COLUMBIA, S.C. - A call to honor a black Civil War hero with a monument at the South Carolina Statehouse grounds, the 2015 epicenter 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 Wednesday 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.