Traitors? Before the Civil War, people thought of the US as a union of independent nations, like the EU. The people who fought for Virginia were being patriots to Virginia. You can call them many things, but certainly not traitors.
That's not true. Before the American civil war the United States was a singular nation, the states were not sovereign; we had attempted something like that very early in our history under the Articles of Confederation but it was a total failure of an experiment and so the Articles were tossed and the US Constitution was drafted and fully ratified in 1789. What is true is that in the antebellum era there were different views and perspectives in the relationship between State governments and the Federal government.
Yes, those who ceded from the country and fought against the US were traitors of their country. That one man's patriot is another man's traitor may be all well and good, after all, the American founders and all the colonists who fought for their independence against Britain were traitors against the British Crown. Had America lost its war for independence it'd be a bit strange to have statues of Washington, Jefferson, et al; traitors. So the complex forces of history determines whether one is a patriot or a traitor--but the fact remains that the "heros" of the Confederacy were traitors against the US, and their cause was unjust and immoral.
And in spite of claims to the contrary, the primary cause of the Civil War wasn't something as nebulous as "state rights", the cause of the American civil war was the issue of slavery. This is evidenced by the Declaration of Secession, and the words themselves of the leaders of the Confederacy.
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The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation." - from the
Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union
To suggest, as many do, it was merely "states rights" fails entirely to understand that the very particular "right" which these states were interested in was their "right"
to own other human beings.
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Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth." - Alexander H. Stephens, Vice President of the Confederate States of America,
Cornerstone Speech, 1861
Is, frankly, the nail in the coffin here.
These are statues which glorify traitors whose unjust and immoral cause was the institution of perpetual slavery for men and women of African descent, statues which were erected and installed not during the time of the Confederacy, or shortly thereafter in the post-bellum period, but during periods of civil rights advocacy in the early 20th century and during the Civil Rights era of the 1960's; the whole point of these monuments was to terrorize black Americans. That was their purpose. These statues were erected intentionally, not to honor the Confederacy as such, or even these particular historical figures as such, but as symbols of terror against an oppressed people so that they "knew their place".
-CryptoLutheran
