[quote=@Smash]
We don't generally hand out 2nd place trophies for wars friend. It's best we just tear'em all down now.
[/quote]

Well unlike most of the big wars that make the history books, those are not from [i]Civil Wars[/i].  Families were split up over loyalty to their state and loyalty to the federal government.  It was a war where also every single casualty was an American.  The South was down right proud of how long they managed to hold out and had a good chance of actually forcing a settlement and becoming an independent confederation of states if it had not been for some very key mistakes on the battlefield.

The South never wanted to conquer the North, they just wanted to be left well enough alone.  The famous Emancipation Proclamation was a key strategic move by President Lincoln and the North both to boost their own fighting forces by getting the slaves excited by freedom to start working for them, to hit the South economically as hard as possible, and to give their fight the [i]moral[/i] edge they needed to get the regular people back on their side in the seemingly never ending war.  Most likely slavery would have died out on its own eventually but the Civil War, forced the United States to drop it very quickly since the North needed to do that to give them the edge they needed.

So why do we have so many statues of Robert E. Lee?  Robert E. Lee was a very likable man, a very successful general, and people on both sides of the war had great respect for the man.  When the war was just in its infancy President Lincoln himself asked Robert E. Lee to lead the Union troops, but the man was a state loyalist first, and so when Virginia joined the Confederacy that is the side he joined.  Robert E. Lee lead the Confederacy to victory many times throughout the war, basically was one of the main reasons the Confederacy had a chance to win, although he was also the main reason they lost in the end because of his rash decisions at Gettysburg which prevented the Confederacy from being able to put Washington DC ever in danger again so they could force terms.

Even after the war, Robert E. Lee was treated with great respect though because of the side he took he was banned from ever running for a lot of government positions.  Many people still considered him a great and honorable man and if he had never joined the Confederacy had a good chance to have been elected President of the United States if he had ever run.  The South was proud of what they had accomplished and to help ease relations during and after reconciliation, why not allow a few statues of great men and leaders to be erected?  No one put those statues up because they fought to protect slavery, but because they fought for their state's rights and gave the Union a run for their money for many years.

I would say the statues were an overall nice way to give tribute to the men who gave their lives in service to a cause they believed in and helped the South to overcome the bitter feelings of their defeat and the many changes their society had to go through in a very short period of time.  By having the nation respect these men, it helped with the reconciliation process and made reminders to all that even good men could be on the wrong side of history, also the hope that the good people of America would never be forced to choose sides and fight in a civil war ever again, a tragedy that should never be repeated.

Despite the wrongness of slavery which is what the Civil War [i]became about[/i].  As fellow Americans we can respect our fallen brothers and sisters and what they fought for.  We respect their drive and their passions but we also remind ourselves that slavery is never something to fight for, of course when the Civil War started that was not the major issue of the day.