Customer Reviews

CARVED IN STONE (Civil War Georgia)

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Having lived in Atlanta until 1985, I played on and around the mountain most of my childhood, but knew little of it's history. Mr. Freeman's book is very informative and explains in an interesting way how the park came to be. If your interested in what some call the "8th Wonder of The World," I would suggest this read.

I just recently got done reading this book that I picked up on a trip to the mountain. There is still so much left to see, and i have been down there five times already. The history is rich, and very informative. It is a shame that politics got involved and that the original dream was not able to be fullfilled, but alas we got something

Stone Mountain Georgia is located near the foot of the Appalachians, an ancient mountain chain, composed of granite. Granite is the universal stone which contains uranium, aluminum, iron, silica and rare minerals. At one time, the peaks rose higher than the Rockies and even taller than the Himalayas. Three hundred million years ago, the land in the area stood 10,000 feet higher than it does now. There was never an eruption like that in Alaska.

The exposed granite of Stone Mountain covers 25 million square feet, or 583 acres. It is 1,683 feet above sea level. When I visited there with a school group, it was just a huge rock. But not anymore. Now three famous Confederates astride their horses have made this monstrosity famous. The land had belonged to the Creek Indians, then the Venable family. In 1826, President John Quincy Adams purchased the land topped by a rock as big as a mountain.

Historians tried to find evidence that Hernando de Soto (searching for the garden of youth) visited Stone Mountain. Captain Juan Pardo, sent by Spain in 1567, called it Crystal Mountain. George Washington got involved in acquiring this large-scale replica of Gibraltar in 1790.

In 1909, the United Daughters of the Confederacy chose this as a site for a spectacular Confederate Memorial at the world's largest piece of sculpture cut into this enormous mass of granite. Fifty-five years elapsed before the statue was begun in 1964. At first, it was to depict a seventy foot (later expanded to 168 ft.) carving of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis, all astride their horses. (Lee's horse, Traveler, has his own notoriety, the best known in the Civil War (you can read about it in the World Book). In 1958, the Georgia legislature deeded it as a state park and actual work on this monument began in 1963.

A few revisions were made throughout the project by the chosen sculptor, Walker Kirkland Hancock of Gloucester, Mass. The carver, Roy Faulkner, spent six years drilling thousands of holes in the acre of granite, declared it a privilege to be associated with such a great man as Mr. Hancock. Together, they created a work of art the likes of Michelangalo: a giant, effective Confederate Memorial of the three top men.

This tells the story well. However, I would like to see more murals carved into the granite on the rest of Stone Mountain's sides. For a more balanced memorial to those who served and suffered in the years surrounding the War of the Secession, these should include images of Dred Scott, John Brown, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Abraham Lincoln, Clara Barton, and Frederick Douglass, as well as the Cherokee Trail of Tears.