As a figure of national importance, George Washington is associated with a wide array of myths, tall tales, and anecdotes. Given his stature during the American Revolution, his reputation throughout the colonies following independence, and his role as the first president of the United States, it is unsurprising that he has attained a legendary status perpetuated by national myth-making. These tales have often described Washington as the ideal virtuous individual and a model political leader of the nation. In general, such stories are the result of a combination of his prominent role in American history, the reserved nature of his character, inaccurate biographical publications since his death, and the public construction of Washington into a unifying national symbol. While a number of factors have contributed to the creation of the public perception of Washington, the vast majority of the myths associated with him can be traced to the publication of biographer Mason Locke Weems’s (1759–1825) text on the first president shortly after his death, in 1800.
George Washington was born in Virginia on February 22, 1732, as the eldest son of Augustine and Mary Ball Washington. He was educated primarily by his father in the subjects of reading, writing, mathematics, accounting, and surveying. Owing to his skill as a surveyor, Washington was employed to survey portions of the Blue Ridge Mountains at the age of twenty, and he was later made surveyor of Lord Fairfax’s lands in the Shenandoah Valley. In 1754 Washington began his military career in the Virginia militia, eventually serving in the French and Indian War (1754–1763), and in 1759 he married Martha Dandridge Custis (1731–1802). After resigning his commission, Washington served in Virginia’s House of Burgesses (1759–1774) and was later selected as the Virginia delegate to both the First and Second Continental Congresses. During the Second Continental Congress in 1775, the creation of an army was agreed upon, and Washington was chosen to be its commander.
During the War of American Independence, Washington emerged as the premier military leader in the colonies, and soon became a national unifying symbol. In 1787 he again served as Virginia’s delegate, this time to a Constitutional Convention, and presided over the deliberations that led to the drafting of the U.S. Constitution. Soon after, he was elected as the first president of the United States (1789–1797). Throughout his tenure in government Washington’s decisions and actions established many of the founding principles of the office of the presidency and the functions of the executive branch, which his predecessors have since followed. Upon Washington’s death on December 14, 1799, those who had sought to promote the image of him as the Father of the Nation soon began to enhance his reputation in an idealized manner and ensured that he was eulogized as being “First in War, First in Peace, and First in the Hearts of His Countrymen.”
Hale, Nathan (1755–1776)
If George Washington is the benevolent father-figure of American mythology and Benedict Arnold its Judas Iscariot, Nathan Hale is its archetypal martyr, the courageous and self-sacrificing young hero whose “only regret,” according to the famous legend of his fearless dying words, is that he had “but one life to lose” for his country. Born on June 6, 1755, in Coventry, Connecticut, Hale went to Yale and taught school before he became an officer in the American forces. Having fought in a number of engagements, Hale was captured by the British and hanged as a spy on September 22, 1776. According to legend, at the request of Washington, Hale volunteered to spy out the strength and position of the British troops under General Howe. Hale successfully posed as a schoolmaster for a week and was captured with maps in his boots as he attempted to rejoin the Americans.
C. Fee
George Washington became the subject of a range of myths, legends, and anecdotes for a number of reasons. First, Washington’s position as a national hero following his actions during the American Revolution and as the nation’s first president made him the evident unifying figure for the country. Second, Washington’s reserved and distant personality made it difficult for many to know the facts of his personal life. Third, his military, political, and personal decisions left a great deal of room for reinterpretation and debate. Fourth, the need for a common national history in the wake of the War of 1812 (1812–1814), the Civil War (1861–1865), and the Centennial Celebrations of 1876 resulted in increasingly embellished tales about Washington, a figure who was easily recognizable and widely popular. Finally, the publication of biographer Mason Locke Weems’s text The Life of Washington (1800) promoted many popular but undocumented stories about the first president that have since been enshrined into national myth and reiterated by subsequent authors and artists. In addition, a range of anecdotes about Washington are often retold or exaggerated to promote virtues such as charity, humility, honesty, morality, and wisdom. The most popular and widely known tales regarding Washington include the story of young Washington and the cherry tree, his false wooden teeth, the tossing of a silver dollar over the Potomac River, his prayer at Valley Forge, and his wearing of a powdered wig.
The tale of the cherry tree is attributed to young Washington by Weems. Weems wrote that as a child, Washington was confronted after taking a hatchet to his father’s favorite cherry tree. When questioned by his father, Washington’s famous answer was either “I can’t tell a lie, Pa; you know I can’t tell a lie. I did cut it with my hatchet.” Or “I cannot tell a lie, for it was I.” In response, his father is purported to have embraced Washington and praised him for his honesty. Following Weems’s publication of this tale, both historians and authors alike reiterated the story, often presenting it as fact, thereby immortalizing Washington as a model of moral rectitude and character.
Another tale in Weems’s publication is the story of George Washington praying in the snow while camped at Valley Forge. Weems drew from popular folklore and oral accounts of the episode, with little documentary fact to support it. Regardless, the image of Washington kneeling in the snow at Valley Forge has since been used to emphasize his religious devotion, and to depict the founding father as pious and resolute. Despite the tenuous origins of this story, Weems’s portrayal of this event has subsequently been set into stained glass in the Congressional Prayer Room in the Capitol Building, and has appeared again later on stamps released by the U.S. Postal Service (1928, 1977).
Another enduring myth is the notion of Washington as unsmiling and overly formal as a result of his painful false wooden teeth. While Washington did not have wooden teeth, he did experience lifelong dental problems and had dentures composed of hippopotamus and elephant ivory, which had a metal spring as a hinge. A range of materials were used to construct dentures throughout the eighteenth century, but wood was not among them. As such, historians have since hypothesized that Washington’s habit of drinking port wine discolored his ivory teeth and gave him the look of having wooden teeth, which may have contributed to this rumor.
The account of Washington throwing a silver dollar across the Potomac River is widely told to emphasize the president’s physical strength. Given that there were no silver dollars during Washington’s time, and that the Potomac is too wide to throw either coins or stones across, scholars believe that this story is an exaggeration of an actual event. They suggest that this tale originated in a story related by George Washington Parke Custis, the president’s grandson, about Washington skipping stones or slate across the narrower Rappahanock River in Fredericksburg.
The majority of these tales either first appeared or were widely disseminated across the nation by the publication of Parson Weems’s biography of George Washington. Weems’s anecdotal portrayal of Washington promoted his skills, accomplishments, and virtues, while downplaying any shortcomings and vices, transforming the first president into a mythologized national icon. Moreover, while Weems’s text was popular in its subsequent republications, the perpetuation of many of these tales in school textbooks such as the McGuffey’s Readers throughout America during the nineteenth century transformed many such myths and legends into accepted “truths” about Washington. Twentieth-century historians and scholars have severely criticized Weems’s tales as lacking credible sources, and yet myths about George Washington have circulated unabated throughout the nation.
Given George Washington’s importance during the American Revolution and his role as the first president of the United States, it is unsurprising that he has attained a legendary status as perpetuated by folktales and unfounded anecdotes. In general, such stories have resulted from a combination of his prominent role in American history, the reserved nature of his character, the publication of inaccurate biographical tales, and his public construction into a unifying national symbol. The mythic Washington and the historical Washington are overlapping, though different figures, and the mythic Washington endures because of its usefulness in fashioning patriotic feeling and national identity in the United States.
Sean Morton
Valley Forge (1777–1778)
Referring to the winter encampment of General George Washington’s Continental Army from December 1777 until June 1778, “Valley Forge” has become shorthand in the American folkloric vocabulary for stoic perseverance and eventual transcendence in the face of the most brutal and merciless conditions. Although that winter was long and harsh, the troops ill-fed and ill-clothed, and morale at all-time lows, Washington and his men survived, and by the next summer had become a disciplined and efficient fighting force. Valley Forge is thus both a literal and a legendary place, and the challenges faced and overcome by Washington’s men, although certainly real, have become archetypal in what they suggest to Americans about ourselves. To face “Valley Forge” is thus to find the light at the end of a long, dark night of the soul, and to be a better person as a result of this travail.
C. Fee
See also Founding Myths; Weems, Parson
Further Reading
Furstenberg, Francois. 2007. In the Name of the Father: Washingon’s Legacy, Slavery, and the Making of a Nation. New York: Penguin Books.
Lengel, Edward D. 2011. Inventing George Washington: America’s Founder in Myth and Memory. New York: Harper.
Longmore, Paul K. 1988. The Invention of George Washington. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Onuf, Peter S., ed. 1996. Mason Locke Weems, The Life of Washington: A New Edition with Primary Documents and Introduction. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.
Sullivan, Dolores P. 1994. William Holmes McGuffey: Schoolmaster to the Nation. Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.