The father of this country was not a warmly demonstrative kind of father. On the Mall in Washington, the monuments to Presidents Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln portray people; Washington’s is a stone obelisk. Washington himself was partly responsible for his image since he went to great lengths to keep his emotions private. “He is in our textbooks and our wallets,” wrote his biographer Richard Brookhiser, “but not our hearts.”
Mason Locke Weems, a minister and traveling bookseller, wanted to make Washington less of a monument and more of a man. The story of young George taking a hatchet to his father’s favorite tree and then redeeming himself by confessing grew out of that effort.
The Story’s Origins
Weems’ Life and Memorable Actions of George Washington first appeared in 1800, the year after Washington died. Weems made the young George especially endearing. That took a lot of creativity since little was known of Washington’s childhood. The most famous story of Washington’s childhood did not appear until the fifth edition of Weems’ book in 1806, then titled The Life of Washington the Great. As Weems told the story, the 6-year-old George received a hatchet as a present and promptly started chopping everything in sight, including his father’s tree.
The next morning the old gentleman...came into the house.... Presently George and his hatchet made their appearance. George, said his father, do you know who killed that beautiful little cherry tree yonder in the garden? This was a tough question, and George staggered under it for a moment; but quickly recovered himself; and looking at his father, with the sweet face of youth brightened with the inexpressible charm of all-triumphant truth he bravely cried out, “I cant tell a lie, Pa, you know I cant tell a lie, I did cut it with my little hatchet.”
As Weems’ story continues, George’s father embraced him, telling him he was glad he had killed the tree since George’s courageous honesty had “more worth than a thousand trees though blossomed with silver and their fruits of purest gold.”
Weems claimed he had heard the story from a distant and unnamed relative of the family who as a girl had spent much time with the Washingtons. That was hardly a verifiable source, and from the start there were skeptics. The September 1800 edition of The Monthly Magazine, and American Review called the early editions of Weems’ biography — even before the cherry tree story was added — “as entertaining and edifying matter as can be found in the annals of fanaticism and absurdity.” Multivolume works by other 19th-century biographers, including John Marshall, Jared Sparks and Washington Irving, made no mention of the cherry tree, and later authors were openly derisory.
Wrote biographer William Roscoe Thayer in 1922: “Only those who wilfully prefer to deceive themselves need waste time over an imaginary Father of His Country amusing himself with a fictitious cherry-tree and hatchet.”
The Story Spreads
None of this slowed the story’s spread. William Holmes McGuffey, a minister, like Weems, included the story in grammar school textbooks read by millions of children in the 19th century. In case any student might have missed the moral of the story, McGuffey’s Readers included prompts, including “When we have done wrong, what are we tempted to do?” and “What may we expect by confessing our faults?”
In an 1864 version of the story, Washington’s father is about to punish an enslaved man for cutting the tree. George arrives in time. “‘O papa, papa!’ cried he, ‘don’t whip poor Jerry: if somebody must be whipped, let it be me; for it was I, and not Jerry, that cut the cherry-tree.’”
The honesty-is-the-best-policy moral could also be drawn from a story told by Washington’s step-grandson, George Washington Parke Custis. Custis recounted how young George tried to tame a horse that was his mother’s favorite but that was too fierce to ride. George and the horse were equally willful, and their struggle ended only when the horse “burst his noble heart” and died. Young George confessed to his mother. She was at first angry but quickly softened and said, “I rejoice in my son, who always speaks the truth.”
Custis spent much of his childhood at Mount Vernon and had access to other relatives’ recollections. Some historians, notably Henry Wiencek, concluded that Custis may have embellished his stories but did not make them up. “It is hard to believe,” Wiencek wrote, “that he would tell a lie about a story whose moral is not to tell a lie.”
Most historians, however, have found it hard to believe Weems or Custis. Weems told other stories about Washington because of the morals — or perhaps the enjoyment — he hoped his readers would derive from them, rather than because of any evidence. And Custis was never able to figure out how to live a life as someone other than George Washington’s step-grandson. He lived amid Washington’s relics, painted murals of Washington in battle, wore Washington’s old uniform and entertained in Washington’s tent. Washington loved his step-grandson but was frustrated by his behavior. Just before Custis flunked out of Princeton, Washington wrote to the president of the university: “From his infancy, I have discovered an almost unconquerable disposition to indolence in every thing that did not tend to his amusements.... I could say nothing to him now, by way of admonition — encouragement — or advice, that has not been repeated over & over again.”
Hardly a ringing endorsement of his step-grandson’s credibility.
Adapted from American Stories: Washington’s Cherry Tree, Lincoln’s Log Cabin, and Other Tales — True and Not-So-True — and How They Spread Throughout the Land, published by Lyons Press.
READING LIST
Edward G. Lengel. Inventing George Washington: America’s Founder, in Myth and Memory. (HarperCollins, 2011). A thorough and entertaining study.
Karal Ann Marling’. George Washington Slept Here: Colonial Revivals and American Culture, 1876-1986. (Harvard University Press, 1988). Marling traces Washington imagery.
Paul K. Longmore. The Invention of George Washington. (University of California Press, 1988). Longmore stresses Washington’s own role in myth-making.
Garry Wills. Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment. (Doubleday, 1984). This book also looks at Washington’s own image of himself, as well as that of early biographers, writers and artists.
Ron Chernow. Washington: A Life. (Penguin Press, 2010). Though just one volume Chernow’s work has the breadth and depth of multi-volume biographies.
Joseph Ellis. His Excellency: George Washington. (Knopf, 2004). "Within the gallery of greats so often mythologized and capitalized as Founding Fathers," Ellis wrote, "Washington was recognized as . . . The Foundingest Father of them all."
Richard Brookhiser. Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington. (Free Press, 1996). Brookhiser's study is brief but incisive.