At the same time, Gutzon Borglum, the Klan insider and eventual sculptor of Mount Rushmore, a man Stephenson had called “my close personal friend,” started work on a marble carving of Alexander Stephens, vice president of the slave states. The Confederacy, Stephens had said, was founded “upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.” The carving was bound for Statuary Hall in Washington’s Capitol Rotunda, home to the most iconic totems in the nation.
