The Cherry Tree, the Flat Earth and Other History Myths Traced to Their Source

Every American schoolchild learns that George Washington chopped down a cherry tree, confessed to his father, and was forgiven for his honesty. It is a lovely story. It is also, as far as anyone can prove, a fib, which makes it the only cherry tree in history that was planted entirely in the imagination of a book salesman.

I raise this not to spoil your Presidents' Day but to make a point that conservatives should care about more than anyone. We are the people who say the past matters. We say the Founders were serious men who deserve to be studied, not caricatured. And that means we have a double duty: to defend the true record against those who would trash it, and to refuse to defend the false record just because it flatters us. A man who tells a tall tale about Washington is no friend of Washington. He has swapped a hero for a greeting card.

So let us go through eight of the best-known stories in American history, find who invented them, and hand down verdicts. Some are myths from the left of the aisle, some from the right, and some from nobody in particular. The method is the same each time: ask where the story first appears, and ask who was there.

The method: three questions for any story

Before the cases, the rules. A good history detective asks these in order.

1. Where does the story first appear? If it shows up in print decades after the event, with no earlier source, be suspicious.
2. Who told it, and what did they want? A preacher selling moral lessons, a novelist, a painter and a politician each has a reason to improve the facts.
3. Is there a contemporary witness? A letter, a diary, a newspaper or an official record written at the time outranks any later telling.

These are the same standards a court applies to evidence, and for the same reason: memory is a creative writer.

Myth 1: Washington and the cherry tree

The claim. Young George Washington cut down his father's cherry tree with a new hatchet, and when asked, said, "I cannot tell a lie."

The source. Mason Locke Weems, an itinerant Episcopal clergyman and book peddler, wrote a popular short biography of Washington that first appeared in 1800, soon after the great man's death. The cherry-tree story did not appear in the early editions. It was added in the fifth edition, around 1806, and Weems presented it as an anecdote he had been told rather than something he had seen himself.

The test. No earlier source mentions the tale. No letter, diary or record from Washington's boyhood or from anyone who knew him as a boy supports it. Weems wanted to sell books and teach virtue to the young, and he was open about the second aim. He wrote the story the way a preacher writes an illustration.

Verdict: invented. The honest thing to say is that we cannot prove it never happened, but nobody has been able to show that it did, and its first appearance is a book designed to sell moral lessons. Treat it as a parable. And notice that the real Washington needs no such help. He commanded an army through eight years of war and then walked away from power, twice, which is the better honesty story. See George Washington Gave Up Power Twice and Changed What Leaders Could Be.

Myth 2: Columbus proved the earth was round

The claim. In 1492 everyone in Europe thought the earth was flat, and Columbus bravely defied the ignorant scholars who said he would sail off the edge.

The source. Washington Irving, the American writer best known for Rip Van Winkle, published a biography of Columbus in 1828 that dramatized a council of Spanish scholars opposing him, and the later nineteenth century ran with it.

The test. Educated Europeans had known the earth was a sphere since the ancient Greeks. Eratosthenes, in the third century before Christ, estimated its circumference using shadows at two Egyptian cities. Medieval scholars taught it as well. The real dispute in Spain was about distance. Columbus argued that Asia lay only a short voyage west. The scholars said the earth was far bigger than he claimed and that he could not reach Asia before his crews starved. On that point the scholars were right. Columbus was wrong about the size of the earth, and he was saved by the accident that two continents lay in the way.

Verdict: invented, and backwards. The flat-earth debate was manufactured three centuries later, and the clever side in the actual argument was not the one the myth honors. This matters for education. A child taught that medieval people were stupid is a child taught to feel superior to the dead, which is the opposite of what history is for.

Myth 3: The Pilgrims dressed in black with buckles

The claim. The Pilgrims wore somber black clothes, tall hats and large buckles on hats, belts and shoes.

The source. Nineteenth-century illustrators, and later Thanksgiving cards and school pageants. The buckle in particular was a decorative convention. Buckles came into fashion later in the seventeenth century, after the Pilgrims landed in 1620, and the buckle-and-black look settled into American imagination by way of engravers who wanted a quick visual shorthand for "old-timey and serious."

The test. The surviving inventories of the property of Plymouth colonists list clothing in colors, including reds, greens and violets, and the Pilgrims were ordinary English people who dressed as ordinary English people of their station did. Black clothing was worn for church and for dress, as it was elsewhere in England, and not as a uniform.

Verdict: false as a general picture. The Pilgrims were not gloomy scarecrows. They were farmers, craftsmen and families who crossed an ocean for the freedom to worship, and they wore what they could afford, in colors. If you want the true story of what they did once they arrived, see The Pilgrims Tried Common Property and Went Hungry Until Bradford Changed It.

Myth 4: Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address on the back of an envelope

The claim. On the train to Gettysburg, Lincoln scribbled his speech on the back of an envelope.

The source. A story that grew up in the decades after the speech, the kind of tale that sticks because it flatters the idea of effortless genius.

The test. The surviving manuscripts tell a different story. Five handwritten copies in Lincoln's hand are known, and they differ slightly from one another, which shows that he kept working on the text. The earliest copy is associated with his secretary John Nicolay, and scholars still debate which copy he actually held on the platform when he delivered the speech on November 19, 1863. The speech is about 270 words long, and it is short because it was drafted with care.

Verdict: false. Lincoln was a deliberate writer who revised constantly, and the speech is a product of that discipline. The myth does him a disservice by implying that great speech is the result of inspiration on a rail car. It is the result of work. For a close reading, see The Gettysburg Address Read Closely Sentence by Sentence.

Myth 5: The Liberty Bell cracked on July 4, 1776

The claim. The Liberty Bell rang out to announce the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, and cracked doing it.

The source. The bell ringing scene, complete with an excited boy sent to tell the bell ringer, comes from a work of fiction, a short story by the Philadelphia writer George Lippard published in 1847.

The test. The bell was ordered for the Pennsylvania State House in 1751 and cast in London, then recast in Philadelphia in 1753 by local metalworkers after it cracked on its first test ring. It bears the line from Leviticus: "Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants thereof." It was not called the Liberty Bell in 1776. An abolitionist publication first called it the Liberty Bell in 1835, and the name caught on only years later, as abolitionists used the bell as a symbol against slavery. The first public reading of the Declaration took place on July 8, 1776, but the National Park Service says there is no evidence that the bell rang on July 4 or July 8. As for the crack, the National Park Service says it probably developed in the early 1840s, and in 1846 a failed repair before Washington's birthday widened it and a second fissure silenced the bell.

Verdict: mostly legend. The bell is genuine, the inscription is genuine, and its later career as a symbol of liberty is genuine. The July 4 ringing is a story by a novelist. I would not tell a child it is false and leave it at that. I would tell her that the real symbol grew over time, and that the people who made it a symbol were abolitionists, which is a better story than the one Lippard wrote.

Myth 6: Betsy Ross sewed the first flag

The claim. In 1776 George Washington visited Betsy Ross in Philadelphia and asked her to sew the first American flag, and she suggested five-pointed stars.

The source. Her grandson, William Canby, who presented the story to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in 1870, almost a century after the events, from family memory.

The test. No document from the time records the visit. The Continental Congress adopted a flag design by resolution on June 14, 1777. Betsy Ross was a real Philadelphia seamstress and flag maker, and records show she was paid for making flags for Pennsylvania's navy. So the claim that she made flags is solid. The claim that Washington commissioned the first Stars and Stripes from her rests on family tradition.

Verdict: unproven. It may be partly true. It cannot be shown. Say "according to family tradition" and you are on safe ground.

Myth 7: Washington crossing the Delaware, as painted

The claim. The great painting shows Washington standing in a boat among his men, with the Stars and Stripes flying, crossing the Delaware on Christmas night, 1776.

The source. The 1851 painting by Emanuel Leutze, an artist born in Germany who painted it in Düsseldorf, Germany, as a message to European reformers.

The test. The Stars and Stripes did not exist yet. Congress adopted that design in June 1777, six months after the crossing. The boats in the painting are not the type used, which were large cargo boats called Durham boats and other river craft, and standing in a small boat in an icy river is not how a general stays alive. The crossing was real and heroic, and the surprise attack at Trenton the next morning is one of the great turning points of the war. Only the picture is wrong. For the real story, see Crossing the Delaware on Christmas Night and the Ten Days That Saved the Cause.

Verdict: great painting, bad documentary. Art is allowed to improve the scene. Historians are not.

Myth 8: Washington's wooden teeth

The claim. Washington wore wooden false teeth.

The source. A guess that became a joke.

The test. Washington suffered from bad teeth for most of his adult life and wore several sets of dentures. Surviving sets were made of materials that included ivory, human teeth, and animal teeth, held together with metal. Wood is not among the teeth. Wood would have been a poor choice, because it absorbs moisture and stains.

Verdict: false, and a little grim. The true story is that the man who won the war did it in pain.

The argument: why we correct the myths

Now the argument that pulls these together. A host can tell a good story, and a good host also has to tell you why the story matters. Here it is in numbered premises.

1. A republic runs on informed public opinion. Washington said so in his Farewell Address: "Promote then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened." Citizens who cannot tell a fact from a legend cannot judge the people who govern them.
2. Myths are not harmless, because they set the terms of argument. A false story about the past becomes a premise in a present-tense fight. If it is a flattering myth, it makes our side lazy. If it is a hostile myth, it can be used to condemn the nation's founding as nothing but a fraud.
3. Truth is the stronger weapon. Washington did not need the cherry tree, Lincoln did not need the envelope, and the Revolution did not need a bell that cracked on the right day. The real record is richer and more demanding than the legends, and it makes better citizens.
4. Correcting a myth is an act of respect. Teaching what actually happened treats students as adults and treats the dead as real people.
5. Conservatives have the most to gain. We believe in inherited things: institutions, traditions, the wisdom of the dead. An inheritance that has been quietly falsified is an inheritance that can be quietly stolen. The way to keep it is to know it.

The objection from the other side

Someone will say: "These myths are harmless. They make children love their country. Why spoil it?"

That is a decent argument, and the answer begins with an honest concession. Stories do shape character, and a child can learn something from a parable about honesty. But two problems follow. First, children grow up. The student who learns at twelve that the cherry tree was a story learns at the same time that the adults around him were willing to tell him something false for his own good, and that makes the next claim harder to trust. Second, the true accounts are better. A child who hears that Washington crossed an icy river in the dark with a ragged army, in a surprise attack, with the cause nearly lost, does not need a hatchet. Teach the parable as a parable, and teach the history as history, and tell the child which is which.

That distinction is the entire discipline, and it is a skill we should want in every citizen. It is the habit that protects against every kind of propaganda, whether it comes from a textbook, a movie, a politician or a tweet.

There is a related myth to read next: Paul Revere Never Shouted the British Are Coming and Six More Revolution Myths collects more from the Revolution. For a modern example of a myth tested against the record, see Was the Moon Landing Faked and Other Space Race Myths Tested Against the Record. And for a larger quarrel about the founding itself, see Was America Founded in 1619 or 1776 and What the Historical Record Shows. The Founders page has primary-source material for checking any claim you hear.

The case in brief

1. Many of the best-known American stories were invented, usually by someone with a motive: a preacher selling books, a novelist, a painter, a grandson, an illustrator.
2. Test any story with three questions: where does it first appear, who told it and why, and is there a witness from the time.
3. Washington's cherry tree, the flat-earth Columbus, the black-and-buckles Pilgrims, the envelope, the July 4 bell crack, the first flag and the wooden teeth fail those tests, in whole or in part.
4. A republic needs an informed public, and the true record is stronger than any legend.
5. Correct a myth the way you would correct a friend: kindly, with the source in your hand.

What you can do: the next time you hear a famous historical story, look up its first appearance in a library or in the Library of Congress catalog before you repeat it, and teach your children the difference between a parable and a record.