The "Children of the Confederacy Creed" plaque, highlighted in a letter state Rep. Eric Johnson sent to the State Preservation Board, asking that it be taken down.
The "Children of the Confederacy Creed" plaque, highlighted in a letter state Rep. Eric Johnson sent to the State Preservation Board, asking that it be taken down. Credit: John Jordan / The Texas Tribune

Texas House Speaker Joe Straus requested on Tuesday that a contentious Confederate plaque be removed from the Capitol.

The plaque, erected in 1959, asserts that the Civil War was “not a rebellion, nor was its underlying cause to sustain slavery.”

“This is not accurate, and Texans are not well-served by incorrect information about our history,” Straus said in a letter to the State Preservation Board, which oversees the Capitol grounds.

Straus added in his letter that “confederate monuments and plaques are understandably important to many Texans” but stressed the importance of such landmarks being “accurate and appropriate.”

“The Children of the Confederacy Creed plaque does not meet this standard,” Straus wrote.

State Rep. Eric Johnson (D-Dallas) who has called for the removal of the plaque, told the Texas Tribune he was “pleased” that Straus agrees it should come down.

“I am confident that it will come down soon,” Johnson said.

“We have an obligation to all the people we serve to ensure that our history is described correctly, especially when it comes to a subject as painful as slavery,” Straus said in his letter.

Disclosure: The University of Texas at Austin has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune. A complete list of Tribune donors and sponsors can be viewed here.

 

Alex Arriaga is a reporting fellow for the Texas Tribune.

6 replies on “Texas House Speaker Joe Straus Calls for Removal of ‘Inaccurate’ Confederate Plaque”

  1. I can’t believe that the plaque was erected in 1959!!! By that time, folks should have been thinking about the causes of the Civil War and that rethinking confederate memorials was certainly in order. And the “Children of the Confederacy”? Don’t they mean adults of the Confederacy? I am confused and very thankful that, yet again, Joe Straus is seeing the larger picture and acting for all of us as Texans.

  2. Will Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant PLEASE resurrect from the grave so THEY can set the record straight??? I am SURE those who think they know the whole story DON’T!!!
    Will you tear down all the monuments from Vietnam too? Who are you kidding? War is UGLY! No matter what it stood for.
    History is ugly and our country is full of ugly.
    Messing with it makes it even uglier.

    1. You’re right, messing with history is ugly. It’s awful that in 1959, nearly 100 years after the Civil War began, there were people in this state who were trying to install lies stamped in metal on to the building that houses our state legislature for the purpose of misleading their fellow Texans.

  3. Wow, I have never read that plaque before. No wonder some people are misinforned about what the Civil War was about. This definitely needs to be put in a museum with ample commentary.
    How do you (as it says) have an army, fight 4 years of war, and yet not be in a rebellion??!! The museum should post plaques with all the secession statements from the states, which very clearly give slavery as the reason for secession (and resulting denouncement of their US citizenships). The museum should also have statues of all the people killed and lynched in the name of slavery and see how the weight of that “heroic honor” is measured.

  4. Does anyone know the history of this plaque? I know the article states it was erected in 1959, but who’s idea was it? I’m curious to know if it was the state legislature itself or a Confederate memorialization group like the Sons of Confederate Veterans or the Daughters of the Confederacy.

    Or perhaps the Klan.

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