Taking down the Confederate statue in Travis Park was the easy part. News Radio 1200 WOAI reports removing the most egregious, and inaccurate, Confederate relic of all is caught up in politics.
It is the 'Children of the Confederacy Creed,' a plaque in the rotunda of the Texas State Capitol in Austin. Erected in 1959, at the beginning of the Civil Rights movement, the plaque makes the incredibly inaccurate statement that maintaining slavery was not an underlying cause of the Civil War, and that Texas and the other Confederate states did not rebel against the United States government.
Even though both Gov. Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick have both expressed concern about the plaque, neither has formally asked the Attorney General to remove it.
Rice University Political Analyst Mark Jones says this is dangerous political ground for Republicans seeking re-election.
"This is not going to be framed in terms of historical accuracy," he said. "This is going to be framed as removing or not removing something related to the Confederacy from the State Capitol."
Many conservatives and heritage groups have been concerned at the speed at which Confederate related monuments have been removed or renamed across Texas. The Southern Poverty Law Center reported last week that Texas has removed more Confederate related items than any other state.
But there has also been push back among conservative groups, mainly over the hasty removal of the monuments, and the fact that many of them were removed in the dead of night, without any sort of public vote on their future.
Jones says the Republicans may have an out. He points out that House Speaker Joe Straus (R-Alamo Heights), who is not seeking re-election in November has spoken out strongly against the Children of the Confederacy Creed, and formally petitioned the Attorney General to remove it.
"This is something that I suspect both Gov. Abbott and Lt. Gov. Patrick would prefer that somebody else deal with and take the blame for,"he said. "Ideally Joe Straus."
Despite what the plaque claims, the Texas Declaration of Secession, approved by the Legislature, in 1861, is filled with praise of slavery, and states specifically that preserving slavery is a key reason why Texas is leaving the Union.