The Stone Mountain Memorial half dollar was struck in 1925 at the Philadelphia Mint. 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.
About Stone Mountain Memorial half dollar in brief
The Stone Mountain Memorial half dollar was struck in 1925 at the Philadelphia Mint. 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. The first European-descended settlers inhabited the land around Stone Mountain, Georgia, today in the east Atlanta suburbs, around 1790. The town of New Gibraltar was founded nearby in 1839; its name would be changed to Stone Mountain by the Georgia Legislature in 1947. 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. 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. In 1915, the film The Birth of a Nation sparked interest in the Confederate cause in the South in the wake of the Civil War. The Stone Mountain project was initially a UDC endeavor, originally a larger sculpture of General Lee on the mountain. Officials originally proposed a monument of perhaps 20 feet by 20 feet, much much larger, much like a postage stamp on a barn.
The project was eventually abandoned in the 1970s, when a new sculpture of Confederate President Jefferson Davis was completed on the same mountain. The sculpture was the first work of sculpture to be purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and won a gold medal at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, and is now on display at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. It is the only piece of Confederate art to be on display in a major art museum, and the only one of its kind in the United States. It was also the first piece of sculpture of a Confederate general to be sold for more than $1,000,000 at the New York World’s Fair in 1904. The sculptor was a Ku Klux Klan member, and he 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 Association sponsored extensive sales efforts for the coin throughout the South, though these were hurt by the firing of Borglom in 1925, which alienated many of his supporters, including the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The coin was also made in honor of Harding, under whose administration work had commenced, but all reference to Harding was removed from the design by order of President Calvin Coolidge. In the early 20th century, proposals were made to carve a large sculpture in memory for General Lee. The owners of Stone Mountain agreed to transfer title on condition the work was completed within 12 years.
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