ExclusiveGeorge Washington Cherry Tree_ The Honest Lie

One of the most famous stories about Washington is how, as a little boy, he chopped down his father's cherry tree with his little hatchet and then said to his father, I cannot tell a lie. I did it with my little hatchet. Now that story goes along with the popularly told myth that Washington never told a lie because he was honored for being a man of honesty and principle. Now it's true that Washington was indeed a man of high honor and great principle. But that story about him and the cherry tree was simply made up by one of the biographers who wrote about him very lovingly shortly after his death.