Gutzon Borglum, the carving's first chief sculptor, designed the
coin for the government, working and reworking his design until he satisfied the federal mint.
The head side of the coin depicted Lee and Jackson in
their famous last meeting at Chancellorsville, before
Jackson was shot down by a misdirected corps from South Carolina. The tail side of the coin depicts an American eagle in the
foreground, with the message, "Memorial to the Valor of the Soldier of the South" in bold print.
Jefferson Davis, the third member of the carving's central group,
appears nowhere on the coin. Perhaps Borglum left Davis off for spatial considerations, or
perhaps he was responding sensitively to the public's disenchantment with the Confederate
president and attempting to make the coins as sellable as possible.