This conversation is a lot of different discussions.
1) When Doing starts these threads, it is to see how open we are to various ideas. Sort of an anti extremist exercise. Hammering in a point misses the OP. So if you are trying to do just that, direct it to someone else.
2) As a Yid, I am not into any statues. Let Mount Rushmore be destroyed in a mudslide.
3) There are more productive methods than pulling down statues. And it does not need to be stated that it is owned property. Everybody knows that. Maybe they should build a statue to the sacredness of ownership and possession.
4) Most of those pulling down statues are clueless. Tell them that the Jackie Robinson Parkway is named after a slave trader. The correct analogy would be Hebrew Israelites taking down Nazi statues.
5) There are statues that were erected in southern cities mainly to intimidate blacks. The Government should have removed those decades ago.
6) There about half a million slaves in the USA today.
7) The moral question of being a slave owner, is no different than being an employer. The concern is how you treat those beneath you (or in a lower social class). Morally, titles are insignificant.
8) If the South would have abolished slavery, there would have been no secession. Had they abolished slavery and seceded for no reason, the majority of Northerners would not have supported the Civil War. And, without the need to control vast amount of slaves, the South could have ran a more efficient military campaign. [Not to mention Blacks helping the North as spies. And hundreds of blacks who could not serve in the Confederacy.]
9) There have been attempts to revise the narrative around the Civil War to exclude slavery (or treason) since the 1890s. Some educators bought in, because of some liberal idea of multiple viewpoints or the like.