silence to the road, slowly, sedately, like people emerging from a
solemn religious service. They got into their cars and just as silently
and just as unhurriedly moved out toward Atlanta. Then in an hour or two
it was dark--a thick, impenetrable dark.
Gutzon escorted Mrs. Plane to her car and she shook his hand. “I am
ninety-four years old,” she said. “I have waited a long time for this
day and I have never, never in my life seen anything like it.”
* * * * *
The unveiling of Lee was merely a beginning for the Confederate
memorial. Work on the mountain was resumed immediately.
The bust of Stonewall Jackson was the next subject, and that promised
little trouble. Gutzon had made a model of the head in his Stamford
studio and had brought a seven-foot enlargement of it to Georgia. While
the rough work was proceeding on the mountain, a local studio was
completed. Modeling stuff was moved in and Borglum’s horse “Smoke” was
brought down from Connecticut to pose for the mount of Lee.
Then the arguments began.
There had been no doubt about whose face would be the first to be carved
out of Stone Mountain. Jackson was an easy second choice. But after that
nearly everybody in Georgia had a departed Confederate relative who
should rightfully be memorialized in the first group. In the original
plan Borglum had made room for five figures in this group. Lee, Jackson
and Davis were certain of their places. Forrest and Longstreet had many
supporters for the last two places. Then somebody suggested that seven
men be given this immortal recognition, and trouble renewed itself. The
committee squabbled. The state legislature rattled with sonorous debate.
Church societies and high-school debaters aired their views, and Gutzon
Borglum made a fine assortment of models.
The models were a disconcerting problem because modeling clay in the
vicinity of Atlanta was difficult to get and expensive to import. For
his preliminary work the sculptor modeled in plaster which turned out to
be a pure makeshift, because it is not pliable and cannot be used for
fine work. Wax was better for small figures but out of the question for
the stupendous casts used on the mountain.
In addition to these causes of delay, funds began to get short. Borglum
found the money situation an imposing study. The executive committee
seemed to be getting plenty of financial aid, but this money didn’t seem
to be coming in quickly enough. There were always enough funds to
support the office and hire the stenographers and get the printing done.
But there was never enough of a residue to push the work on the mountain
as fast as the sculptor wanted it pushed.
Gutzon was hard-eyed about this situation. Some of the committee
members declared that he was an irascible old obstructionist--that he
didn’t understand their difficulties nor give them credit for the work
they were doing.
To this Gutzon’s reply, generally delivered to them in a harsh tone, was
that the only thing of real importance about a carving on a mountain was
the carving. If the fund raisers couldn’t raise enough funds to pay the
hard-rock men, he declared, then there wasn’t much use in their raising
any funds. During the first eight years of getting ready for the work on
Stone Mountain--which started in 1915--Gutzon said that he had advanced
$20,000 for labor, materials and machinery. He had kept no account of
the expense of traveling around the country in support of the
enterprise, he said. Nor had he kept any record of what he had put out
for experimentation with new tools, his sketches, studies, drawings and
models.
He observed more violently that for the first few months of the newly
organized association he had worked without a definite agreement. A
contract was finally drawn by which the sculptor agreed to carve the
central group for $250,000, he to furnish labor, power, machinery,
explosives and other materials and his own salary. A portion of an old
labor-and-lumber bill was paid to him on account of his advances during
the preceding years. Other payments were postponed for future
settlement. For the time being the association was supposed to pay all
expenses at the mountain, together with a certain monthly stipend for
the sculptor. These payments were always in arrears.
“And why is this?” the sculptor demanded witheringly.
“But, Mr. Borglum,” answered the treasurer, “we just haven’t the money.
We’re sure to have it next week.”
Out of nowhere came the plan to persuade the United States to issue
fifty-cent pieces carrying the picture of Stone Mountain Memorial to be
turned over to the committee for resale at a dollar. This looked like a
wonderful solution to all money problems and, to tell the truth, that’s
what it was. There was some argument about who had first disclosed the
idea. Dave Webb was warmly mentioned by some of those close to the
subject. But in the end, Henry Stilwell Edwards got official credit for
it and is said to have received $30,000 as a reward from the Stone
Mountain Memorial Association. Mr. Edwards was certainly a well-known
writer, and even without his fifty-cent-piece idea his support seemed to
be worth paying for.
Once the plan had been accepted and Edwards properly acclaimed, there
seemed to be some difficulties. It was a difficult matter, some
Atlantans pointed out, to ask the government to memorialize the valor of
soldiers who had so recently been at war with that government. Nobody on
the committee had friends in high places or, for that matter, knew much
about where to go for help. Gutzon Borglum had come into the Stone
Mountain situation as a sculptor whose almost impossible task was the
carving of a granite precipice, but he had friends in Washington from
the President down. So the executive committee approached him, and all
the labor of fostering the memorial coin fell on his shoulders.
It is common knowledge that many things annoyed Gutzon during his
vigorous lifetime and that he spoke of them sometimes loudly and
witheringly. A careless hard-rock man on Stone Mountain had once
observed of him with reasonable fairness, “He’s a pretty good
stonecarver--but he ain’t no sweet talker.” And there had been little
cause for him to improve his ways since the committee began to think
about finance.
The idea of the resalable half dollar appealed to him. It would get
funds--plenty of funds. But, he pointed out, the promotion of it wasn’t
his job. And he was cold and hard about it. He would undertake the work,
he said, because he was ready to do almost anything to see the monument
finished, but he didn’t want to be tripped up every five minutes by
petty politics or local interference or advice. He would do the job in
his own way, he said, or he would be just as glad not to do it at all.
They agreed and he went to Washington.
Borglum wasted no time with professional lobbyists. His first call was
on Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, of Boston, cradle of the “damyankees.”
Lodge thought the idea was grand and directed Gutzon to take it to
Senator Smoot. Senator Smoot was chairman of the finance committee. He
was also leader of the Republican party, and the sculptor was a little
worried about him. He knew that he wasn’t going to get votes for himself
or his party in the South, no matter what he might do, and he must have
been aware of possible censure in the North. But Smoot was a showman no
less than Borglum.
“It is a noble idea,” he said. “It will be recognized as a gesture of
friendship on the part of a victorious government toward its late enemy.
I shall be glad to handle it for you.”
Borglum then went to President Calvin Coolidge, and what had looked like
an almost impossible job was finished. Coolidge, the skeptical, taciturn
and unemotional, broke out with one of his rare enthusiasms. He would
give the matter his personal support, he said. And he did.
Congressman McFadden, who had helped Gutzon in the aircraft
investigation, introduced in the House the bill authorizing the coin,
and presently it was through both houses. But the making of a model for
a coin and having it approved by the Treasury Department and the Art
Commission and the Director of the Mint entails countless visits to
offices in Washington, Philadelphia and New York, and it is a tedious
process.
Gutzon made nine different models before he got the approval of every
detail. There were arguments about the style of the lettering and the
arrangement of the figures. One member of the Art Commission thought
that the eagle’s legs were too gaunt and lifelike and should be enclosed
in feather pantalettes.
Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon wanted to know why the motto
“In God We Trust” had been placed over the heads of Lee and Jackson.
“Because they did trust Him,” said Gutzon, “and were sincere in their
belief that they were right.”
The secretary smiled. “And the thirteen stars,” he went on. “What are
they there for?”
Gutzon knew then that his trouble was over. “It all depends on which
side of Mason and Dixon’s line you happen to live,” he said. “They
could, of course, stand for the thirteen rebellious states.” And Mellon
laughed and gave in.
The first coin was struck at the mint in Philadelphia on January 21,
1925. The first model had been approved six months before, and the
memorial fifty-cent piece differed from it in only one important
particular. The figure of President Jefferson Davis, a part of the first
group projected on Stone Mountain, did not appear on the coin. That was
one concession the victorious government declined to make.
CHAPTER TWENTY
_MONEY_
It became evident during the summer of 1924 that the Confederate
memorial of Stone Mountain was on its way to a considerable solvency.
The memorial half dollar would presently be minted, whatever the Yankee
quarrels about the status of Jefferson Davis and the need for pants on
eagles. In the meantime a new project of the inventive David Webb showed
signs of lucrative popularity.
“The Children’s Founders’ Roll,” Webb called this new appeal for cash.
And all he needed to recruit the eager children to the Founders’ Roll
was a children’s medal that he could exchange for their donations. This,
he thought, didn’t involve anything very difficult inasmuch as he had
one side of the medal already depicted in the first model for the coin.
The other side was to carry an inscription of the committee’s choosing.
But he didn’t want the medal to cost too much, and there came
difficulty.
The United States mint maintains a rigid high standard in its coinage,
and Gutzon wanted the children’s medals to be equally fine. He turned
his model over to the Medallic Art Company of New York, whose
workmanship satisfied him. The company agreed to make the medals for six
or seven cents apiece. They were to be sold to the public for fifty
cents or a dollar.
However, there turned out to be competition. Another company had made
overtures to the Stone Mountain Memorial Association offering to do the
job for a cent or two less and intimating that somebody--they wouldn’t
of course say Gutzon Borglum--was to profit in some way on the
difference in price. Gutzon, who had put away his anger during his coin
negotiations in Washington, suddenly went berserk again. He turned over
to the committee all his correspondence with the Medallic Art Company,
showing that he was not getting a cent. He reminded them that he had
made all the models for the coin and children’s medal without
recompense, and pointed out one after another the things he was doing on
the mountain for love alone.
“You seem to forget the promotion of your coin idea,” he snapped at
them. “Who paid me for that? Who paid me for the time I spent getting
pushed from one office to another? Who around here ever pays for
anything? Who is honest enough to think that he has to?”
Most of the directors tried to placate him, but some weren’t convinced.
Borglum’s blood pressure was still rising when he went out.
In another week there was another bitter quarrel. Gutzon, whose view of
his associates was still pretty dim, came across some publicity material
designed to promote the sale of the memorial coin. He might not have
liked it had he been untroubled by other things. He certainly did not
like it in his present state of mind, and his criticism of the publicity
director was sudden and bitter. The publicity director answered him in
kind, bowed and retired, and, thereafter, the two men never got along
together.
Amity was singularly lacking around the memorial headquarters for the
rest of the summer. Unfortunate things just continued to happen. The
Borglums, toward the end of August, went to Nantucket where, at the
request of Ed Howe, the sculptor was to give some talks at the summer
school for social science. They had barely arrived when Gutzon got an
emergency call to get back to New York. In a heat wave of unexpected
virulence the wax model of the children’s medal had melted and the
completion of the work had been stopped.
The records show that the Stone Mountain Memorial Association was loudly
indignant and remarkably bitter. Letters subsequent to the telegrams
complained about the sculptor idly vacationing while there was important
work to be done.
Gutzon replied that he hadn’t melted the wax and that he had previously
expressed himself on the subject of the company employing the
thumb-fingered medal maker who did do it. Conditions of mutual trust and
good will when he repaired the damage and returned to Atlanta were no
better than they had been.
Work on the memorial, however, was proceeding smoothly. Gutzon had moved
his family into a house near Stone Mountain. The hard-rock men and
dynamiters in the crew had learned their jobs. The figure of Jackson
would be ready for unveiling in April and that of Davis in June 1925. L.
M. Roberts, the Association’s engineer, had examined the work and
reported that everything was going along according to contract. Gutzon
was ahead of his schedule.
In March 1924 the fund-raising activities of the Association began to
pay their way. At the end of the month receipts equaled expenditures. In
April, before the start of any extraordinary fund-raising campaign,
receipts amounted to more than $28,000 and there was plentiful evidence
that the flow of cash would continue during May.
The annual meeting of the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial
Association was held in April 1924 and was marked by some political
maneuvers that greatly irritated the U.D.C. Officers had to be elected.
A new board of directors and a new executive committee was to be chosen
to act for the next twelve months. It was an understanding in the
Association that the presidency would be passed around from year to
year, but this year the old president made a plea for re-election. The
national presidential campaign was in full progress. The Association
president had been active in support of William Gibbs McAdoo and was
having some friction with the editor of the Atlanta _Constitution_. If
he were re-elected president of the Association, he said, he would have
greater status in politics, and he would resign immediately after the
primary election. His request, unfortunately, was granted. It was no
help to McAdoo.
The date of the Association’s election day was the same as that of the
selection of a presidential primary candidate. The political meeting was
held first. After it had adjourned the Association president went to the
Association’s annual meeting accompanied by a large number of
politicians.
Up to that point the Association hadn’t had many active members. The
dues had been five dollars. Nobody seems to have known what the total
membership was. Nobody ever counted the attendance. And most of those
present were members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
Eighty-six politicians came into the hall with the re-elected
Association president. Somebody moved to reduce dues to one dollar, and
someone else slapped eighty-six dollars on the desk of the treasurer.
Eighty-six new names were added to the roster of the Association. And
these eighty-six, along with the president, dominated the meeting.
There had hitherto been five or six people on the board of directors.
The number was immediately changed to fifty. The membership of the
executive committee was increased from nine to fifteen and was to be
chosen by the board of directors. A resolution was passed to bar any
increase in the membership of the Association except with the approval
of the president and a subcommittee of three appointed by him. The
president and the executive business manager, as the result of these
arrangements, were then in absolute control of the organization. The
president forgot his promise to resign.
An executive committee of fourteen men and one woman was named. The men
were persons of big affairs--several of them bankers whose daily
routine gave them little time for benevolent causes. There was not a
member to represent the U.D.C.
* * * * *
There has been a lot of controversy over the Stone Mountain memorial.
There will, no doubt, continue to be. Nobody who ever knew Gutzon
Borglum would attempt to say he was a complacent character. Decidedly he
was not. He knew what he thought was right, and that is what he wanted.
He wanted nothing else. Calm argument could change his point of view, of
course, for he was intelligent. But he could not be browbeaten. He was
honest--so he could not be bribed. His anger could be Jovian, and in his
indignation he could be intolerant and insulting. No one will deny these
things.
There isn’t much doubt that the executive committee of the Stone
Mountain Association encountered him in many moods, for he was in and
about the premises from 1915 to 1925. When things went wrong with
Gutzon’s plans, when anybody thwarted him, the world knew about it, and
few will say that the early days of the work on the mountain were
without confusion.
The story is still circulated in the South that Gutzon Borglum was a
genius of evil temper with whom no one could possibly get along; that he
had quarreled bitterly with the ladies of the U.D.C. and, in a huff, had
destroyed his models and all that it was possible to destroy of the
carving on Stone Mountain, and had gone away. But none of that is true
except that he did destroy a pair of models.
If anybody thinks that the carving of the Confederate memorial was a
simple thing, he may consider the odd politics that took over the
project at the annual meeting of the Association in 1924. There would
have been nothing simple about that even if Borglum had never lived.
Little had changed in the atmosphere except that money had begun to roll
into the treasury and there was prospect of more. The Children’s
Founders’ Roll was getting a large number of members, the children’s
medals were being distributed in quantities, and presently the memorial
coin would come out of the mint.
Gutzon Borglum, back at work on the mountain, paid little attention to
the political maneuvering in the Association. If he was displeased with
anything, he went down to Atlanta and told somebody about it. Otherwise
he was getting President Davis and General Jackson out of the rock in
shape for presentation on Davis’ birthday, June 3. He was looking
forward to the completion of the entire central group by the end of
1926.
He was called from this work to discuss the problem of selling the
memorial half dollars. Commercial institutions experienced in such jobs
wanted too large a percentage of the profit. Pseudo-patriotic
associations wanted more. At a bankers’ meeting in the Biltmore Hotel
early in 1925 it was suggested that a number of wealthy men might
underwrite the coin so that the money or some part of it might be
available at once. The board of the Association authorized the proponent
of this scheme to find such a group. And the man who had made the
suggestion was Gutzon Borglum.
Borglum wrote to John Kirby of Houston, Texas, and got promise of
$100,000 toward a fund of $500,000. With Dave Webb he went into
Mississippi and got promise of more money. W. W. Fuller urged him to
come to New York and there, with friends in the American Tobacco
Company, he lined up a sheaf of pledges. Judge Elbert Gary promised to
find more. Gutzon invited these people to meet Hollins Randolph at a
dinner in Washington where the sums to be subscribed would be agreed on.
President Randolph of the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial
Association failed to show up or to answer telegrams. He was out duck
shooting. Nobody, it appears, had time to go and look for him.
Gutzon considered the situation somewhat sadly. The only problem in
mountain carving that he could not solve was that caused by human
ignorance or cupidity. The Stone Mountain Association somehow had been
happy as long as its treasury had been empty. There was now an
expectation of an even two million dollars in the till.
The men of the Association formed a quick plan to abandon most of the
carving program. It would be simpler, they thought, to spend $250,000 on
the central group and reserve the rest of the money “for future causes
and purposes.”
On February 18, 1925, Gutzon was going through Atlanta from Stone
Mountain to Washington with Lester Barlow, inventor of a depth bomb.
Barlow had promised that if the government were to pay him his back
royalties, he would donate $100,000 of the sum to the Confederate
monument.[A] Barlow says that the sculptor was so outraged at the idea
of holding up the spending of money for work on the mountain that he
went straight to Washington and got an immediate interview with
President Coolidge. His single purpose was to stop the minting of any
more Stone Mountain coins.
[A] His claim was settled in 1940 when he was given nearly $700,000.
Coolidge, who sat knee to knee with him in serious and intimate
conversation, became incensed. He slapped Gutzon on the shoulder and
declared--as Barlow remembers it--“We won’t let those rebels put
anything like that over on us.” Barlow does remember vividly that the
President promised to put an end to the issuance of the coins. Gutzon
slapped him on the knee and thanked him. Of course, nothing more came of
this than conversation. Gutzon had hardly reached the Metropolitan Club
after his conference when Bascom Slemp, Presidential secretary, called
him on the phone. The President, it seems, had not understood. The
promise to stop the coin must be considered unofficial.
Things were moving fast in Atlanta. Tucker was called in from Stone
Mountain to meet with some of the men who were active in the
Association. Tucker refused to talk with them as a group, and Randolph
met him alone.
The conversation was what the engineer had expected. The directors were
going to get rid of Borglum and were offering him $15,000 a year to
carry on the building of the memorial. Tucker laughed. It was Borglum’s
idea, he said. He wouldn’t consider taking the job even if he thought
himself qualified.
Randolph seemed disappointed. “You could put _something_ up there that
would be satisfactory,” he said.
Tucker telephoned to Gutzon in Washington and begged him to come back.
The sculptor said he would. The next day Hollins Randolph gave out a
statement which at least one Atlanta newspaper printed under the
heading: “Borglum’s Dismissal as Sculptor Is Imminent.”
Gutzon was back in Atlanta twenty-four hours after receiving Tucker’s
message. A meeting of the executive committee of the Association had
been called for the next day. But the sculptor fully believed that his
contract would protect him, and he was not so worried as his friends.
Virtually everybody else in Atlanta knew what the executive committee
was going to do. A full copy of the proceedings of the scheduled
meeting, to its climax in a resolution dismissing Gutzon Borglum, had
been given in advance to the Atlanta _Journal_ and was in type hours
before the committeemen were called to order.