Florida Legislature Votes to Replace Confederate General's Statue
5:58 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2016
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The Florida Legislature has sent Gov. Rick Scott a bill to replace the statue of Confederate Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith as one of the state's two contributions to the U.S. Capitol's National Statuary Hall Collection.
The House approved the bill Wednesday 83-32 despite objections from members and citizens who have called it an attempt to erase Southern history and heritage ...
The House sponsor of the bill, Rep. Jose Diaz, R-Miami, argued that Smith was a man of principle who fought for the Confederacy over states' rights rather than slavery but wasn't truly a Floridian. He was born in St. Augustine to a family who had moved from Connecticut but left the state at age 12 to go to boarding school and West Point and never returned ...
Smith is famous largely as the last Confederate officer to surrender a significant force at the end of the Civil War, nearly two months after Robert E. Lee's April 9, 1865, surrender at Appomattox Court House ...
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