Senators call for monument honouring black Civil War hero

COLUMBIA, South Carolina (AP):

A call to honour a black Civil War hero with a monument at the South Carolina Statehouse grounds, the 2015 epicentre of a national move to strip away Confederate symbols, is being made by two lawmakers in a bid to encourage consensus building in a nation divided by the issue.

Two state senators one a black Democrat and the other a white Republican called yesterday for a statue of Robert Smalls, who, in 1862, hijacked a Confederate supply ship, steered his family to freedom and turned the boat over to the Union.

After the war, Smalls helped found South Carolina's Republican Party and became a state legislator and congressman.