Norse-American medal personnel from making dies for private medals, and was enacted after Philadelphia Mint Chief Coiner Franklin Peale had for some years run a private medals business on Mint premises, prior to his firing in 1854. Kvale hoped that his friend and fellow Minnesotan, Senator Henrik Shipstead, could persuade sculptor Gutzon Borglum to design the medal for no fee or a nominal one. Borglum, who was busy with construction at Stone Mountain in Georgia (he would later sculpt Mount Rushmore), had designed the Stone Mountain Memorial half dollar; he had no time to accept the work. Buffalo nickel designer James Earle
Gutzon Borglum Denmark near the Grand Lodge of New York. He received his Scottish Rite Degrees in the New York City Consistory on October 25, 1907. Borglum was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. He was one of the six knights who sat on the Imperial Koncilium in 1923, which transferred leadership of the Ku Klux Klan from Imperial Wizard Colonel Simmons to Imperial Wizard Hiram Evans. In 1925, having only completed the head of Robert E. Lee, Borglum was dismissed from the Stone Mountain project, with some holding that it came about due to infighting within the KKK, with Borglum