in carving the head of george washington, mr. borglum studied all the known portraits of him and drew heavily on certain famous likenesses which he preferred because he believed them most faithful to the character of the man. borglum was confronted by an extraordinary problem. he had undertaken to place his sculpture on a mountain peak over 6000 feet above sea level. his face of washington, tall as a five-story building, was to be far up in the sky “where the clouds fold about it like a great scarf, where the stars blink about its head, and the moon hides behind a lock of hair.” as borglum himself pointed out, it has been the practice of the sculptors of history, immediately they departed from the normal dimensions of men, to conventionalize and simplify their faces and to generalize the portraiture, and, in so doing, lose those qualities which gave distinction. such methods had no appeal to borglum. vehemently, he brushed aside “the claptrap standards of good enough.” the faces he placed upon the mountain to gaze down upon hundreds of generations of mankind must be true, great, and noble faces, and that of washington would be the gauge of all the rest. borglum spent thirteen years digging into every corner of washington’s life in order that his portrait might say the last word about the man who is called the father of his country. he made an extensive study of his character and was deeply impressed by the picture presented by thomas jefferson in the following letter to dr. walter jones, dated at monticello, january 2, 1814:
i think i knew gen. washington intimately and thoroly; and were i called on to delineate his character, it should be in terms like these.
his mind was great and powerful, without being of the very first order; his penetration strong, tho not so acute as that of a newton, bacon, or locke; and as far as he saw, no judgment was ever sounder. it was slow in operation, being little aided by invention or imagination, but sure in conclusion. hence the common remark of his officers, of the advantage he derived from councils of war, where hearing all suggestions, he selected whatever was best; and certainly no general ever planned his battles more judiciously. but if deranged during the course of the action, if any member of his plan was dislocated by sudden circumstances, he was slow in readjustment. the consequence was that he often failed in the field, and rarely against an enemy in station, as at boston and york.
he was incapable of fear, meeting personal dangers with the calmest unconcern. perhaps the strongest feature in his character was prudence, never acting until every circumstance, every consideration, was maturely weighed; refraining if he saw a doubt, but when once decided, going thru with his purpose, whatever obstacles opposed.
his integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible i have ever known, no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship, or hatred, being able to bias his decision. he was, indeed, in every sense of the words a wise, a good, and a great man. his temper was naturally high toned; but reflection and resolution had obtained a firm and habitual ascendancy over it. if ever, however, it broke its bonds, he was most tremendous in his wrath.
in his expenses he was honorable, but exact; liberal in contribution to whatever promised utility; but frowning and unyielding on all visionary projects and all unworthy calls on his charity. his heart was not warm in its affections; but he exactly calculated every man’s value, and gave him a solid esteem proportioned to it.
his person, you know, was fine, his stature exactly what one would wish, his deportment easy, erect and noble; the best horseman of his age, and the most graceful figure that could be seen on horseback. altho in the circle of his friends, where he might be unreserved with safety, he took a free share in conversation, his colloquial talents were not above mediocrity, possessing neither copiousness of ideas nor fluency of words. in public, when called on for a sudden opinion, he was unready, short, and embarrassed.
yet he wrote readily, rather diffusely, in an easy and correct style. this he had acquired by conversation with the world, for his education was merely reading, writing, and common arithmetic, to which he added surveying at a later day.
his time was employed in action chiefly, reading little, and that only in agriculture and english history. his correspondence became necessarily extensive, and, with journalizing his agricultural proceedings, occupied most of his leisure hours within doors.
on the whole, his character was, in its mass, perfect, in nothing bad, in few points indifferent; and it may truly be said that never did nature and fortune combine more perfectly to make a man great, and to place him in the same constellation with whatever worthies have merited from man an everlasting remembrance. for his was the singular destiny and merit of leading the armies of his country successfully thru an arduous war, for the establishment of its independence; of conducting its councils thru the birth of a government, new in its forms and principles, until it had settled down into a quiet and orderly train; and of scrupulously obeying the laws thru the whole of his career, civil and military, of which the history of the world furnishes no other example....
