page_title: Stone Mountain
section_title: Confederate Memorial
hierarchical_section_title: Stone Mountain / Confederate Memorial
caption_attribution_description: close up of stone mtn. carving
context_page_description: Stone Mountain is a quartz monzonite dome monadnock and the site of Stone Mountain Park, near the city of Stone Mountain, Georgia. The park is owned by the state of Georgia and managed by Norcross-based Herschend Family Entertainment. At its summit, the elevation is 1,686 feet above sea level and 825 feet above the surrounding area. Stone Mountain is well known for not only its geology, but also the enormous rock relief on its north face, the largest bas-relief artwork in the world. The carving depicts three Confederate leaders, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson—making it the subject of widespread controversy. The president of the NAACP called it "the largest shrine to white supremacy in the history of the world".
  Stone Mountain was once owned by the Venable Brothers, "as a memorial to the Confederacy." Stone Mountain Park officially opened on April 14, 1965 – 100 years to the day after Lincoln's assassination, although the park had already been in use for a few years. By 2015, it was the most visited destination in the state of Georgia.
  Stone Mountain is more than 5 miles in circumference at its base.
context_section_description: The largest bas-relief sculpture in the world, the Confederate Memorial Carving depicts three Confederate leaders of the Civil War: President Jefferson Davis and Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson (on their favorite horses, Blackjack, Traveller, and Little Sorrel, respectively). The entire carved surface measures 1.57 acres (6,400 m²). The carving of the three men is 400 feet (120 m) above the ground, measures 76 by 158 feet (23 by 48 m), and is recessed 42 feet (13 m) into the mountain. The deepest point of the carving is at Lee's right elbow, which is 12 feet (3.7 m) into the mountain's surface.
  Who first conceived of a Confederate memorial on the side of Stone Mountain has long been a matter of debate..... The written evidence...points to Francis Ticknor, a nineteenth-century physician and poet from Jones County, Georgia...in an 1869 poem.... William H. Terrell, an Atlanta attorney and son of a Confederate veteran, ...suggested it publicly on May 26, 1914 in an editorial for the Atlanta Constitution." Three weeks later, Georgian John Temple Graves, editor of the New York American, suggested it should have a 70-foot (21 m) statue of Robert E. Lee.
  The project was greatly advanced by Mrs. C. Helen Plane, a charter member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) and first president and Honorary Life President of the Georgia State Division. After obtaining the approval of the Georgia UDC, she set up the UDC Stone Mountain Memorial Association. She chose the sculptor Gutzon Borglum for the project and invited him to visit the mountain (although, despite his Ku Klux Klan involvement, she "would not shake his hand—he was, after all, a Yankee"). She met him at the Atlanta train station, took him to her family's summer home, Mont Rest, at the foot of the mountain, and introduced him to Sam Venable, another active Klan member and owner of the mountain. Borglum also enlisted Luigi Del Bianco, whom he would also involve in Mount Rushmore.
  Borglum's original plan was: five groups of figures, sixty-five mounted officers representing the states (to be chosen by the states), General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his cavalry—some 700 to 1,000 figures, each from 35 feet (11 m) to 50 feet (15 m) high. In addition, Borglum planned a room cut 60 feet (18 m) into the mountain, 320 feet (98 m) wide, and 40 feet (12 m) high, faced by 13 columns.
  Venable deeded the north face of the mountain to the UDC in 1916, on condition that it complete a sizable Civil War monument in 12 years. Finances as well as technical problems slowed progress. The US Mint issued a 1925 Commemorative silver US half dollar, bearing the words "Stone Mountain", as a fundraiser for the monument. This issue, which required the approval of both the 1926 Congress and President Calvin Coolidge, was the largest issue of commemorative coins by the U.S. government up to that time.
  Financial conflicts between Borglum and the Association led to his firing in 1925. He destroyed his models, claiming that they were his property, but the Association disagreed and had a warrant issued for his arrest. He was warned of the arrest and narrowly escaped to North Carolina, whose governor, Angus McLean, refused to extradite him, though he could not return to Georgia. The affair was highly publicized and there was much discussion and discord, including discord between Sam Venable, the Association, and its president Hollins Randolph. The face of Lee that Borglum had partially completed was blasted off the mountain in 1928.
  Borglum's next major project was Mount Rushmore.
  After a number of sculptors turned them down, Augustus Lukeman took up the work in 1925, with a different, smaller design. Fundraising was even more difficult after the public debate and name-calling, and work stopped in 1928. In 1941 segregationist Governor Eugene Talmadge formed the Stone Mountain Memorial Association (SMMA) to continue work on the memorial, but the project was delayed once again by the U.S. entry into World War II (1941–45).
  In response to Brown v. Board of Education of 1954 and t
caption: Close-up of the memorial
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