Eric Johnson just won’t go away.

Last year, the Texas state representative from Dallas met with Gov. Greg Abbott and asked that a plaque erected by the Texas Division of the Children of the Confederacy be taken down at the Capitol. He apparently thought he and the governor had a deal on the matter, but the plaque remains — right outside Johnson’s office.

The plaque was placed on Aug. 7, 1959. It’s one of a dozen Confederate markers in and around the Capitol. They’ve come under some special scrutiny because of the 2017 deadly clash in Charlottesville, Virginia over a statue of Robert E. Lee. If Lee can’t survive in Virginia, is the Old South safe anywhere?

Johnson would like all Confederate symbols at the Capitol gone. But the plaque outside his office seems to offend him most.

It should. Something that Johnson, a Democrat; and Abbott and former House Speaker Joe Straus, both Republicans; can all agree upon is this: What the plaque states is dead wrong.

The plaque pledges the Children of the Confederacy to preserve “pure ideals,” specifically these:

“To study and teach the truths of history (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), and to always act in a manner that will reflect honor upon our noble and patriotic ancestors.”

The best way to reflect honor upon our ancestors is to tell the truth. What the plaque says is untrue. Let’s do better by Texas’ ancestors.

That Associated Press story, posted to our website Thursday (OK, I posted it) drew some opposition, which seemed to suggest that history is subjective and because the plaque was erected, it must be true. To take it down would be to deny people the opportunity to know their history, no? Well, no.

Slavery’s role as the Civil War’s principal incentive is reliably certain. Southern states withdrew from the Union largely because they considered Abraham Lincoln an abolitionist — he was not — and they considered slavery as an institution to be imperiled by the Lincoln election. States began to secede the next month.

I’m a newcomer to Texas history but not to the history of antebellum and Civil War era Louisiana — that state across the pond. There, voters in 1860 gave states’ rights firebrand and presidential candidate John C. Breckinridge a plurality — but not a majority — of their votes. The rest went to Unionists.

A month later, a convention dominated by cotton growers — their crops were in, and planting had not started — was elected and steamrolled Louisiana out of the Union by late January. Within a week, Texas followed.

In a declaration of causes why Texas left the union, the secession convention stated this, then, about their state’s exit:

“She was received (into the Union) as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery — the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits — a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time.” So there, Children of the Confederacy.

Johnson — by the way, he holds a bachelor’s in history, cum laude, from Harvard — takes exception to the plaque’s inaccuracy in his quest to have it removed and has lawfully and earnestly requested the governor and the State Preservation Board to act.

“We could get out the screwdrivers today,” he said in the AP story.

Or we could add a plaque, I’d suggest, right below the Children of the Confederacy’s, that points out the wholly inaccurate mythmaking that the above plaque touted when it was erected 59 years ago — and still touts. It might be easier to just remove Plaque No. 1.

I’ve got no problem with Confederate monuments that revere brave Southern soldiers. There were many of them, including from Texas. I grew up in an area steeped in history and blessed with monuments and markers. In 42 years living in the Deep South, I’ve met countless well-intentioned, honorable members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans who honor their ancestors truthfully and know their history well.

I’ve got lots of problems with inaccurate plaques that pose as historical markers, tributes to a “Lost Cause” that is ideological, not objectively true. You should have problems with them, too. So should the folks at the Capitol in Austin.

Get that man a screwdriver.

Ken Stickney is editor of The Port Arthur News.