He is also associated with various other public works of art across the U.S., including Stone Mountain in Georgia, statues of Union General Philip Sheridan in Washington D.C. and in Chicago, as well as a bust of Abraham Lincoln exhibited in the White House by Theodore Roosevelt[6] and now held in the United States Capitol crypt in Washington, D.C.[7] The son of Danish immigrants, John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum was born in 1867 in St. Charles, in what was then thought to be in Utah but was later determined to be in Idaho Territory.

[13] After a brief stint at Saint Mary's College, Gutzon Borglum moved to Omaha, Nebraska, where he apprenticed in a machine shop and graduated from Creighton Preparatory School.

[17] Borglum was an active member of the Ancient Free and Accepted Masons (the Freemasons), raised in Howard Lodge #35, New York City, on June 10, 1904, and serving as its Worshipful Master 1910–11.

[18] He was friends with Theodore Roosevelt for many years[19][20] and during the 1912 United States presidential election Borglum was a very active campaign organizer and member[21] of the Bull Moose Party.

[22][23] While it has been claimed that Borglum was a member of the Ku Klux Klan,[7] an article in the Smithsonian Magazine denies that there is proof that he officially joined the KKK.

"[27] The museum at Mount Rushmore displays a letter to Borglum from D. C. Stephenson, the infamous Klan Grand Dragon who later was convicted of the rape and murder of Madge Oberholtzer.

Correspondence from Borglum to Stephenson during the 1920s detailed a deep racist conviction in Nordic moral superiority and strict immigration policies.

(Smith:see References)[full citation needed] President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered an address on May 3, 1934, dedicating a statue of William Jennings Bryan created by Borglum.

Borglum's nativist stances made him seem an ideologically sympathetic choice to carve a memorial to heroes of the Confederate States of America, planned for Stone Mountain, Georgia.

Borglum accepted, but told the committee, "Ladies, a twenty-foot head of Lee on that mountainside would look like a postage stamp on a barn door.

"[32] Borglum's ideas eventually evolved into a high relief frieze of Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Stonewall Jackson riding around the mountain, followed by a legion of artillery troops.

Borglum agreed to include a Ku Klux Klan altar in his plans for the memorial to acknowledge a request of Helen Plane in 1915, who wrote to him: "I feel it is due to the KKK that saved us from Negro domination and carpetbag rule, that it be immortalized on Stone Mountain".

After finishing the detailed model of the carving, Borglum was unable to trace the figures onto the massive area on which he was working, until he developed a gigantic magic lantern to project the image onto the side of the mountain.

At Stone Mountain he developed sympathetic connections with the reorganized Ku Klux Klan, who were major financial backers of the monument.

His domineering, perfectionist, authoritarian manner brought tensions to such a point that in March 1925 Borglum smashed his clay and plaster models.

When he died in Chicago, following complications of surgery, his son finished another season at Rushmore, but left the monument largely in the state of completion it had reached under his father's direction.

[46] One of Borglum's more unusual pieces is the Aviator completed in 1919 as a memorial for James Rogers McConnell, who was killed in World War I while flying for the Lafayette Escadrille.

[47] In 1922, he crafted the William Dempster Hoard Sculpture in the north end what is now the Henry Mall Historic District at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The cast bronze sculpture depicts a wounded Confederate officer encouraging his men to push forward during Pickett's Charge.