  Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson ride forever on Stone Mountain. Stone Mountain’s Confederate Memorial is the world’s largest piece of sculpture, cut into the side of the world’s biggest exposed mass of granite. The carving is 90 feet tall and 190 feet wide, stands eleven and a half feet out from the side of the mountain, and towers 400 feet above the ground in a frame that is 360 feet square, or three acres. Fifty-five years elapsed from the time of the original concept in 1915 until completion of the three figures in 1970. Not a blow of the hammer was struck for 36 years, from 1928 to 1964. At Stone Mountain things have a way of coming out quite differently than planned. History is a little hazy on who first envisioned a Confederate Memorial on Stone Mountain. Mrs. Helen Plane, charter member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, was quoted in 1909 as thinking it would be a fine place for a monument. In 1912 John Temple Graves, editor of the New York American, after a visit back home wrote a rousing editorial for the Atlanta Georgian urging that the world’s greatest monument be carved on the world’s finest piece of stone. Actual movement began in 1915 when Mrs. Plane, then president of the Atlanta chapter of UDC, suggested having a 70-foot statue of General Robert E. Lee carved on the steep side of the mountain. The UDC consulted Gutzon Borglum, who just then was being acclaimed for his statue of Abraham Lincoln. The first look at Stone Mountain set Borglum’s imagination afire. Here was the biggest, finest solid block of granite any sculptor ever had an opportunity to carve. A small figure in its center, he pointed out, would be like a postage stamp stuck on a barn. The sculptor stayed several weeks at the nearby home of Samuel H. Venable, head of the family that owned the mountain, while he studied the great stone. Then he drew up sketches of Confederate leaders riding around the mountain, which he submitted to a meeting of the UDC. In 1915 women were not even permitted to vote. Their principal commercial experience was as salesladies, telephone girls and seamstresses. When Borglum said the monument would require ten years and cost three million dollars, the ladies were terrified. They wanted no part of such an undertaking. On March 20, 1916, Sam Venable, Mrs. Coribel Venable Kellogg and Mrs. Robert Venable Roper deeded the face of Stone Mountain and ten adjoining acres to the UDC, with the proviso that the property would be turned back to the original owners if a suitable monument was not completed in twelve years. At their Chattanooga convention in 1917 the UDC ladies founded an independent chartered organization known as the Stone Mountain Confederate Monumental Association to manage the project. World War I stopped non-essential activities. In 1923 Borglum announced that his designs were complete and he was ready to start carving. The world’s largest sculpture presented many unprecedented problems. A difficult one was how to get a sketch of the monument on the mountainside. Borglum announced that he would pour chemicals from above to coat the stone with photographic emulsion, flash an image of his There was not even a precedent for determining the size of the carving. The nearest thing was the rule that decreed the diameter of court house clocks. By this scale the statues should be 35 feet high for viewing from the studio 1,300 feet away. A crowd collected the evening the projector was set up. Borglum computed the lens setting to give a 35-foot-tall image, inserted the plate bearing a photograph of his model, and switched on the light. There was a gasp from the spectators. Horses and men looked like midgets. Borglum enlarged the image until it assumed an impressive size, then called to two men, swinging down the mountain in bos’n’s chairs, to measure it. One dangled a tape from the top. The other, reading the figure at the bottom, called out, “One hundred and sixty-eight feet!” Gutzon Borglum with his famous projector, and in the studio with his model. ... and in the studio. Oxen hauled timbers up the mountain for the stairway. Visitors arriving the day carving was begun in June, 1923. The men carried buckets of paint and brushes for outlining the picture; but when they started to work they could not tell men from horses nor heads from feet, or where one figure ended and another began. The next day Borglum traced the picture of his model as a Motor trucks of that period were not powerful enough to climb Stone Mountain. Materials needed to construct a stairway from the top down to the carving site were hauled up the foot trail by ox cart. After the stairs were finished, cable, pulley and winch were installed to bring up materials for stairs down to the ground, scaffolding and tools. On June 23, 1923, Borglum led a group of dignitaries over the top of the mountain and down to the platform above the carving site. Gov. E. Lee Trinkle of Virginia made a dedicatory speech through a megaphone to throngs below. Then Borglum had himself lowered by bos’n’s chair and, with a pneumatic drill, punched several holes into the mountain as the official beginning of the carving. Notables at lunch the day before Lee’s birthday in 1924. Borglum’s carvers at work. 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, 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. To get his men up against the wall where they could work, Lukeman had twenty-one 10-inch steel beams placed along the top of the cut, so they extended 30 feet out into space. Workmen’s scaffolds were suspended from these by steel cables, with winches to raise and lower them. A dozen men usually were on the job, although 42 crowded the scaffolds during one rush period. Only eight were carvers, the rest helpers. The sketch of Lukeman’s model was painted onto the mountain by painstakingly measuring all the component points, so there could be no Four men directing a pneumatic drill. Lukeman’s original master model. Cutting into Stone Mountain had to be done mechanically since explosives can start a crack in granite that may run on for many feet. If an area four feet high by two feet wide needed to be gouged out two feet deep a jackhammer crew would drill a row of holes almost touching each other down the sides and across the bottom, then a row slanting downward across the top. Wedges were hammered into the slanting holes until the block broke loose and plummeted earthward. A drill was good for only a few minutes in the hard granite before its point was dulled, and a fresh one had to be inserted. The dull drills were sent by cable and pulley down to the shop on the ground just out of range of falling rock, where two blacksmiths were kept busy sharpening and repairing tools. Whereas one man can hold a pneumatic drill straight up and down to break up the paving in a street, it took four men per hammer to drill horizontal holes into the face of the mountain. One guided the drill and held it in place. Two helped lift the heavy hammer. The operator did his share of lifting and worked the trigger. All exerted what force they could to press the drill into the mountain. After a figure was blocked out in this manner, skilled carvers with hand and air-powered tools completed the job. Lukeman blocked out the figures of Lee and Davis and finished their faces and also roughly outlined Lee’s horse, Traveler, before the deadline of March 20, 1928. It was evident that he was capable of completing the monument. The Confederate Commemorative half-dollars were arriving from the mint, and the way they were being bought up by the public indicated that financing the carving would be no problem. Altogether, 2,314,000 of these coins were struck. A million were melted back into bullion, and the rest eventually were put into circulation. Incidentally, the coins had about as much material as could be stamped into that small a piece of silver. On one side were Lee and Jackson on horseback. Thirteen stars for the thirteen Confederate States showed above them, and over this firmament was the slogan, “In God We Trust.” At the bottom was “Stone Mountain, 1925.” On the back side were 48 stars, the raised image of Stone Mountain with an eagle above it and Miss Liberty, and printed below, “United States of America Half Dollar. Memorial to the Valor of the Soldiers of the South.” Mayor Jimmy Walker of New York was guest of honor when Lukeman’s Lee was unveiled. The deadline date of March 20 came and went with no word from the Venables about extending the contract. On April 9, the 63rd anniversary of Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, Atlanta’s Gate City Guards militia unit hosted an unveiling of the Lee and Davis features. The extremely popular Mayor Jimmy Walker of New York was guest of honor. On May 20, 1928, the Venables reclaimed their property, ending the UDC’s chance to complete the memorial. In 1958 the Georgia Legislature finally got around to developing the state’s greatest tourist attraction. It named a Stone Mountain Memorial Association, with authority to purchase the mountain and surrounding land, 3,200 acres in all, for a state park, and to complete a satisfactory Confederate monument. Nine of the nation’s leading sculptors were invited to visit Stone Mountain and submit plans for the memorial. The Association approved a suggestion by Walker Kirtland Hancook of Gloucester, Mass, for making Lukeman’s uncompleted design appear intentional by carrying the carving to a point that would be aesthetically satisfying, a device used effectively by Michelangelo. Mr. Hancock was engaged in 1963 and charged with responsibility for finishing the design according to his plan, for serving as a direct consultant for the carving, and for developing the memorial area. The Association employed George Weiblen, whose family had operated the quarry at Stone Mountain, to assemble a crew and get the mountain ready. In 37 years the steel supports for the stairway had rusted out and required replacing, as did the steel cables and scaffolding. Bids were asked for a 400-foot elevator up to the carving, and when the costs seemed entirely too high, a prefabricated elevator was ordered, and the work crew put it up in 28 days. It was the world’s highest outside elevator. A skilled carver was hired to begin the carving. He rode up on the new elevator and studied from arm’s length the acre of granite which he was expected to fashion into three horsemen. He found that he simply could not visualize such gigantic figures at such close range. The foreman of the working crew, Roy Faulkner, a young Marine veteran from nearby Covington, experimented with the new carving tool to be used, and discovered he had a knack for it. Although the foreman had never had an art lesson, and his only previous experience with stones was throwing them, he was assigned some smoothing tasks by sculptor Hancock while the search continued for an experienced carver. Soon the search was forgotten. Roy Faulkner stayed on the face of the mountain for more than six years, to complete the world’s largest carving. The new tool was the thermo-jet torch developed for use in granite quarries. It consisted of an eight-foot pipe fed by three hose lines. One hose carried kerosene, another oxygen, and the third water to be sprayed through the jet nozzle to keep it cool. The operator could adjust the flame to any temperature up to 4,000 degrees. When such intense heat strikes granite the moisture between molecules is suddenly converted into steam, literally exploding the surface crystals, or flaking them off, as quarrymen say. Flakes fell away in a continuous stream. In One thermo-jet torch could remove several tons of stone in a day; more than 48 men could do in a week with drills and wedges. Carving with it was a one-man job. Two men trying to work in the same area would have bombarded each other with hot rocks. Even one could expect some lumps. Exploding flakes popped out in many directions, sometimes straight back, or ricochetting off the mountain or steel cables. The operator wore a plastic shield over his face, as well as muffs to protect his ears from the roar of the torch, which was the dominant sound in the north end of the Park for six years. The torch acted like a miniature jet engine, developing about as much backward thrust as an automatic shotgun. The carver had to keep his body braced against this force as long as the flame was lit. Fine carving was done with a tool half as large. With the flame adjusted as thin as an acetylene torch’s, it could cut along a pencil mark. The carving was continued from Lukeman’s master model, with several important changes made by Hancock. He stopped the monument below the riders’ knees, creating an illusion that the horsemen were just emerging from the rough stone. This saved months of carving that would have produced no more than a view of horses’ legs and hooves. The army that Lukeman planned to have following behind was left off entirely, making the three leaders the entire monument. The sculptor lowered the head and neck of General Lee’s horse so that more of President Davis and his horse could be seen, and he gave Davis a civilian hat instead of the campaign hat Lukeman modeled. And, Hancock modeled a new head of Stonewall Jackson to make him look more like the photographs taken just before the General’s death. Looking at the finished work, it seems amazing that a man could get his first lesson in carving on the world’s biggest monument, and go on to complete it. In explaining how he carved, Faulkner said that mostly he measured. If he was to start a new feature, like the knuckle of General Lee’s first finger, he measured the distance to it from his center line on the master model. Then he checked to get the distance to the knuckle from Lee’s ear, his nose, Davis’ eye, the ear tips of the horses, and other spots. Interpolating inches on the model to feet for the mountainside, he measured from corresponding points on the carving. When all the measurements came out at the same place, he drilled a hole there to the exact depth corresponding to the distance from the knuckle to the plumb line at the front of the model. To insure against cutting away too much of the adjoining stone, he measured and drilled depth holes for all of the features nearby. After making certain that all the measurements were correct, he fired up the large torch and cut down to within half an inch of the bottom of the holes, then switched to the smaller torch to carve the rest of the way. He said he always tried to keep in mind the first fundamental of sculpture—never cut too deep nor in the wrong place. He thoroughly understood that carvers cannot erase mistakes nor paint over them nor sew them up. The only way is not to make them. Stonewall Jackson’s cap. Carving Jackson’s arm. An interesting portrait of Sculptor Walker Kirtland Hancock. Roy Faulkner’s torch sends out slabs of hot granite like flying saucers. Ray Faulkner’s torch. Sculptor Hancock lowering head of Lee’s horse on the master model. The jet flames glazed the surface of the remaining stone, leaving a grayish glassy effect. This was removed and the whiteness of the live granite restored by going over it lightly with a surfacing machine, a vibrating tool driving a four-point tip. Roy Faulkner figures that in six years he drilled thousands of holes in the acre of granite—more than ants ever dug in an acre of meadow. Experience did not speed up the work much. He was just as careful measuring the last points to be carved as the first. There were special models of the heads of men and horses, on a scale of four-to-one. When working on a head Faulkner took the corresponding model up on the scaffold for ready and frequent references. Incidentally, errors in the harness showed that Mr. Lukeman’s experience with horses had been purely academic. He had all the harness buckles backward, so that a hard pull on the reins would have made the bridles come apart. The buckles are turned around right on the mountain. The sheer side of Stone Mountain would seem a lonely place to spend six years, but the man who was up there never found it lonesome. He had a couple of aides to stretch the opposite end of the tape measure, help raise and lower scaffolding and do other jobs, but conversations could not be heard over the roar of the torch. “The entire job was one of the most satisfying experiences anyone could have,” Faulkner declared. “In the first place, it was a privilege to be associated with such a great man as Mr. Hancock. “Everything about the work was a challenge. The danger was very real. I was aware every minute I was up there that a misstep, or a little carelessness, could drop me to my death. The wind helped keep me on my toes. When you hardly noticed a breeze on the ground, it could be gusting at 50 miles an hour, first into your back, then bouncing off the mountain into your face. “The work was hard enough to keep a man in trim. After leaning against the thrust of that jet for an hour or two or three, when I turned off the flame, I felt like taking a rest. There was enough climbing up and down ladders to keep legs and lungs in good order. “For six years I worried that I might make a mistake. After coming down in the evenings I checked over the day’s figures in the studio to make sure they were right. Then I drove home with them in my head, ate with them, and often slept with them. The worst dream I ever had was the time I saw General Lee’s head lying in the ditch at the base of the mountain. “Among my greatest experiences was, on several occasions, to look into the stone and visualize the full outline of the feature I was about to carve. Then I often got the opposite reaction just before I finished with a component such as a horse’s eye or nostril. From the close-up view it seemed to be the wrong shape or in the wrong place, and up there on the mountain you don’t step back for a better look. It was a relief, on coming down, to see that it fit. “I realized at all times that I was carving the largest piece of sculpture that man ever attempted, one that would last through eternity. “You could hardly do anything more satisfying than that.” |
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