Answer:
The cherry tree myth is the most well-known and longest enduring legend about George Washington. In the original story, when Washington was six years old he received a hatchet as a gift and damaged his father’s cherry tree. When his father discovered what he had done, he became angry and confronted him. Young George bravely said, “I cannot tell a lie…I did cut it with my hatchet.” Washington’s father embraced him and rejoiced that his son’s honesty was worth more than a thousand trees.1
Ironically, this iconic story about the value of honesty was invented by one of Washington’s first biographers, an itinerant minister and bookseller named Mason Locke Weems. After Washington’s death in 1799 people were anxious to learn about him, and Weems was ready to supply the demand. As he explained to a publisher in January 1800, “Washington you know is gone! Millions are gaping to read something about him…My plan! I give his history, sufficiently minute…I then go on to show that his unparalleled rise and elevation were due to his Great Virtues.”2 Weems’ biography, The Life of Washington, was first published in 1800 and was an instant bestseller. However the cherry tree myth did not appear until the book’s fifth edition was published in 1806.
Although there were other myths about Washington in Weems’s book, the cherry tree myth became the most popular. Weems had several motives when he wrote The Life of Washington and the cherry tree myth. Profit was certainly one of them; he rightly assumed that if he wrote a popular history book about Washington it would sell. Weems was also able to counter the early tradition of deifying Washington by focusing on his private virtues, rather than his public accomplishments. A Federalist admirer of order and self-discipline, Weems wanted to present Washington as the perfect role model, especially for young Americans.
Cover page of the 1840 edition of Weem's Life of Washington. The book's subtitle shows how important Weems thought the anecdotes were to his book's central purpose to make Washington a role model for his "Young Countrymen."
The cherry tree myth and other stories showed readers that Washington’s public greatness was due to his private virtues. Washington’s achievements as a general and president were familiar to people in the early nineteenth century, but little was known about his relationship with his father, who died when Washington was only eleven years old. As one Pennsylvanian observed, “The facts and anecdotes collected by the author are well calculated to exhibit the character of that illustrious man, and Christian hero.”3 Weems knew what the public wanted to read, and as a result of his success he is considered one of the fathers of popular history.
Weems wrote his version of the cherry tree myth to appeal to a broad audience, but decades later William Holmes McGuffey composed a series of grammar school textbooks that recast the anecdote as a children's story. McGuffey was a
Mason Locke Weems, by an unidentified artist, c.1810. Number NPG.95.190, National Portrait Gallery.
Presbyterian minister and a college professor who was passionate about teaching morality and religion to children. His books, known as McGuffey’s Readers, gave him the perfect opportunity. First published in 1836, the readers remained in print for nearly a hundred years and sold over 120 million copies.
McGuffey's version of the cherry tree myth appeared in his Eclectic Second Reader for almost twenty years, including the German-language edition from 1854. In McGuffey's version of the story, Washington's language was formalized, and he showed more deference to his father’s authority. For example, when Washington’s father explains the sin of lying, McGuffey has young George respond tearfully, "Father, do I ever tell lies?”4
