The General Kirby-Smith Statue should be Proudly displayed in Lake County.
Yankee people have no clue why the South attempted independence. Northern money would never stop an institution that they personally profited from. Slave ships all ran out of the North. Grandsons of Confederates fought and died to defeat the Nazis in World War II. Today the ADL equates Confederates with “Nazis.”

Regarding secession, Florida was in the Union for 14 years when it seceded. Before 1860, American officers took an oath to their state. New York Sen. Seward, an abolitionist, was on the Senate floor proposing an amendment to forever grant constitutionally protected slavery for all states to entice the South back into the Union. Why? So the South would pay the hefty tariff increases.

Confederates fought not for conquest, but for liberty, independence and their own homes, whereas the armies of Grant, Sherman and Sheridan murdered and raped thousands, both white and black, and pillaged, burned and destroyed the countryside and anything of value. Abraham Lincoln was a dictator. Lincoln completely abolished habeas corpus. No dissent was tolerated, and more than 30,000 people in the North were imprisoned. The North made every effort to give the South slavery forever.

“Surrender” wasn’t in Edmund Kirby Smith’s vocabulary. As a Major, Smith refused to surrender the Second U.S. Cavalry at Camp Colorado, Texas, to secessionist forces at the start of the war. Only when his home state, Florida, seceded in 1861 did Smith join the Confederacy. In 1863, Smith took command of the Trans-Mississippi Department. Despite lacking manpower and supplies, he successfully defended “KirbySmithdom” from Union attacks. Despite the surrender of Confederate forces under Robert E. Lee and Joseph Johnston in the spring of 1865, Gen. Smith continued to resist with his small army in Texas. His Confederate troops were some of the last in the field.

All Southerners, both White and Black, should Honor those who fought for the Confederacy and especially remember General Kirby-Smith, Florida’s own Confederate hero.