AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott agreed Friday to remove a plaque in the state Capitol that rejects slavery as the underlying cause of the Civil War, bending after years of resistance by state Republican leaders in the face of Confederate monuments falling nationwide.

A unanimous vote by the State Preservation Board, which Abbott chairs, ordered the removal of the 60-year-old plaque that pledges to teach “the truths of history,” adding that “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.”

The State Preservation Board is governed by Texas’ three most powerful Republicans — Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and newly chosen House Speaker Dennis Bonnen. They quickly voted to remove the plaque with no discussion and left without speaking to about a dozen reporters in the room. None of their offices immediately returned messages for comment.

The plaque was first hung in 1959. It remained mounted to a wall next to a staircase in the Capitol after the vote, and it was unclear when it would be removed.

Texas has taken down Confederate plaques before. In 2000, then-Gov. George W. Bush’s administration removed two Confederate memorial plaques in the state Supreme Court building following pressure from the Texas NAACP.