The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1932-06-30
FORT NECESSITY, WHERE
WASHINGTN BEGAN HIS
CAREER WITH DEFEAT
By NEIL H. SWANSON,
I'm the Baltimore Sunday SUM

A young soldier was sent out to do
an important job. He failed to do it.
Instead, he was surrounded, forced to
surrender, misled into confessing he
had assassinated an ambassador, and
sent home.
With that as beginning he worked
up to be general, commander-in-
chief of the American Army, first
President of the United States and
foremost hero of his country. On the
Fourth of July, the swampy field
where George Washington got away
to a discouraging start will be dedi-
Gated as a national memorial. In the
lowest part of the field, overlooked by
a circle of hills, the crowds who attend
the dedication will see tight fence of
upright logs, inclosing a small plot of
ground and log cabin. That is Fort
Necessity, built there by Washington
when he was %, and now restored as
nearly as possible to its original ap-
pearance.
The log palisades are some ten feet
high. The fort which they form is the
shape of a box, with one corner
squeezed together. Take shoe box
and pinch two sides Of it until the
corner where they meet is sharp
point, and you will see what Wash
ington's fort looks like now-save
that it has no lid,
***
It was out CT the question, Of
course, to make Fort Necessity on
July 4, 1882, look just as it did on
July 4, 1854. To do that would require
mud knee deep, rain water standing
in every boot track, dead horses and
the smoke of burning baggage. In
stead, visitors to the fort will see neat
white paths and precise banks of
earth thrown up against the inside of
the log walls to simulate the firing
step where 300 Virginians and $50
Carolininans stood to fire through the
loopholes. The loopholes are there,
trim and neat also, and the spiked
tops of the palisades are like pencils
fresh from a pencil sharpener.
1t is Fort Necessity, retailored to
meet the needs Of public shrine. The
thousands who will visit it in years
to come may have little difficulty in
visualzing it as it was when George
Washington surrendered it to the
French. For the surrender, as well as
the fort itself, is being retailored. for
reasons which are not so readily ap-
parent.
The battlefield of Great Meadows is
to be a memorial not to a man who
went doggedly ahead through defeat
and disappointment, but-officially, at
least-to a man who never knew what
defeat was like.
George Washington never met de-
feat" Representative Sol Bloom said
in an address at the ground-breaking
ceremony when the restoration Of the
fort was begun last fall. Mr.. Bloom is
associate director of the George
Washington Bicentennial Commission.
He added, at is high time we took
this battle of Great Meadows out Of
the shadows Of defeat and placed it in
the glorious light Of triumph and
military success"
Washington himself, it was ex-
planned, was wrong when he wrote to
his brother after the surrender that
he had been "soundly beaten" And
both the associate director CT the BIZ
centennial Commission and the pub
lished material prepared in connection
with the memorial rise to the defense
of Washingtons' military "sagacity"
in picking out that particular spot for
his fort.
Military engineers" runs the apol-
ogy, "have criticized Washington for