A lot of this bullshit pride of the Confederacy can be traced back to the turn of the 20th century, which can be seen as a kind of revisionist history, because southerners were butthurt that they lost and didn't want to be depicted as evil pieces of shit:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy
Of course they were upset that they lost, but were they really evil pieces of shit?
They were men who fought for something they believed in. They lost. Then, when their generation was dying off, their children and grandchildren chose to honor them by raising money to put up statues of them.
Were they racist as we would regard racism today? Probably, but every man for his time. Lincoln is called the Great Emancipator, but if given the choice to reunite the country without freeing the slaves, would have taken that option. But instead he is honored, as he should be, but if you took Lincoln and placed him in time during the Civil Rights movement, he'd probably look as backwards as Wallace.
When Lee surrendered to Grant, Grant had him treated as an equal. He refused to allow his soldiers to celebrate the victory. "The Confederates were now our countrymen, and we did not want to exult over their downfall,"
For terms of surrrender, instead of taking prisoners and prosecuting on charges of treason, he paroled all who were engaged in revolt immediately:
wiki said:
In accordance with the substance of my letter to you of the 8th inst., I propose to receive the surrender of the Army of N. Va. on the following terms, to wit: Rolls of all the officers and men to be made in duplicate. One copy to be given to an officer designated by me, the other to be retained by such officer or officers as you may designate. The officers to give their individual paroles not to take up arms against the Government of the United States until properly exchanged, and each company or regimental commander sign a like parole for the men of their commands. The arms, artillery and public property to be parked and stacked, and turned over to the officer appointed by me to receive them. This will not embrace the side-arms of the officers, nor their private horses or baggage. This done, each officer and man will be allowed to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by United States authority so long as they observe their paroles and the laws in force where they may reside.
In light of things like this, I'm tempted to say that Federals in the field that had just fought for 4 years against the very same men that we are talking about their statues today, held them in higher regard than someone 100+ years removed from the events.
I'm not saying that any or all of these statues should remain. Personally, I take issue with any statues on public property. However, to take them down wholesale is every bit 'revisionist' history as to leave them all up.
After a nightmare weekend of Facebook where such ridiculous memes as "there is only one side" have taken root, I am disappointed but not really surprised that a striking number of Americans do not understand what it means to silence a minority group when you disagree with them. Simultaneously, they have allowed themselves to be trolled by what some estimates were fewer than 500 people. 500 people is less than you get for a high school football game in bumfuck whereeversville. Now they've multiplied their perceived strength by attaching them to basically anyone that voted for trump or really even anyone that didn't vote for Hillary. 500 skinhead, kkk, white power chucklefucks now represent the antithesis to the Democratic party. The idiots don't understand how that won't help change the course of future elections, but they'll shitpost memes on facebook to prove how 'active' they are in standing up to Nazis.
The tiki torches were a nice touch I thought.