CHAPTER NINETEEN

_THE EMERGENCE OF LEE_

There have been few days in the history of Atlanta so festive as the one set for the dedication of the Confederate memorial. And, possibly, there will never be another. The progress of the carving against unspeakable odds had been such that visitors were pouring in from all over the United States. There were artists, engineers, dynamite salesmen, machinery designers, Civil War veterans, politicians and unaffiliated patriots.

When three governors--Brandon of Alabama, Neff of Texas and Trinkle of Virginia--had appeared two days before the unveiling, Gutzon decided that it would be proper to give them a luncheon on Lee’s shoulder. It would give them some idea of the size, he thought.

So, with the aid of Hetty McCurdy, who ran “The Golden Glow,” a Stone Mountain tearoom, Mrs. Borglum arranged the luncheon. The stoneworkers hung out a pulley, and hot fried chicken, hot biscuits, hot coffee and other things were served with very little trouble. Twenty leading citizens of Atlanta sat down with the governors on Lee’s shoulder. One of the governors turned pale when he descended the 400-foot stairway, and sat down to rest several times. At every move he seemed to be stepping off into the infinite.

Three more governors--Morrison of North Carolina, McLeod of South Carolina and Walker of Georgia--were present when Lee’s head was presented to the world, besides former governors, representatives of governors, two representatives of the President of the United States, and a long list of distinguished individuals appearing for the Daughters and Sons of the Confederacy and for Georgia and other states. The event was accompanied by all the pageantry and oratory that the South knows so well how to produce. There were pieces about it, too, in the _Stone Mountain Magazine_, published by the Confederate Memorial Association. Said one of these bits:

The dream of the world’s greatest memorial began to come true Saturday afternoon at 3 o’clock. With a stately dignity that held something of a caress, a bright, broad national emblem was lifted and gathered as a flowing coronet on the majestic brow of Robert E. Lee, looking now and forever from the sheer wall of Stone Mountain....

And nobody knew--or had even a remote inkling--how wrong that was.

Mrs. Helen Plane, the Old South’s daughter, who had hoped for this great memorial, stood by the sculptor’s side and leaned on his arm as she gave the signal for the unveiling. Under the gray sky of a typical January afternoon the flag swept aside and the calm, sad eyes of Lee looked down upon ten thousand of his people. The crowd stood hushed in awe and admiration.

Since before noon a pilgrimage had been under way from Atlanta and surrounding communities toward Stone Mountain. There were no good roads hereabouts--not in that day--so presently there was a crush of vehicles parked on the approaches for nearly a mile from the mountain. They never reached the unveiling. Hundreds upon hundreds of automobiles were in fields along the highway, and in ditches and on crossroads. The occupants of some of them walked on miles and miles to the ceremony. Others were stopped in their tracks when the first trickle of cars back to Atlanta began at 3:30.

Ten thousand people stood bareheaded and silent as the statue of Lee was unveiled. Another ten thousand were in the group that could not see, blocked in the crush of traffic miles from the mountain.

Hollins Randolph, president of the Memorial Association, stood on the platform briefly to introduce Dr. David Marx, who delivered the invocation. Mrs. Plane, in a costume of the sixties, was carried onto the rostrum by the sculptor. With bared head he stood motionless as she waved her hand.

Up on the mountain platform, a thousand yards away in an air-drawn line, tiny figures moved beneath the two vast American flags that hung like a curtain. Mrs. Plane’s hand was scarcely raised before boulders of granite began to slip from resting places under the flags and flash down the sheer drop of the precipice--five seconds in their fall from the flags to the base of the mountain, then two more seconds before the dull thunder of their impact rolled across the valley.

The flags parted and rose, and between them, to the thunder of cascading granite, the head of Lee appeared--a majestic head that even in its colossal size and distance seemed vibrant and lifelike. The silence of the spectators was long. Then suddenly out of the stillness spoke a voice clear though quavering--an old man’s voice: “It’s General Lee! It’s the general!”

Borglum turned wonderingly toward the source of this unscheduled salute. It was a bent old man who spoke--an old man in a gray uniform. His day seemed to be done. Not many had heard his outcry--not more than a hundred or so who happened to be standing near him--but his voice had brought the awakening of the throng. Applause--cheers, screams and the shrill rebel yell--crashed across the valley and came echoing back again, an amorphous sound like the din of a hurricane. Lee had been well acclaimed.

Gutzon, holding the trembling arm of Mrs. Plane who seemed to have undergone a tremendous emotional shock, suddenly realized what the people were cheering for: the head of Lee. And he gazed up at it openmouthed, conscious that he was looking at it for the first time.

Gutzon Borglum had worked on this massive carving for weeks on end, day and night. He knew every dimension of it, every curve. Its magnitude was no surprise to him, because standing on the upper lip of the statue he had been unable to reach the upper eyelid. He had swung across the face in a bosun’s chair, drilled holes along the nose, placed his dynamite sticks and exploded them. But he had had no time to travel down the face of the mountain and into the distance to look at it.

It was a pleasing sight that day. The monument looked logical, perfect in scale on the great wall of granite. The day was mild and gray, and the light was fading; but for all that, there were lifting shadows in the face. Each part of it stood out in its proper place. And for the first time in months Gutzon was really happy.

After a time the cheering thousands were quiet again. They moved in 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.