Give the man room

by Robert J. Casey; Mary Montgomery Borglum

Gutzon carried on conversations about this piece of work by mail and carved the figure in San Antonio, Texas. It was a striking portrait, fine, strongly intellectual features, lighted by an inner serenity and gentleness. It was a seated figure, for Stephens could not stand. And the hands, resting on the arms of his chair, were modeled to show great firmness of character. Hugo Villa, who had followed the sculptor to Texas, helped carve the statue, slightly oversize, in Georgian marble.

The unveiling in Washington in 1927 was a gala affair. A special trainload of Georgians had come to the capital with the governor of the state in the lead. The National Guard of Georgia, brilliantly uniformed, was on hand to lend color.

Most of these people were from Atlanta. Some were even members of the Stone Mountain executive committee. All seemed to ignore the tragic happenings of only two years before. It must be noted, however, that Gutzon was as good at that as they were. He was calm, pleasantly aloof and unconcerned.

In 1928 the time set for the finishing of the central group on Stone Mountain expired with only Lee’s head and part of his horse completed. An attempt was made by the donors to reclaim the property. They said that the work on Stone Mountain was at a standstill and that the operating Association was insolvent.

Sam Venable circulated an open letter in which he charged that he had added together all the sums spent by the Association on bank loans, etc., and had reached the stupendous figure of $1,421,665 which, he said, it had cost Gutzon’s successor to complete his model and change the bust of Lee. He added this comment:

Furthermore, Mr. Borglum’s head of Lee everybody recognized. His successor’s head of Lee, nobody recognizes. The nose is crooked. The left arm is withered and paralyzed. The hilt of the sword is gone and the stirrup of the saddle is broken off. The money is all gone and the carving of Lee, in my opinion and the opinion of hundreds of others, is a mutilated imperfection that cannot be rectified.

The Association was in debt to the Founders’ Roll for the use of $260,800 paid for tablets, and to the Children’s Founders’ Roll for $35,019.91. Suits were being brought by contributors to the first of these funds. G. F. Willis succeeded Hollins Randolph as president. The Association begged for an extension of time, and the Venable family agreed to allow work to proceed until May 1931. However, nothing was done on the mountain during that period.

In 1930 the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, under the leadership of Park Committee Chairman L. Lawrence McCord, got interested in finishing the monument. Mayor-elect James L. Key, largely celebrated for his huge Sunday School Bible Class, sent a telegram to Gutzon who was then in the Black Hills. He wanted to have Mr. Borglum come to Atlanta as his guest, he said, for the purpose of conference on Stone Mountain Memorial. The telegram was sent in August 1930. It might be mentioned that on July 4 of that year the head of Washington had been unveiled on Mount Rushmore with a great deal of publicity.

The sculptor arrived in Atlanta on the first of September and was given a rousing welcome and reception by a capacity house at the Fox theater. It was the first chance public opinion had had to express itself, and the result was gratifying to a man who had had to suffer in silence for five years. He mentioned that if he had to do it over again, he would make the Stone Mountain figures twice the size. He had learned something of mountain carving. The crowd cheered him enthusiastically, and he came home. But little came of it.

In 1931 McCord got a bill through the Georgia state legislature, giving the state right of eminent domain to take over Stone Mountain and adjacent property for a park. On this basis talks went on for years and years.