Presidents’ Day
George Washington and the Cherry Tree. Folklore & Fakelore (from the LATimes)
No other great man in history has had to live down such a mass of absurdities and deliberate false inventions. . . . Only those who willfully wish to deceive themselves need waste time over an imaginary father of his country amusing himself with the fictitious cherry tree and hatchet. — William Roscoe Thayer.
The famous “I cannot tell a lie” episode, it seems, was a lie itself — a wholesale fabrication by the Rev. Mason Weems, a hack writer and alleged plagiarist. After George Washington’s death in 1799, Weems realized that Americans were hungry for stories about their hero and happily obliged with a series of “biographical” pamphlets, beginning in 1800. By the 1806 pamphlet, the juvenile lumberjack and his cherry tree had made their appearance. Starting in 1808, that episode would reappear in dozens of subsequent editions of Weems’ book, The Life of George Washington: With Curious Anecdotes, Equally Honourable to Himself and Exemplary to His Young Countrymen.
