PLAQUE DOWNPLAYING SLAVERY’S CIVIL WAR ROLE COMING DOWN

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott agreed Friday to remove a plaque in the state capitol that rejects slavery as the underlying cause of the Civil War, bending after years of resistance by state Republican leaders in the face of Confederate monuments falling nationwide. A unanimous vote by the State Preservation Board, which Abbott, pictured, chairs, ordered the removal of the 60-year-old plaque that pledges to teach “the truths of history,” adding “one of the most important of which is that the war between the states was not a rebellion, nor was its underlying cause to sustain slavery.” The plaque is among nearly a dozen Confederate markers in and around the Texas Capitol. It’s the first slated to come down since the deadly 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that led to the removal Confederate monuments nationwide.