West Virginia came to exist because that part of Virginia refused to secede from the United States, and stayed with the Union in the Civil War. More recently, a right-wing political movement set up monuments to the Confederacy and Confederate generals, thus spreading an erroneous idea of the state's history.

Now Republicans, who dominate the state's government and perhaps lean towards white supremacism, want to make it illegal to remove or rename those monuments.

It is possible to deal with a statue that supports the Confederacy by putting up an opposing statue: perhaps of Lincoln or Grant, or some West Virginian who fought for the Union.

However, when a building's name refers to the Confederacy, it would not usually be feasible to override its message by building another building nearby. Cities and schools in West Virginia should rename those buildings promptly, before a new law can get in the way.

Putting up new monuments depicting West Virginia soldiers in their blue Union uniforms would help teach the state's history. And if West Virginia organized regiments of escaped slaves, like the 54th Massachusetts, monuments to them would get the point across even more clearly.

They surely deserve monuments.