The statues of leaders of the South are not national heroes. They supported and lead a war to be allowed to continue to enslave a race of people that considered to be property and subhuman. It is only 50 years since the Supreme Court ruled that those states must not put into jail any married couple of a black person (1/16 black blood) and a white person. The war was not about states rights, it was only about the states right to have slaves. Period. Every comment by every contemporary Southern politician knew it. The CSA which was formed by the traitors had a constitution. Did it have anything in it about "states rights" if you think that was so important to them. Read it.

The CSA almost word for word copied the US Constitution but it did make some changes.

The US has The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States

The CSA has
The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States; and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired

See the difference? No state in the CSA, that bastion of states rights, has the right to prohibit slavery or even the transportation of slaves through its territory. Now if this was all about states rights, why did the CSA say the state can do what it wants except to prohibit slavery?

Or how about this addition

The Confederate States may acquire new territory; and Congress shall have power to legislate and provide governments for the inhabitants of all territory belonging to the Confederate States, lying without the limits of the several states; and may permit them, at such times, and in such manner as it may by law provide, to form states to be admitted into the Confederacy. In all such territory, the institution of negro slavery as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress, and by the territorial government: and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories, shall have the right to take to such territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the states or territories of the Confederate states

See that, we in the CSA welcome any new territory as long as it also protects the institution of slavery.

So stop with this revisionist history of the war being about rights. It was about one "right". The "right" to own slaves

See the statement of the first state to leave the Union, South Carolina
Avalon Project - Confederate States of America - Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union
Take your time and read it. It states that South Carolina, like the other slaveholding states, felt that because Lincoln had won the election {On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States. } it was now time to get out because the Union seemed to want to abolish slavery. It is all about slavery. Only slavery.

Go ahead, read the secession statements of the other states, same story. We are leaving because we need to protect our institution of slavery.

So now, tell me again about the nobility of those who lead this war. You may think Lee is an American hero. I do not. Nor are any of the others who supported this rebellion because they believed they needed to defend slavery.

And statues were erected not right after the war to honor their dead, no those statues were erected once the Jim Crow laws were enacted and the KKK was in its fullest glory. They were erected by a culture that did not find it necessary to honor any person who opposed slavery, no statues of Lincoln, no statues of Sojourner Truth, no tributes to H B Stowe.

These statues, and the flag we too often still see including the one on Betty Exum's house, honor the institution of slavery and those who would rather die than give up that right to own property. Nikki Haley finally understood. Maybe you can too if you read the record the south left of its own justification for war.

You don't see Germany erecting statues to its WW 2 generals saying wonderful things about the honorable causes those generals believed in. You don't see sane Germans flying Nazi flags to honor the German dead and the glory of their war and all the good things the Nazis did, you know other than that concentration camp thing they were pretty good for Germany and believed in the beauty of German culture and its institutions.