13. Fort Necessity National Battlefield in western Pennsylvania
Fort Necessity was built by the Virginia militia, out of what it was named for, by the commander of the militia, a then unknown young Virginia surveyor named George Washington. The fort was a hastily built wooden palisade, erected to protect the militia’s supplies as a larger force of French and their Indian allies approached. Washington erected the palisade to protect the supplies from those of his men he believed may be prone to desert, guarded by British regulars. Washington ordered trenches dug outside the palisade for the protection of the troops, but heavy rains in late June and early July rendered them unusable. Meanwhile French troops approached the fortification using the road which had been built by Washington’s men.
In the end Washington was presented a surrender document written in French, which he could not read, and he signed it without realizing that he had admitted his men had assassinated a French officer in a confrontation earlier in the spring. Washington and his men were allowed to withdraw back to Virginia, and the young colonel of militia was then a household name. Fort Necessity was the first battle of what became the Seven Years War, a global conflict by the time it ended in 1763. Washington’s reputation would be enhanced in yet another defeat at the Monongahela in 1755. By the end of what is known in America as the French and Indian War he was known as America’s foremost soldier, despite having achieved little success in battle.