The South Carolina Monument on the Gettysburg National Military Park bears an inscription that reads the following:

“That men of honor might forever know the responsibilities of freedom. Dedicated South Carolinians stood and were counted for their heritage and convictions. Abiding faith in the sacredness of states rights proved their creed here. Many earned eternal glory.”

There has been an ongoing debate on the role of Confederate symbols, memorials, and markers in our contemporary society. This monument is four miles from my house, it is one that I literally pass a few times a week, on my battlefield jog and it is one that really bothers me.

The monument itself is not an offensive image: there is no glorified artistic rendering of the Confederate soldier, no kneeling slaves, and no “superman” or Christlike depictions, like the many statues of Jackson and Lee. It is a simple granite memorial to the contribution of this southern secession state at the battle. Or so it would seem if you didn’t read the text.

The inscription is bothersome because it is an affirmation of Lost Cause sentiment in a public memorial placed in a National Park. It reinforces the outright historical fallacy of the Lost Cause. I would say it reinforces a “myth”; however, a myth transmits a degree of truth to the reader. The Lost Cause of the Confederacy is only fiction.

Closely look at the text of the marker. South Carolina’s soldiers, according to this marker, fought for “heritage and convictions”. What is that heritage? Is it the dubious claim that the South emerged as culturally independent from the north, a claim long debunked by serious cultural historians? Does heritage, in this context, include centuries of racism and racial dominance? Is this what is being fought for and memorialized? What “convictions” did South Carolina fight over if not the adamant conviction of racial superiority?

The prominence of state’s rights is emphatic. The sanctifying of state’s rights as the cause of the Civil War is a claim that seeks to undermine (if not sanitize) the importance of the institution of slavery to the causality of the war, but also in it’s very nature, marginalizes the issue of slavery and the experience of millions of slaves. It is a skewed and destructive historical abstraction that is harmful to people today.

The inscription implies that the freedom fighters of South Carolina earned “eternal” glory through fighting for this heritage and conviction in the Civil War. Whose freedoms were they fighting to protect? Who’s heritage were they fighting for? Whose convictions? These are the questions we need to ask but it is a lot easier to drive past the monument, read the roll of honor, and keep on driving than it is to admit to the grim realization of our collective history.