Two TLSs, both 8.5 x 11 and dated December 12, 1922: one on personal letterhead to industrialist Curtis Freshel, in part: “I am under contract to deliver a certain amount of work before Christmas. I don’t see how it is possible. I am sending a copy of the letter I have just written to Bob LaFollette. For we held a very stiff hand and made a very distinctive track in the conservative ranks of the nation. I believe Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota and the other states mentioned in LaFollette’s letter, have permanently left the re-actionary group and they are not the tail that will wag the dog, but the head that will lead future politics in this country, if we can keep the soft-pedal on third party activities. I feel as you do. I can’t vote Republican and I won’t vote the Democratic ticket as such. The question is simply one of organization. I should very much like to meet Fuller, but I am wondering if he is as much of a patriot as he is a politician? The most important and imperitive [sic] work to be done now, is to organize on the solidest grounds the present Progressive minds in Congress. I have found in Atlanta the Klan has probably seventy-five in Congress who are in sympathy with the Western movement. If this is true, and by some process I can get at them or we can get at them, Lodge, Weeks, Fall, Hoover and their masters are ‘hog tied’ as far as further interference with the welfare of all this country is concerned. I have just about broken with Harding. I say that with regret, because I am very fond of him but he hasn’t the intestinal stamina to remain loyal to those who have helped him, if it effects the larger pressure of vested interest;” and a signed carbon copy of the letter to LaFollette referenced, in part: “Looking over the list of Progressives, so-called, that met on the 2nd, I noticed a lot of bronchos [sic] that are hardly house-broken and others that are half dead at the top. I am in sympathy with soft-peddling the Presidential possibilities. Any activities of the kind will corrupt any program and rob it of its power. The South, by the way, is falling into line. All we need to do is hold what we have now, solidly together. I mean Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Nebraska, Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Iowa. I believe these states have gone forever from the re-actionary machine and if we have the courage to give the Democrats some honors in the next Congress, we can re-organize the entire house and control Legislature.” Intersecting folds, overall toning, a few stray ink marks, and chipping to the right edge and staple holes to the letter to LaFollette, otherwise fine condition.
With his Stone Mountain Confederate Monument underway, artist Gutzon Borglum found himself utterly distracted by his political interests: “I am under contract to deliver a certain amount of work before Christmas. I don’t see how it is possible.” In planning the monument, a bas-relief depicting Confederate heroes Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and Jefferson Davis, Borglum was closely involved with the Ku Klux Klan, major financial backers for the project. Setting his work aside in an effort to put the Progressive party in the White House, he hoped to exercise some influence over the 75 Klan members in Congress, confident that he could gain enough control to ‘hog tie’ “Lodge, Weeks, Fall, Hoover and their masters” (referring to Senate Majority Leader Henry Cabot Lodge and incumbent President Harding’s Cabinet members John W. Weeks, Albert B. Fall, and Herbert Hoover). After divulging this plan to destroy his Cabinet, he notes, “I have just about broken with Harding.” In his accompanying letter to LaFollette, Senator of Wisconsin and future Progressive Party presidential nominee, he expresses a somewhat delusional opinion of his own strength in influencing politics, writing, “if we have the courage to give the Democrats some honors in the next Congress, we can re-organize the entire house and control Legislature.” A fascinating, fast-paced letter revealing the political schemes of an artist who never held any government position, and whose power was greater nowhere than in his own mind. RR Auction COA.
