The Stone Mountain Memorial half dollar was an American fifty-cent piece struck in 1925 at the Philadelphia Mint. Its main purpose was to raise money on behalf of the Stone Mountain Confederate Monumental Association for the Stone Mountain Memorial near Atlanta, Georgia. Designed by sculptor Gutzon Borglum, the coin features a depiction of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson on the obverse and the caption: "Memorial to the Valor of the Soldier of the South" on the reverse. The piece was also originally intended to be in memory of the recently deceased president, Warren G. Harding, but no mention of him appears on the coin.
In the early 20th century, proposals were made to carve a large sculpture in memory of General Lee on Stone Mountain, a huge rock outcropping. The owners of Stone Mountain agreed to transfer title on condition the work was completed within 12 years. Borglum, who was, like others involved, a Ku Klux Klan member, was engaged to design the memorial, and proposed expanding it to include a colossal monument depicting Confederate warriors, with Lee, Jackson, and Confederate President Jefferson Davis leading them.
The work proved expensive, and the Association advocated the issuance of a commemorative half dollar as a fundraiser for the memorial. Congress approved it, though to appease Northerners, the coin was also made in honor of Harding, under whose administration work had commenced. Borglum designed the coin, which was repeatedly rejected by the Commission of Fine Arts. All reference to Harding was removed from the design by order of President Calvin Coolidge.
The Association sponsored extensive sales efforts for the coin throughout the South, though these were hurt by the firing of Borglum in 1925, which alienated many of his supporters, including the United Daughters of the Confederacy. A 1928 audit of the fundraising showed excessive expenses and misuse of money, and construction halted the same year; a scaled-down sculpture was eventually completed in 1970. Because of the large quantities issued—over a million remain extant—the Stone Mountain Memorial half dollar remains inexpensive compared with other U.S. commemoratives.
Background
The first European-descended settlers inhabited the land around Stone Mountain, Georgia, today in the east Atlanta suburbs, around 1790. They called the large outcropping, about long and high, "Rock Mountain". Rev. Adrel Sherwood of Macon, Georgia, first named it Stone Mountain in 1825. The town of New Gibraltar was founded nearby in 1839; its name would be changed to Stone Mountain by the Georgia Legislature in 1947. From about the time of the American Civil War, the mountain was used as a quarry; this would not entirely cease until the 1970s.
John Gutzon de la mothe Borglum (usually called Gutzon Borglum) was born in Idaho Territory in 1867, to one of several wives of a Dane who had converted to Mormonism. As a boy, Borglum lived in various places in the Far West. Turning to art as a career, he attended the San Francisco Art Academy, the Académie Julian, and the École des Beaux-Arts. Greatly influenced by Rodin, whom he met, Borglum switched from painting to sculpture in 1901. His Mares of Diomedes won a gold medal at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, and became the first work of sculpture to be purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Inception
In the early 20th century there was an increased interest in building monuments to Confederate leaders, with the intention of romanticizing these historical figures while also repudiating the Reconstruction-era efforts to extend civil rights to African Americans. In 1914, editor John Temple Graves wrote in the Atlanta Georgian, suggesting the establishment of a memorial to Confederate General Robert E. Lee on Stone Mountain, "from this godlike eminence let our Confederate hero calmly look history and the future in the face!" Others who called for the establishment of a Confederate memorial there included William H. Terrell, an Atlanta attorney who believed that while the North had spent millions of dollars on monuments to the Union, the South had not sufficiently honored Confederate soldiers and generals. Also active in the early days of the Stone Mountain proposal was Helen Plane (1829–1925), who had been a belle from Atlanta before the war, and whose husband died at the Battle of Antietam in 1862. Plane joined the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which supported a heroic interpretation of the Confederacy known as the Lost Cause
The release of the film The Birth of a Nation in 1915 sparked increased interest in the Confederacy. Plane, who was lifetime honorary president of the Georgia organization of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), asked Borglum to carve the image of General Lee on the mountain. The Stone Mountain project was initially a UDC endeavor. Officials originally contemplated a monument of perhaps by . Putting that on Stone Mountain, Borglum supposedly stated, would be like putting a postage stamp on a barn. He proposed a much larger sculpture, high and long, and drew up plans in his Stamford, Connecticut, studio. He envisioned a huge depiction of the Confederate army, including artillery and infantry, as well as 65 Confederate generals, five to be nominated by the governor of each Southern state. In 1917, the Stone Mountain Confederate Monumental Association (the Association) was founded to publicize and raise funds for a colossal sculpture at Stone Mountain. Samuel H. Venable and his family, owners of the land, agreed to deed it over for a monument, on condition that if the project was not completed in 12 years, title would revert to them. A formal dedication took place in May 1916; the preliminary work was interrupted by the US entry into World War I in 1917.
Another organization which took an interest in the Stone Mountain work was the recently revived Ku Klux Klan, of which both Venable and Borglum were members. Inspired in large part by The Birth of A Nation and other popular films about the original post-war Klan, this iteration of the KKK sought to intimidate African Americans and anyone who challenged the supremacy of native-born White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. The Klan, through much of the 20th century, held regular encampments on or near Stone Mountain. Plane, in a 1915 letter to Borglum, stated that the original Klan had saved the South from "Negro domination" in the Reconstruction era, and suggested that the design include a small group of Klansmen in robes, seen in the distance, approaching.
Beginning in 1920, the project slowly came under the control of Atlanta businessmen, brought in to aid with the massive fundraising, and the UDC became marginalized. The work on the sculpture resumed on June 18, 1923, when Borglum began carving Lee's figure into the mountainside; he planned for General Stonewall Jackson and Confederate President Jefferson Davis to be close by Lee. Borglum's plans were for a huge sculpture depicting the Confederates, a memorial hall hewn from the granite at the base of the mountain in which artworks and artifacts could be displayed (as well as rolls of honor listing the contributors) and a giant amphitheater nearby. He estimated the total cost at $3.5 million. Instead, the scope of the project was scaled back, though different sources give varying cost estimates and dimensions. Borglum signed a contract to complete the group of Lee, Jackson, and Davis within three years for a cost of $250,000.
The work was expensive and by November 1923, the Association decided to advocate for a commemorative coin which it could buy from the government at face value and sell at a premium as a fundraiser. Two men each sought credit for coming up with the idea for a coin. Daniel W. Webb, executive secretary of the Association, said he had thought of it after finding an Alabama Centennial half dollar at home; journalist Harry Stillwell Edwards made a similar claim and apparently collected a reward from the Association.
On November 16, 1923, Edwards wrote to Bascom Slemp, secretary to President Calvin Coolidge (the previous president, Warren G. Harding, had recently died). Edwards arranged a meeting between the President and himself, association president Hollins N. Randolph (an Atlanta lawyer and direct descendant of early president Thomas Jefferson), and Borglum. President Coolidge agreed to support authorizing legislation for a Stone Mountain coin.
Borglum later stated that the Association asked him to write to people in Washington because of his contacts in the Republican Coolidge administration. He wrote to the powerful Republican Massachusetts senator, Henry Cabot Lodge, urging him to support legislation for a Stone Mountain commemorative coin; the appeal apparently worked, as late in 1923 the committee chairmen having jurisdiction over coinage, Reed Smoot in the Senate and Louis Thomas McFadden in the House of Representatives, introduced legislation for a Stone Mountain Memorial half dollar. McFadden later wrote that he sponsored the legislation because of his friendship with Borglum. With the threat of sectional opposition if the coin only honored the South, the bill's sponsors included language making the new half dollar also in memory of the recently deceased Harding (an Ohioan), during whose presidency the renewed work had begun. The bill passed by unanimous consent in the House on March 6, 1924, and in the Senate five days later; Coolidge signed it on March 17. The bill authorizing the coin read:
Preparation and design
Borglum was busy between the passage of the bill and the end of May 1924, first working on the Children's Founders Roll medal, and then the half dollar. The Children's Founders Roll was open to white children up to the age of 18 who contributed one dollar to the building of the monument. Borglum must still have been fine-tuning the monument's design; Jackson's posture on the medal differs from that on the coin. Unlike the issued coin, Borglum's models showed the front part of Davis's horse, although the Confederate president is unseen, and marching soldiers appear in the background. Borglum met with Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon who questioned first why "In God We Trust" appeared directly over Lee's head; Borglum responded that it was to pay tribute to the Confederates' faith. Mellon then asked what the thirteen stars on the obverse represented; Borglum replied that those on the north side of the Mason–Dixon line could consider them to represent the thirteen original colonies (those south of it, the implication was, could consider them to be a tribute to the Southern states). Mellon laughed and gave preliminary approval. On July 2, Mellon showed the designs to President Coolidge; they were then sent to the Commission of Fine Arts for its members' opinions.