I did. Yes of course not everyone in the south was fighting for the right to own slaves, and not everyone in the north was fighting to free them. Robert E. Lee may never have owned slaves, but he apparently left it up to God to decide when slavery ended, and he allowed his own men to capture slaves. The confederate constitution itself endorsed the preservation of a crime against humanity. That inevitably affects the legacy of any leader or hero associated with the confederacy, including their memorials. I'll make the cliched but appropriate point that there were good people in Nazi Germany too, but the state endorsement of a crime against humanity, and the complicity (willing or not) of the citizenry destroyed the reputation of the country and put a shroud over related monuments from that era.
Do claims of bigotry and stupidity also apply to assuming that all southerners endorse keeping the monuments, at least any more than all Confederates endorsed slavery or all Union soldiers wanted it gone? As was mentioned earlier, in Charlottesville the decision to take the statue down was made by the city council. Locals. What does that say?
