North Carolina State Monument (Gettysburg, Pennsylvania) to purchase and landscape the site and to commission Gutzon Borglum, who was approached while working on Mount Rushmore. Borglum designed the monument in Texas and posed the Confederate flag designer (Orren Smith) as the flag bearer, while the other soldiers were sculpted from photographs of posed Confederate soldiers. Postponed from May 1929, the US Navy and 6th Field Artillery bands played at the monument's dedicationon July 3, 1929. By 1949, a glass-faced display at the site, and a wooden marker for the site was cut down by vandals in 1954. President Kennedy left his car to visit the monument
Gutzon Borglum of which had never been attempted before. Many difficulties slowed progress, some because of the sheer scale involved. After finishing the detailed model of the carving, Borglum was unable to trace the figures onto the massive area on which he was working, until he developed a gigantic magic lantern to project the image onto the side of the mountain. Carving officially began on June 23, 1923, with Borglum making the first cut. At Stone Mountain he developed sympathetic connections with the reorganized Ku Klux Klan, who were major financial backers for the monument. Lee's head was unveiled on Lee's birthday