ANACS MS-65 Stone Mountain Half Dollar

After a long hiatus from classic comms, here is a Stone Mountain Half Dollar. I am not a big fan of this coin personally for historical reasons, but it exists and I needed it for my type set, so here she is:

 

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You are right, the site itself is beautiful. And the coin is nice, despite what it is commemorating. Like I said, can't say I'm a huge fan of the message, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate the coin. Though I ain't gonna lie, I'm in the "Union Forever" camp.

Interestingly, I had the Stone Mountain Commemorative coin with me today in my travel bag when I stopped by Fort Clinch on the Florida/Georgia border. It was originally built for the American Seminole wars, then occupied by the Confederacy, and retaken by the Union in 1862 when they made their move to capture Jacksonville from the Confederacy.

 

We were practically neighbors. I lived from elementary school through early college in Jacksonville, Florida. That's where I met my wife too.

PS: Next time I'll take you on the offer. I've already moved on in my journey. But I go by that area often enough @lordmarcovan . I still have family living around the Jacksonville area, just south of the Nassau county line.

 

what a great looking coin

must ve took some time locating the right one . . .

as for the history of it , it happened

cant change it or write it

have to accept it and move on and learn from it , imo

 

I got this one in change in the way back days. We would see commemoratives in circulation occasionally. I think that people were in need after the war and spent lots of old stuff.

 

I once had a good dealer friend that collected these. He bought everyone of these that came thru the door and would never sell any of them. I'll guess he had over a hundred of them.
He did the same thing with gold coins but he would sell the problem gold coins.

 

The engraver sculpted Mount Rushmore.

 

My grandmother, who compiled our genealogy, was quite proud of our ancestors' participation in the Indian Wars. That's a generic category but she was referring to the early 1600s-1700s period. Me, from the Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee generation, not so much. Different perspectives from different times. Three ancestors at Andersonville and those stories passed down make me not a fan of certain commemorations either, but it is a nice design.

 

Actually it's a bit more complicated than that. Here's an article about that I wrote a few years ago.

Every United States commemorative coin has a story to tell, but the history surrounding the 1925 Stone Mountain half dollar is one of the most interesting tales in U.S. numismatics. The legislation that authorized this coin rekindled a debate that had started before the end of the Civil War, and the project that it partially funded would remain incomplete for more than 30 years.

The Daughters of the Confederacy Initiate the Project

Mrs. Helen Plane was a charter member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC). For some years, she supported an idea to establish a Confederate monument at Stone Mountain, which is located 15 miles northeast of Atlanta, Georgia. Her plan called for a 70 foot high statue of Robert E. Lee that would be carved into the side of the mountain.

In 1915, after she was elected president of the Atlanta chapter of the UDC, Mrs. Plane convinced other members of the group to ask sculptor Gutzon Borglum to do a feasibility study. Borglum reported to the ladies that a 70 foot statue on Stone Mountain “would look like a postage stamp on a barn.” The artist told them that an appropriate project would cost $3.5 million and would take ten years to complete. Borglum drew some sketches and presented his ideas at a UDC meeting.

Although some UDC members were horrified at the cost of the project, others worked to make it a reality. In 1916 the owners of Stone Mountain granted a conditional deed to the UDC for the face of the mountain and ten acres of land around it. The site would become the property of the UDC if the organization completed a suitable monument within 12 years. The following year, the UDC chartered an independent organization, the Stone Mountain Confederate Monumental Association, to manage the project.

The Project Faces Obstacles from the Beginning

The Stone Mountain project was in trouble from the start. Before work could begin, the United States entered World War I. During the war all nonessential activities were curtailed, and the project was delayed until 1923. After the project began, Borglum found more challenges than he had imagined. No one had ever attempted a sculpture this large before, and even drawing an outline of the figures on the face of the mountain posed significant technical difficulties.

Borglum’s original plan had called for three main statues: Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and Confederate President, Jefferson Davis, all on horseback. Behind them and around the mountain, the plan called for depictions of other southern Civil War heroes, including the average foot soldier. Plans also called for a Memorial Hall to be carved into the base of mountain and an amphitheater at the base of the site that would be as large as the Roman Coliseum.

Helen Plane, the honorary life president of the UDC, represented the dark side of the project. She sympathized with the KKK and concept of pushing for the monument to become a symbol for “the lost cause.” She suggested including a small group of Klansmen in the design “in their nightly uniform approaching from the distance.” Fortunately, her ideas were ignored although a resurgent KKK was in the mix to get the project started.

The Project Begins

By January 1924 Borglum’s men had carved Robert E. Lee’s head into the side of the mountain. On January 19 a group of dignitaries, including the governors from several southern states, held a luncheon on a banquet table set on top of Lee’s hat, which was indication of the size of the work.

The UDC held many find raising events to finance the project. These events ranged from bake sales to gala balls at which participants contributed money and made pledges. In the mean time members of the UDC contacted President Calvin Coolidge to solicit his support for a commemorative half dollar that would be sold to raise funds for the project. Coolidge embraced the project, and Congress approved the legislation although not without difficulty. Feelings still ran high about the Civil War. The final legislation stated that the half dollar would honor the contributions of southern soldiers for their service during the Spanish – American and First World Wars, BUT NOT the Civil War. In addition the half dollar would also honor the memory of President Warren G. Harding who had recently died.

Gutzon Borglum designed the coin although he had considerable difficulty getting Fine Arts Commission to approve of his work. Only Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson appeared on the coin because Jefferson Davis was still a pariah to many in the North. The authorized mintage was 5 million pieces, which was a very high number for a commemorative coin. Ultimately the mint struck 2.3 million pieces, but 1 million of those pieces were returned and melted leaving a still healthy net mintage of 1.3 million coins.

Borglum Departs

In the mean time Borglum was having problems with the Stone Mountain Confederate Monumental Association. The association was not paying him in a timely manner and there were complaints that he was not supervising the project properly. Borglum had a thin skin and was more than willing to talk to newspaper reporters to make his complaints public. He charged that the association head, Hollis Randolph, was misusing and misappropriating funds. This very public argument became heated, and Borglum resigned. The artist smashed his models and left Georgia with the police hot on his trail.

The Project Comes to a Feeble Finish

The association hired Augustus Lukeman to continue the project. Lukeman is best known to coin collectors has the artist who designed the Boone commemorative half dollar. Lukeman restarted the project as he blasted the face of Robert E. Lee off the mountain and began his own interpretation of the work.

Lukeman’s work in the mountain did not go well. One observer stated that Lukeman’s Robert E. Lee did not look like the general. Lee’s nose was crooked; his left arm appeared to be withered and paralyzed; the hilt of his sword was missing; and the stirrup of his saddle was missing. In 1930 Lukeman abandoned the project and title to the land reverted to its original owners.

Borglum’s Reputation Rises as Monument Association’s Standing Collapses

In the coming years Gutzon Borglum’s reputation was restored among the people of the South while association chairman, Hollis Randolph’s, reputation slid off into the gutter. An audit of the Stone Mountain Confederate Monumental Association revealed that Randolph had spent more on events and personal travel expenses than on the carving of the figures into the mountain. Borglum offered to finish the project and there was talk of borrowing money from Franklin Roosevelt’s Depression era Reconstruction Finance Corporation to fund it, but nothing came from those ideas. Gutzon Borglum would win lasting fame from his work at Mt. Rushmore, South Dakota which has become one of our nation’s most imposing landmarks.

The State of Georgia Steps Takes Charge

In 1958 the Georgia Legislature funded the purchase of the Stone Mountain site and 3,200 acres around it. In 1963 Walker Kirkland Hancock, a Gloucester, Massachusetts sculptor, was selected to re-design the monument. Working with a small crew headed by contractor, Roy Faulkner, the monument was completed and dedicated on May 9, 1970. Faulkner’s crew used a thermojet torch that carved out the details of the monument with temperatures that reached 4,000 degrees. It was said that one craftsman with the thermojet torch could do the work of 48 men with hammers and chisels.

Today the Stone Mountain Memorial is the centerpiece of a growing complex of recreational facilities that has become a source of pride and revenue for the Atlanta, Georgia area. Although none of Gutzon Borglum’s original work remains, the commemorative half dollar he designed and the pioneering artwork that he attempted at Stone Mountain remain as a significant achievement in the eyes of coin collectors and historians.

 

I wonder why they’re holding their hats over their hearts. Has anyone looked at the meaning? I can make guesses, too, just saying. I’m curious what it means, intended to symbolize.

 

Timothy Egan in his book A Fever in the Heartland on page 22 writes about the Klan and Stone Mountain.

In 1915 on Thanksgiving night there was a small ceremony held on top of Stone Mountain at which the KKK was resurrected by Walter J. Simmons. "The men set fire to a cross and shouted to the heavens an oath of allegiance to the Invisible Empire of a new age. The Ku Klux Klan had risen, Simmons proclaimed, "awakened from a slumber of half a century."

I have a complete set of classic commemoratives except one.

 

Love the reverse on this half. A nice addition to any collection

 

The monument itself, not the coin.

 

After reading John Milton's typically excellent article above, I looked for an image of Gutzon Borglum's original carving which was blasted off the mountain and replaced with the present image. Surprisingly, all I could find was this brief film of it's unveiling to the public in 1924.

https://cutt.ly/reLlyI72

 

Personally I think it is a scar on an otherwise beautiful piece of natural geology, but removing it would not return the rock to its original state and will only make the scarring worse, so it's best to leave it as is and not cut into the rock any further.

I've always had a thing for nature in its original untouched state. I've hiked mountains in the past and appreciate the natural wear of rock faces....so any cutting and altering of that by people makes me cringe....but what's done is done so let it be.

 

I'd never seen it until last night when I looked up images, and yours was my first impression as well. Especially from distant images, it looks like an ugly scar. It's so small relative to the rock monolith and that huge pile of debris from the carving makes it look like an abandoned mine. Different mindset at the time I guess.