Suits to save Confederate icons dropped in South Carolina

(AP) - Lawsuits filed to stop the removal of memorials to Confederate leaders and a pro-slavery congressman in a South Carolina city have been dropped.

The Post and Courier reports that the American Heritage Association helped fund one of the lawsuits. It had been filed by descendants of John C. Calhoun, a former congressman and vice president who died before the Civil War. ]

The suit had opposed the city of Charleston’s removal of Calhoun’s statue. Another suit opposed the removal of a Robert E. Lee Memorial Highway marker in Charleston and the renaming of an auditorium that had been named after a treasury secretary of the Confederacy.