North Carolina State Monument
The beautiful and striking North Carolina Monument is located on West Confederate Avenue, near A.P. Hill’s headquarters. The Tennessee state memorial is located a short distance away.
(This is the monolith containing the names of the North Carolina units present as part of the Army of Northern Virginia. It was dedicated at the same time as the rest of the monument.)
The North Carolina Monument was dedicated on July 3, 1929. It cost $50,000.00. This money was appropriated by the state to both pay for the monument and to purchase the land upon which it sits. The United Daughters of the Confederacy paid for the monolith.
The sculptor was Gutzon Borglum (1867-1941); the monument consists of standard bronze and stands nearly 16′ in height. Borglum, of course, is most famous for his work at Mount Rushmore. (He also executed the work at Stone Mountain in Georgia.)
The bronze sculpture is located approximately where Pettigrew’s brigade would have stepped off in “Pickett’s Charge.” A wounded officer urges his men on while pointing towards Cemetery Ridge. A colorbearer carries the all important symbolic flag, while a veteran whispers encouragement to a younger comrade.
Borglum modeled the faces on those of actual Confederate veterans. Orren Randolph Smith, designer of the “Stars and Bars,” served as the model for the face of the colorbearer.
Tags: Army of Northern Virginia, Borglum, Confederate State, Gettysburg, Monument Project, North Carolina
In addition to his more monumental works (pun intended), Gutzon Borglum also designed and cast a fountain in Bridgeport, CT just down the street from where I used to live that always seemed horribly out of place for what the neighborhood had become by the 1980’s. It was always kind of unusual to see that fountain and think of it as being the work of the sculptor responsible for Mount Rushmore!