In 1898, the tiny town of Elberton, Georgia opened its first granite finishing plant. Though there had been a commercial quarry in the area for nine years, prior to this point the city had never produced any monuments from its granite. But the women of the Confederate Memorial Association were determined to change that.
Early in the year the CMA approached an Italian sculptor by the name of Arthur Beter and commissioned a statue to commemorate the Confederate soldiers who had died in the Civil War. The Elberton Granite and Marble Works plant was opened shortly thereafter in order to polish and shape the statue and its fifteen-foot-tall pedestal. And on July 15, 1898, the memorial was at last revealed to an eager crowd of onlookers amidst much pomp and circumstance.
But the monument that the people of Elberton set their eyes upon that Friday morning was not at all what they had expected.
All in attendance agreed that the pedestal of the structure was very finely crafted. An engraving of a Confederate battle flag with one tattered edge sat upon the column, and beneath it were carved the words, “Elbert County to her Confederate Dead.” Crossed swords and small stacks of ammunition adorned other faces of the base. Further inscriptions gave voice to the proud feelings the community shared for the soldiers they had lost in the war.
The statue that stood atop this fine platform, however, was quite another matter. Though he was seven feet tall, the granite soldier somehow managed to look “short and squatty.” 190 His legs and feet were abnormally wide, causing one writer for The Elberton Star to observe that he must have been afflicted with gout. His face was strangely rounded, his eyes just a bit too wide, and his mustache was broad and upturned like that of a British imperial officer in Victorian Africa.
But to the minds of the townspeople, the greatest affront was in the soldier’s apparel. Instead of the mid-thigh-length light jacket and flop hat that were more common to the uniform of the Confederate soldier, the statue was depicted in a knee-length coat, cape, and bill cap. While the exact style and specifications of the uniforms of both sides in the Civil War tended to vary quite widely due to limited resources, the living Confederate veterans of Elberton all seemed to agree that this statue looked for all the world like a Union soldier.
It was generally believed by the townsfolk that such a massive discrepancy could be no error, and so the sculptor, Arthur Beter, was taunted and called a Yankee sympathizer. But those citizens’ modern counterparts now admit that as Beter was a very recent immigrant to the country, it was also quite possible that he simply did not know what a Confederate soldier looked like.
One observer quipped that the statue looked like a “cross between a Pennsylvania Dutchman and a hippopotamus,” 191 and so the people of Elbert County began referring to him as “Old Dutchy,” and he was not much loved. The general ire and indignation of the townspeople grew until finally, two years later, it reached fever pitch.
On the morning of August 14, 1900, the city of Elberton woke to find that one of their number had removed Dutchy from his honored place. The granite figure lay in several pieces at the foot of its pedestal, with its legs broken off and a noose about its neck. No one mourned his loss.
Two days later, The Elberton Star reported the incident glibly: “Dutchy is no more. The man with the stony glare in his eyes took a tumble Monday night and is now lying in the middle of the square with two broken limbs.”192 The article went on to give a facetious account of the circumstances leading up to Dutchy’s demise, indicating that the statue had fainted and fallen backwards due to heat-exhaustion induced by his over-warm clothing and his strong desire for a keg of beer. Concluding with a more serious tone, the author noted the following:
It is not known who pulled the figure down, but it is generally conceded that their conduct was not meant as an insult to the Confederate veterans or to the ladies or to anyone connected to the monument. It was simply an eyesore and they wanted to get rid of it and have a more appropriate Confederate monument in its place.193
Dutchy lay where he had fallen until August 16, when a crowd of people gathered once again and buried the granite man in front of his pedestal in the center of town square. After a few years, another sculptor produced a second statue to complete the memorial, and the city of Elberton all but forgot about Old Dutchy.
When people examine a work of art, whether it be a monument, a novel, or an oil painting, they naturally attempt to discern its meaning. But this is not always the easiest of prospects, as what makes an artwork distinctive from other instances of expression and communication is that art expresses its ideas relatively abstractly. Rather than state in plain language what it is that he is trying to say, an artist plays with stone, paint, light, or other mediums in order to hint at or allude to his meaning. There are a variety of subjects that are historically difficult to convey ideas about in a straightforward way; emotional and spiritual concepts are, by their very natures, outside the bounds of strictly logical and analytical thinking. For these themes in particular, it can be beneficial to take an artistic approach to self-expression to attempt to transmit one’s thoughts and experiences to others. But the very same vagueness that allows an artist to discuss ideas that he might otherwise be unable to articulate also allows for a variety of interpretation by his audience that is sometimes very wide indeed.
In literary and visual art criticism, scholars have widely debated whether or not the meaning that the artist intended is the most important aspect of the work. Within the modern school of New Criticism, this idea is referred to as the “intentional fallacy” and is derided as not only incorrect but also impossible. Critics such as W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley have asserted that “the design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard” 194 for evaluating a work. They claim that it is impossible to ever fully ascertain the exact authorial intent, and that even if it was obtainable it is not worth considering, as to do so would only distract one from the work itself.
Scholars in other schools of thought, such as Psychoanalytic, Marxist, or Feminist Criticism, dispute the idea that the author’s ideas about his work are irrelevant, but even they do not disagree that it can be difficult to ascertain what exactly those ideas are. And no art critic has ever asserted that the authorial intent is the only standard upon which the art should be judged. The content of the piece must always be considered on its own merits as well.
In the case of the Georgia Guidestones, the mystery that surrounds the artist’s identity has caused many to fixate upon the authorial intent of the piece exclusively. Conspiracy theorists such as Mark Dice and Van Smith have focused most of their efforts and study of the monument around attempting to discern who R. C. Christian was and what his motivations were for commissioning such a strange structure. But Christian’s perspective on what the Guidestones mean is only one among a great many opinions.
For Old Dutchy, the situation was reversed. The people of Elbert County had little care for what Arthur Beter intended to convey when he carved his “squatty” soldier. They looked at it, and they saw an ugly figure who reminded them of their enemies. And they tore it down.
But Dutchy’s story did not end there.
In 1982, the Elberton Granite Association decided to go looking for the town’s most historically despised monument. He had been the stuff of legend around Elberton ever since his demise and hasty burial over eighty years before. His replacement had languished for several decades atop his old pedestal, and there were many in the town who did not believe that the short little fellow had ever existed. So on April 19, a team of contracted construction workers took to the square to see what they could find.
Coincidentally, the effort was led by the same man who had sold a tract of his land to a mysterious stranger looking for a home for the Georgia Guidestones, Mr. Wayne Mullenix. Mullenix and his men dug into the earth in front of the memorial for two hours without result. “Hopes began to fade,” recalls Hudson Cone, who was present on that “red-letter day.” But at last, they found what they sought.
Entombed in the hard Georgia red clay were indeed the pieces of a seven-foot statue of a soldier. A throng of curious townsfolk looked on in interest as the team completed the excavation process. Dutchy was filthy, encrusted with the brilliant red-orange soil that had been his home for the better part of a century, and so they loaded him onto the bed of a large truck with a crane and drove him through the local car wash to clean up.
But after he was rinsed off, the representatives from the EGA discovered something amazing. Underneath all of the dirt, the sculpture was in near perfect condition. Despite being thrown to the ground and then buried for eighty-two years, the surface of the granite remained unblemished and un-weathered.
The reception that Dutchy received now was a far cry from the outrage that the town had felt for him before. No longer was he seen as a gouty Yankee, but as “a remarkable advertisement for our Elberton Granite.”195 The EGA considered trying to replace Dutchy on a pedestal in the square, but they could think of no safe way to do this. He was “so heavy,” Cone says, that they could not be certain he would not just fall down again. So instead, they devoted an entire room to him in the Elberton Granite Museum and set him out in the center of it, surrounding the redeemed Dutchy with articles and videos about his history.
Perspectives on artistic works are both subjective and malleable. The significance that one generation or social group derives from a given piece can be completely different from the meanings that other groups might find. The people of Elbert County in the early nineteenth century saw Old Dutchy as an offensive eyesore, where the citizens now see it as a proud part of their heritage. By and large, those same people see the Georgia Guidestones in a similar way.
Visitors to the Guidestones have come away with a variety of impressions of the monument. Some see the ideas it presents as a threatening and sinister manifesto, while others take a more positive approach to the landmark, feeling that it spreads a message of peace in a world troubled by war. Christian himself seemed to be of the latter opinion.
But not one of these perspectives is more valid than another. The Guidestones, like any work of art, presents a “prism of meaning”196 to those who would regard it. Its value is in the fact that it is open to personal interpretation, and that it engenders discussion about the ways in which those interpretations differ.
Now, decades after the end of the Cold War, devastating nuclear war is still a very real possibility, but it has lost much of its impact on the popular consciousness. Works of art about the subject, like the Georgia Guidestones, help to maintain a dialogue about the state of global affairs and the prospect of a more peaceful world. Those who read the precepts put forth on the monument are affected in some way by what they say. They debate the merits of the proposals, in their own minds or aloud, and they come away from the experience thinking about issues that they might otherwise not have considered. And even if one does not believe that this is what R. C. Christian intended when he designed the work, the effect remains.
But there are many who have called for the monument’s destruction, and there are some who have themselves tried to exact that destruction. Seeing it as a symbol for things that they violently oppose, they have obscured its message and attempted to break its stones.
No good can come of such actions. Were the Guidestones to be torn down, after a time they would likely go unremembered, and the dialogue about the merits of the embedded ideas would end. For both those who oppose the message they see in its granite faces and those who support it, this would not be a positive thing. The opportunity for discussion and the exchange of ideas would be lost, and so too would be the possibility of a resolution that pleased all parties.
Instead, perhaps those wishing to endorse a counterpoint could create similar works of art, in Elberton or elsewhere, expressing their own ideas on how to usher in a better tomorrow. Perhaps if there were more such things the dialogue would grow even larger and real change could occur.
For now, the Georgia Guidestones remain, and R. C. Christian’s message continues to speak to those who listen. Christian himself hoped that this message could help ease human suffering. He hoped to create a better world.
The guides are not religious. They are not commandments. We have no authority to command. Affirmation of our thoughts can only occur as they are endorsed and supported by the reasoned judgment of this and future generations. We invite human beings of all persuasions to consider them with open minds, adapting them to the changing circumstances of unknown future centuries.
—Robert Christian, 1986