Since the 1770s, George Washington was celebrated as the “Father of His Country”  and was considered the most important of the Founding Fathers of the United States . Benjamin Franklin was one of his closest friends and gave him in his will the cane with which he walked. The Afro-American writer Phillis Wheatley dedicated an ode to him in 1776. In France, Washington was also well known. It was close to the Marquis de La Fayette, which after the war of independence, continued to write and send gifts. The latter called his son named George Washington Lafayette. When he returned to America in 1824, La Fayette went to pray at the tomb of his hero and adoptive father.

Became a national hero after his death, his admirers were swift apocryphal stories about its virtues, especially his honesty legendary. In the year that followed his death, Mason Locke Weems wrote a hagiography true that erected to the status of national myth, but to him we owe the story of the cherry: this story reports that he wanted to try a new ax, and he shot one of the trees from his father. Interviewed by the Washington, reportedly said: “I can not lie, it was I who killed the cherry tree. The story was first published in a book written by Mason Locke Weems, an Episcopalian minister and intended to be a model for children. The same author has also made Washington a good Christian, a man who had succeeded because he was thinking.

In his Mémoires d’outre-tombe, François-René de Chateaubriand Washington who had met during his trip to America said: “Washington has been the representative of the needs, ideas lights, views of his time. “

Today, Americans say “venerate Washington, like Lincoln and Jefferson remember”. According to a ranking compiled by historians for the magazine The Atlantic Montly, he is the second most influential American in history, behind Lincoln and Jefferson before.