Sewanee Decides To Relocate Confederate Memorial (TN)
By CHAS SISK • OCT 24, 2017
The University of the South in Sewanee is relocating a 77-year-old memorial to a Confederate general, after determining there was little reason for the stone marker to stand at an intersection just off the school's main campus.
The remote liberal arts institution will move markers honoring Edmund Kirby Smith to his grave in the university cemetery on the sprawling, wooded campus. The decision was finalized in September and first reported last week by The Sewanee Purple, a student newspaper.
Kirby Smith was a Florida native and a West Point graduate who first won distinction in the Mexican-American War. He resigned his Army commission at the outbreak of the Civil War and eventually led Confederate forces west of the Mississippi River.
After the war, he became a biology professor at Sewanee, where he lived until his death in 1893. More than 30 years later, the United Daughters of the Confederacy asked for permission to honor Kirby Smith and in 1940 a pillar was finally erected at the intersection of Texas and University avenues, near the Sewanee football stadium ...
http://nashvillepublicradio.org/post/familys-request-sewanee-decides-relocate-confederate-memorial