“Why should we be going over there to fight the Taliban, when we have the Taliban trying to take down monuments in St. Louis?” said Bowden, of Warrenton. “It’s the same thing, only they want to spin it differently.”

Bowden and some of the 35 other people who attended the event believe elected officials are uninformed, bound by political correctness and unwilling to sit down to hear their side. They say they are victims of history books that paint the Civil War into narrow categories — good vs. evil — when the conflict was much more nuanced.

Thousands of Missourians fought on both sides of the war.

Andrew Jackson Martin, of the St. Louis area, was with the South and lived to be 104. He’s one of several Confederate soldiers buried at Fee Fee Cemetery, along with service members from other wars.

“It’s history,” said great-grandson James Martin, 76, a retired machine operator from Florissant. “They should get recognized just like the Union did. They were all Americans.”

His wife, Brenda, had family, including some from Maine, who fought for the North. She supports keeping all the monuments from that era in public view.