A memorial to the 13 Confederate soldiers who died while held on Georges Island - out of some 1,000 kept prisoner there - is now covered with wooden boards as the Baker administration determines if and how they can just get rid of the thing.

The state can't simply remove the marker - placed there in 1963 by the now defunct Boston chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy - because Georges Island is considered a "national historic landmark" due to its role in US military history, from early coastal defense to housing all those Confederate soldiers, officers and even politicians during the Civil War.

When WGBH took a look at the only Confederate memorial in Massachusetts in June, a spokesperson for the governor said he'd rather the thing be gone, because it's hardly something that would "support liberty and equality for the people of Massachusetts."

Before it was boxed up, visitors to the island could see a relatively anodyne memorial that listed the names of the dead - but one with the Confederate seal and motto - the Latin for "With God as our defender."

As with other chapters, the Boston chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy did its part to drum up the legend of the Lost Cause, of a noble band of freedom fighters set upon by evil Northerners, rather than the South being a construct aimed at enslaving millions and starting a war that killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.

In 1927, for example, the Globe reported on the chapter's new president, Mrs. Cecil B. Taylor (ladies of means back then used only their husband's name), who said

I shall endeavor to serve faithfully and well this organization, and I promise the same degree of devotion which animated those who, 65 years ago, gave lasting evidence of such courage and high purpose that the world still holds in affection the men and women who fought for the "lost cause."

The year before, the chapter erected a flagpole on Deer Island to fly the Confederate flag, over the grave of a Southern naval officer shot while trying to escape Georges Island, according to a Globe account at the time.