A battle over whether young George Washington hacked at a cherry tree with an ax has broken out between his great nephew and the keeper of the first president’s history, the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, which operates the family estate on the Potomac River.
In a new book and interview about Washington’s youth, great-nephew Austin Washington says the story is true, and he took Mount Vernon to task for caving in to nay-saying historians.
But Mount Vernon research historian Mary Thompson said the association is siding with historians who dismiss the tale.
The story of how Washington couldn’t tell a lie is well known. In his children’s book published in 1800, Parson Weems wrote that Washington “barked” his father’s cherry tree at age 6 and confessed when confronted. Over time, the tale has morphed into Washington cutting the tree down.
Explaining why Mount Vernon considers it a “myth,” Thompson said Weems had a reputation for exaggeration, and he didn’t quote anybody in his book. “Not having that information for Weems’ biography of Washington definitely lowers its value to professional historians,” she said.
But Austin Washington said current-day history writing style and footnoting wasn’t the fashion in 1800, and there is no reason to believe that Weems’ sources lied.
“The cherry tree story is almost surely based on a real incident,” said Washington, who argued that honesty was what people in the 1700s and 1800s traded on. “Honesty was a really important value,” he told Secrets. “It says something about us that we have trouble believing it,” added the author of The Education of George Washington, published by Regnery History.
500 REGS WORTH $12 BILLION ON CHOPPING BLOCK
Hundreds of federal regulations have been put under review and may be junked under a “look-back” program created to offer businesses relief from costly and burdensome rules that just don’t work.
Office of Management and Budget Director Sylvia Mathews Burwell said more than 500 regulations are being reviewed and reconsidered. Her mandate to agencies: Look for “what can you undo versus what can you add.”
For critics of the Obama administration, the look-back program may be a surprise because most media reports — and critics — have focused on new regulations coming out of the administration.
“I don’t think people understand or know that the idea of looking at things to take off is also something that we are working [on],” Burwell said.
Most of the regulations under review are small potatoes, but the administration has indicated that the savings could total $12 billion.
SIX STATES REAPED SHUTDOWN BONANZA
There is no doubt that federal parks and surrounding communities were hit by an economic tsunami during October’s 16-day government shutdown. A new National Park Service report said shutting the gates cost $414 million in lost visitor spending.
But not all were whacked. In the back of its study decrying the shutdown’s impact on its network of 401 parks, the NPS conceded that six states that paid Uncle Sam to keep facilities open scored a financial windfall of $10 for every $1 spent.
“[V]isitor spending by each park more than offset the total cost paid by the state to keep the parks open during the remainder of the shutdown and eliminated the uncertainty of lost NPS visitor spending to local gateway businesses,” the park service said.
Utah, Arizona, Colorado, New York, South Dakota and Tennessee spent a total of $2 million to keep 14 parks open. NPS said the economic benefit from visitor spending was $20 million to the parks and surrounding towns.
UKRAINE CRISIS LEADS TO AMMO HOARDING
American gun owners are gobbling up cheap Russian ammunition, worried that President Obama’s clash with Vladimir Putin over Moscow’s grab for Crimea will result in new trade sanctions cutting off imports of cheap bullets.
“We’ve seen an ammo-hoarding effect,” said Larry Hyatt, owner of Hyatt Gun Shop in Charlotte, N.C., one of the nation’s largest. “It’s almost like milk and bread when it gets ready to snow: It’s just a mass of people running out and buying some of it, probably more than they need,” he told Secrets.
New and surplus Russian ammo costs less than U.S.-made bullets and is popular with owners of Russian AK-47 and American AR-15 rifles.
Hyatt said shortages are becoming common due partly to Washington politics. “The stock of gun manufacturers is probably going up because they see that as long as President Obama is in office and as long as Hillary [Clinton] is threatening to run, they see sales staying good,” he said.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
