<p>White paper with typed black text</p>
<p>Commission. In the last state, Kentucky, Mrs. Campbell wrote me she had her quota. Then Mrs. Thomas wrote me she could not get it through her legislature so she was securing Missouri’s quota by public subscriptions and had over $300.00. We then had $32,000 – short Florida and Missouri $4,000. I then, as Chairman-general for the U.D.C., wrote the Treasurer-general to send invoices to all states not send in. In the meantime in 1963, the Coordinating Council selected the De Lue design. This decision sent in at the last minute was hastily voted on by a few people and I feel it was too quickly done and was not a suitable design. I sent the design to each committee member who raised this money and through her to the Centennial Commissioners. Very few were in favor of the De Lue design and when Mr. Sturdivant began sending letters to Governors asking for their quotas, they did not understand, as one commissioner wrote me he had received so many letters he did not know what to do. I charge Mr. Sturdivant with this situation. If he had not written letters to the states where my committee women had secured quotas, there would have been no trouble. Why should he or you, Judge Beard, get over into the work of my Committee and write letters where we had the quotas and we would have had those quotas sent in? For instance, the State of Mississippi, Mrs. McIllwaine secured Mississippi’s quota, the fourth state in January 1962. Last year I wrote her to get their quota sent in but she saw the Attorney-general of Mississippi and he told her he must have a copy of the contract. In the meantime, I received a letter from Mr. Newton James, Commander of Mississippi S.C.V., telling me that Mississippi’s quota had been placed in his hands and those of Mrs. J.O. Jones, President of the Mississippi Division, U.D.C. and they would send their quota on.
I recall reading in Mr. Sturdivant’s awful letter to you that he mentioned he was having Mississippi’s quota transferred where he could be assured that the integrity of our patriotic societies will be preserved. If he had not meddled in his own state, trying to get Mrs. McIllwaine’s quota transferred over to him, things would not have become involved. What is integrity in Sturdivants [sic] language? I wrote Mr. James and told him I did not understand Mississippi’s quota being placed in his hands and my good friend, Mrs. Jones, that they were not on my Committee and that I had all correspondence and copy of the bill and that Mrs. McIllwaine and I were looking after that quota.
In my own state, Mr. Fortson, Secretary of State, will send in our quota when some things are cleared up. He very much disapproves of the De Lue design as do the Georgia Division, U.D.C. Read carefully what Mrs. Smith wrote me on March 4th in my report. We both have the same kind of idea as to a monument. I am favoring no sculptor or architect. I have written Mr. De Lue in answer to a letter from him and told him of the wide disapproval of his design for the purpose we want. I wrote him of his delay in sending in the design. He wrote me Miss Franklin had to unfasten her suitcase to put in his design at the last minute. This delay had not given anyone time to carefully consider it and that I as Chairman of Design for the U.D.C., had not seen it. I asked him to send another design more in keeping with our purpose but I have not heard from him. My idea is a handsome shaft, some 30 feet tall, 4 x 4 velvet finished and made of Georgia blue-grey granite – the Great Seal of the Confederacy on two sides with inscriptions “erected by the U.D.C. and S.C.V. 1964” with a suitable verse. This on two sides – on one side the names of the fourteen states with our Motto, “Love Makes Memory Eternal”, on the other side, date of when the war began and when it ended; there the lines you quote would be fine, “last survivor b_____ d_____</p>
<ul><li>Keywords: gettysburg; battlfield; education; virtual experience; photography; monuments; memorials</li></ul>
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