Why did george washington cut down the cherry tree?
It is a myth, a moralistic story to show that truth and honesty produce a positive outcome. It is speculated that the first reason that Mason Locke Weems wrote a biography on George Washington was that he was a shrewd businessman who possessed an uncanny sense of what the public wanted whether they knew it or not. In short, Weems wrote it for the money. What the public in 1800 needed was something new to talk and think about, no matter if it was true or not. The public was between major wars. The Revolutionary War was behind them. It would be late in 1806 before Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark would trek across the country to the Pacific and return. And the War of 1812 was even further away. The public, in 1800, was badly in need of a hero. Weems gave them a hero in the form of a little boy who made a mistake but was brave and honest when confronted. Then that child grew up and became president of the United States of America. In any era, that would be a hard act to follow.
