Congaree National Park May Have to Redact Three Items of Printed Material on Slavery

Congaree National Park in South Carolina is eighteen miles southeast of the state’s capital of Columbia. The park gets fewer than 150,000 visitors every year and it is one of the ten least-visited National Parks in the country. The park is known for its swampy environment, high humidity, and bugs.

Most visitors follow a two and a half mile boardwalk that allows them to study the wetlands environment. As you go along, there is very little on the human history of the site, but much about the birds, fish, and animals that make their home here. I was surprised to see that there were three pieces of printed matter that were identified as questionable by Interior Department staff.

I have been spending the last month looking at the exhibits, artifacts, and signage that Interior Department employees have flagged for possibly being against President Trump’s 2025 Executive Order telling the Interior Department, of which the National Park Service is a part, to review everything at the National Parks and find items and verbiage that should be redacted.

Last year the president issued one of his first Executive Orders calling for the National Park Service (NPS) to restore “sanity” in telling United States history. In the Fall of 2025 the Interior Department ordered individual sites to identify signage and exhibits that violate the new executive order. I have been examining the sites which have submitted controversial exhibits to their superiors for removal or rewriting. At the end of February, insiders at the Interior Department leaked those exhibits which are being considered. The photos in this article were taken by employees of the Interior Department and submitted as potentially violative of the Executive Order.

The president’s Executive Order says that some of the National Parks harm the “United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.” The president says that proper history should “foster unity.” He writes that “Rather than fostering unity and a deeper understanding of our shared past, the widespread effort to rewrite history deepens societal divides and fosters a sense of national shame.” The president sketches out how the National Park Service should approach history:

“It is the policy of my Administration to restore Federal sites dedicated to history, including parks and museums, to solemn and uplifting public monuments that remind Americans of our extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union, and unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity, and human flourishing. ”

Let us look at what is flagged for possible removal.

In the park service brochure on People in the Floodplain the section on escaped slaves was marked with a yellow highlighter by an Interior Service employee because it may be in violation of the president’s order.

You can see why this might violate the president’s order. In the first sentence it says that slaves were seeking “freedom” from “the oppressive plantation economy.” At the end of the paragraph, the author refers to “the cruelty of slavery,” caving into the modern “Woke” mindset. Curtis Yarvin, the historian that the president’s administration listens to, says that Black people were better off under slavery than under Emancipation. So referring to slavery as characterized by “cruelty” is suspect to the historians of the current administration. The author of the passage also says that Black people “chose to resist their masters and live as free people in the wilderness rather than as slaves.” Again, this would be highly questionable in 2026.

There is also a panel that describes the swamp as a refuge during Reconstruction. Entitled “Sanctuary,” the panel really doesn’t say very much other than the swamp was a good place for Blacks to escape plantation life.

There is also a poster that says that slavery was the cause of the Civil War that has also been flagged. The handout says that while a number of issues caused the Civil War, all of them “were inextricably bound to the institution of slavery.” Most historians have accepted that interpretation since the 1950s, but that also now appears to be questionable.