Smoke descends with rock after a powder blast.
From the time he started, Borglum had five years to complete the monument before the end of the 12-year deadline. On January 19, 1924, anniversary of Lee’s birth, 20,000 gathered for the unveiling of General Lee’s head. On the previous day a select party, including the governors of Virginia, Texas and Alabama, had climbed over the mountain and descended the stairs for a dinner at a table set up on the granite shelf in front of the statue.
A few months later work on the carving began to slow down. Personality rifts between Borglum and members of the Association widened, and in March, 1925, the sculptor destroyed his models and sketches, and left Georgia. Other artists said the real reason for his tantrums was distortion in the carving—he never could have finished it, and he was trying to hide the blame. Taking a short cut in projecting his sketch onto the mountain had been a fatal mistake. He went to South Dakota and gained lasting fame by carving the Mount Rushmore masterpiece.
No sign of Borglum’s work remains at Stone Mountain. However, he made a vital contribution. It is doubtful if any other artist would have had the imagination to visualize such a stupendous monument in such an inaccessible place, or have had the nerve to start carving it.
And he accomplished one thing that lasts. He designed the Confederate half-dollar. Congress agreed for the mint to produce five million of these coins, which, with the Association selling them for a dollar apiece, could have financed the carving of the memorial.
The next sculptor selected, Augustus Lukeman, was the exact antithesis of his predecessor—a man of few words and apparently no temperament whatever.
Augustus Lukeman inspecting work on Lee’s face. Note white model at left.
Starting April 1, 1925, Lukeman knew he could never complete the memorial before the 12-year contract would expire in 1928. His hope was to get enough done to show that he could and would finish it. So he worked at top speed. Lukeman made a new design in classic style showing President Jefferson Davis, General Robert E. Lee and Lieutenant General Stonewall Jackson on horseback as the central figures, followed by an army apparently marching out of the solid rock. His master model was on a scale of 12-to-1—one inch on the model corresponded to a foot on the mountain.
Lukeman had the curving face of the mountain blasted off to a vertical wall 305 feet wide by 190 feet high. Although the steep area looks almost straight up, the bottom of the cut made a shelf extending outward 42 feet.