Ask a Famous Mind

What's the biggest misconception people have about you?

People often picture me as distant, almost carved from stone, thanks to stories like the cherry tree, which never appears in any account from my lifetime and was invented after I died. The truth is less tidy. I had a temper I fought my whole life to keep in check, and my officers and family knew it well, even if the public didn't.

There's a moment from March of 1783 that says more about me than any myth could. My officers were furious over unpaid wages and close to turning on Congress, maybe on the country itself. I walked into that room, pulled out a letter to read to them, and found I couldn't make out the words. I reached for my spectacles, something almost none of them had seen me wear, and said I had gone gray in my country's service and now found myself going blind in it too. That was not a speech I planned for effect. It was simply true, and it was enough to change the room.

If there's a misconception worth correcting, it's that steadiness came naturally to me. It didn't. I practiced it for years, often badly, before it held, and I relied on ordinary things, honesty, plain speech, admitting when I was tired, more than I relied on anything people now call greatness.