It is outrageous that more than 150 years after, Confederate apologists are still trying to claim the Civil War was not caused by slavery.

Trump chief of staff John Kelly even suggested that a "lack of compromise" caused the Civil War—as if the three-fifths compromise, the Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 never happened.

This dangerous whitewashing of American history has impeded racial and economic equity for way too long. Only by acknowledging the obvious—that slavery caused the Civil War—can we move forward.

Sign if you agree: Stop sanitizing history. Slavery caused the Civil War.