Members of the Atlanta Chapter personally invited Mr. Randolph to become president of the Association.
Mr. Randolph has discarded the original models entrusted to him, altered the style, and reduced the size of the memorial.
He has plunged the work into a national scandal on false charges.
He has destroyed the confidence of the public in the work by false statements and lowered the standard of Georgia and Georgians throughout the United States.
And that isn’t all of the story of Stone Mountain. While Sam Venable and Gutzon were quietly waiting for the group then in control to take a false step and fall, the Association’s directors suddenly decided that something had to be done about Stone Mountain. Gutzon’s first intimation that something was wrong came with the publication of a news story in which the new sculptor said that Borglum had deliberately left large holes in the rock to interfere with further carving. Inasmuch as Gutzon had not known that he was to have a successor and had not been in Georgia since, the accusation seemed silly.
Next came Randolph’s announcement that Lee would never have worn his hat in the presence of ladies and that the Association was planning to remove the hat. Leading sculptors of the United States said that this could not be done without destroying the head. But the public had nothing to do with it anyway. There was little talk about it, and the work was done behind a canvas.
The book Famous Statues and Their Stories, published by Edwin Rayner in 1936, pictures Stone Mountain with a photograph of the second sculptor’s designs superimposed upon it. The horses’ legs are very prominent. The design is attributed to Gutzon Borglum, and there is no suggestion in the text that he had left the work.
Had Gutzon suspected what was about to be done to his head of Lee, it is probable he would have fought to retain it. It remained in his mind as one of the greatest things he had ever produced. And one close to him recalls that its destruction was caused by men who had boasted that until the end of time nothing could injure it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
BACKSIGHT
One of the most remarkable features of Gutzon Borglum’s quarrel with Georgia seems to be Georgia’s unawareness of it. The sculptor left Stone Mountain ahead of the constables on February 25, 1925. And he sat for a long time in Raleigh aware that a large group of worthy patriots was demanding that he be extradited to stand trial in the municipal court for breaking up a worthless lot of plaster. Then in March 1926 he received a remarkable call. The state of Georgia, which had him roughly classified as a fugitive from justice, conferred on him the signal honor of asking him to make a statue of one of her most distinguished sons, Alexander H. Stephens, vice-president of the Confederacy. The statue was to find permanent place in Statuary Hall of the Capitol Building at Washington, D. C.