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Article: In the SPIRIT of the LAW.(Fort Necessity National Battlefield, United States National Park Service)
- Article from:
- National Parks
- Article date:
- January 1, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 National Parks Conservation Association. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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IF FORT NECESSITY National Battlefield in southwestern Pennsylvania followed the letter of the law, visitors would read a sign in the Great Meadows admitting that nothing happened there in 1757.
"When Congress passed the enabling legislation in 1931, it wrote in the wrong year," says battlefield Assistant Superintendent Chuck Smith. It was actually three years earlier, in 1754, that George Washington, a 22-year-old aide-de-camp to British General Edward Braddock, surrendered to the French on this site in the battle that opened the French and Indian War.
Even correcting the date, Smith says, "If we just stuck to our enabling legislation and focused on ...