 2005, a proposal surfaced to build a casino with 3,000 slot machines less than a mile from the Gettysburg Battlefield. The Civil War Trust joined a local citizens group called No Casino Gettysburg and formed the Stop the Slots Coalition. On the 20th of December, 2006, the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board voted to reject the proposal. A second casino application appeared in 2010, drawing opposition from nearly 300 prominent historians and a video featuring Emmy award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author David McCullough, Medal of Honor recipient Paul William Bucha, composer John Williams, and actors Matthew Broderick, Stephen Lang, and Sam Waterston. On the 14th of April, 2011, the board voted to reject that application as well.

  At the Wilderness Battlefield in Orange County, Virginia, local officials had approved a Walmart Supercenter on land that Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian James McPherson had identified as part of "the nerve center of the Union Army during the Battle of the Wilderness." The Civil War Trust joined the Friends of Wilderness Battlefield, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Piedmont Environmental Council, and other groups in opposing the construction. In January 2011, Walmart announced it had decided not to build. In November 2013, Walmart donated the historic site, comprising more than 50 acres, to the Commonwealth of Virginia.

  Trust President Jim Lighthizer praised the decision, saying he believed that Walmart founder Sam Walton, a veteran of the Second World War, would have been "proud" of his company's move.

• 6. Princeton and the Coalition Model

  ›

  The Battle of Princeton took place on the 3rd of January, 1777. George Washington personally led a counterattack against British troops that morning on a piece of ground called Maxwell's Field. In May 2018, the Trust purchased 14.85 acres of that field for $4 million from the Institute for Advanced Study, which had owned the land and planned to build 15 single-family homes and town homes on it for faculty housing.

  The path to that purchase was not smooth. The Institute brought in heavy equipment and began removing trees before negotiations reached a breakthrough in December 2016. That agreement preserved most of the site of Washington's charge while clearing the way for the Institute to build 16 town homes on its remaining land. The Trust and the Institute committed to restore the battlefield, which will ultimately be conveyed to New Jersey and added to Princeton Battlefield State Park.

  To fight the proposed development, the Trust had built the Save Princeton Coalition, drawing in the American Association for State and Local History, the American Revolution Institute of the Society of the Cincinnati, the National Coalition for History, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Princeton Battlefield Society, the New Jersey Chapter of the Sierra Club, and the National Parks Conservation Association. That coalition model, assembling a broad network of partners to amplify pressure on a single threatened site, runs through nearly every major preservation campaign the Trust has waged.

• 7. The People Who Led It

  ›

  O. James Lighthizer arrived as president of the Civil War Preservation Trust in December 1999, when the merged organization had 22,000 members and its predecessor groups had protected 7,500 acres over the previous 13 years. When Lighthizer retired more than 20 years later, the membership stood near 200,000 and the total protected acreage had grown by more than 32,500 acres. Before his nonprofit career, Lighthizer had served in the Maryland General Assembly, as county executive of Anne Arundel County, and as Maryland Secretary of Transportation from 1991 to 1995. In that last role, he pioneered the use of Transportation Enhancement highway funds to protect thousands of acres of Civil War battlefield land in Maryland through acquisitions or easements. On the 13th of January, 2021, President Donald J. Trump awarded Lighthizer the National Humanities Medal in a ceremony at the White House.

  David N. Duncan, a native of Virginia and a graduate of James Madison University, joined the Trust in March 2000 as its chief fundraiser. During two decades in that role, he helped raise more than $240 million. The Board of Trustees appointed him president effective the 1st of October, 2020, upon Lighthizer's retirement. Before joining the Trust, Duncan had worked as a political fundraiser for a direct mail company.

  The board is chaired by Robert C. Daum, a retired investment banker who also serves on the boards of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, the Royal Oak Foundation, and the Visiting Nurse Service of New York.

• 8. Recognition and Reach

  ›

  Charity Navigator has awarded the Trust 4-star ratings in 12 separate years, including 11 consecutive years, covering 2007 through 2019. The Trust is one of only four Arts, Culture, Humanities institutions in the country with 11 or more consecutive 4-star ratings, alongside the New York Public Library, the Georgia Historical Society, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. The Better Business Bureau's Wise Giving Alliance granted accreditation in 2012, and the United States Department of the Interior awarded the organization its Partner in Conservation Award in 2010.

  Beyond the awards, the Trust's reach extends into classrooms. Its website carries scores of battle maps, hundreds of primary sources, and downloadable curricula. The quarterly magazine Hallowed Ground has received APEX Awards for Publication Excellence each year since 2009. More than 20 GPS-enabled battlefield touring applications are available for smartphones. Park Day, an annual volunteer clean-up program, brings supporters to battlefield sites across the country.

  Since 2019, the Trust has also run a Youth Leadership Team that selects 15 high school students each year to participate in preservation initiatives in their home communities while learning about lobbying, social media, and communication. The next generation of battlefield advocates is already in training, shaped by the same conviction that drove the organization's founding: that the ground itself is the evidence, and losing it means losing the story.