The next day Gutzon went back to Atlanta and told Mrs. Plane and her committee of his additions to their dream. “We haven’t got enough money!” declared the practical Mrs. Plane. But Borglum talked to them. Enough people North and South would be willing to help, he said. He would go through the country and solicit funds. People would come from all over the world to pay tribute to these heroes, he said, to pay tribute to the ones who had died for the right as they had been given to see the right. It would be a shrine for Americans who had fought, without hope, without money, without arms, for the things they believed in. It would be the greatest memorial ever conceived. That’s what Gutzon Borglum believed, and what he said, and the women agreed with him.
There was to be a national convention of the U.D.C. in San Francisco in October 1915 and Mrs. Plane and Mrs. Walter Lamar, president of the Georgia Division, called on Gutzon to attend and tell the delegates about what he intended to do and why. Gutzon went, marched the warriors down the mountainside as he had for Sam Venable, and produced the same results. It was the speech of his life.
The imagination of Gutzon Borglum was just as valuable in his speechmaking as in his sculpture. That the national organization of the United Daughters of the Confederacy should rally in support of his prodigious memorial is not surprising. The interest and support that the press stirred up in the North and East and West as well as in the South was something of a sensation.
In the spring of 1916 the sculptor took his family, Mrs. Borglum and little Lincoln, to Atlanta to live. There Mary Ellis, partly named for Dr. Ellis of the Venable family who saved her life, was born.
Sam Venable and his two nieces consented to deed the necessary portions of the cliff face to the Atlanta chapter of the U.D.C. The deeds were formally presented on May 20, 1916. At that time a stone marker was unveiled and a ceremony of dedicating the mountain for a memorial to the Confederacy was performed with Mrs. Plane and a number of Atlanta citizens assisting.
In December of that year the businessmen of the community were invited to a meeting at Decatur, county seat of the county in which Stone Mountain is located. Some routine business was being transacted when the sculptor came in and sat in a chair with the audience. He quickly heard the conversation of two men directly in front of him.
“What’s this meeting being held for?” whispered one of them.
The other sniffed. “Oh,” he said, “some damn fool artist from New York has a notion he can carve up Stone Mountain, and they want him to tell us about it.”
When Gutzon rose to speak he addressed all his argument to this second man who turned out to be Forrest Adair, one of the prominent citizens of Atlanta.
At the end of the speech Mr. Adair came forward and apologized. “I’ll admit I was skeptical,” he said, “but now I really think it can be done and that you’re the one who can do it.” He was a firm supporter of the memorial plan ever after.