Would you call it historical revisionism to remove Confederate monuments 150 years after the Civil War?

No. It is not historical revisionism to remove statues or rename buildings etc. for racists, or for any other reason. But why limit it to Confederate Civil War generals, politicians and slave owners? There are many slave owners and racists who have been honored with monuments, statutes and buildings. If some, why not all?

First let’s deal with the term “Traitor” that many respondents have used for the Confederates. The 1783 Treaty of Paris ended the war between the colonies and Great Britain. It’s first article declared the 13 colonies “to be free, sovereign and independent states.” In 1787, these 13 sovereign nations came together as principals and created the federal government as their agent for specific activities, i.e. “enumerated powers”. Principals have the right to fire their agent and withdraw from the pact, that is secede.

During the 1787 Constitutional Convention, a proposal was made that would allow the federal government to suppress a seceding state. James Madison rejected it, saying, “A union of the states containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a state would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound.” In fact, the ratification documents of Virginia, New York and Rhode Island explicitly said they held the right to resume powers delegated should the federal government become abusive of those powers. The Constitution never would have been ratified if states thought they could not regain their sovereignty.

Our own Declaration of Independence stipulates that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their Safety and Happiness.”

On March 2, 1861, after seven states seceded and two days before Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration, Sen. James R. Doolittle of Wisconsin proposed a constitutional amendment that read, “No state or any part thereof, heretofore admitted or hereafter admitted into the union, shall have the power to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the United States.” Several months earlier, Reps. Daniel E. Sickles of New York, Thomas B. Florence of Pennsylvania and Otis S. Ferry of Connecticut proposed a constitutional amendment to prohibit secession. If secession were already unconstitutional, why did they think a constitutional amendment was necessary?

I would argue that as the original states that founded the Federal Government were sovereign, then they had the implicit right to withdraw from their previous commitment and an absolute right as our Declaration of Independence spelled out in our withdrawal from Great Britain. So, they were not traitors any more than our Founding Fathers were although Great Britain certainly thought so.

As Walter Williams, a black Economist at George Mason University, recently wrote, “The War of 1861 brutally established that states could not secede. We are still living with its effects. Because states cannot secede, the federal government can run roughshod over the U.S. Constitution’s limitations of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. States have little or no response.”

Now to the racists, slave owners etc.

13 U. S. Presidents owned slaves at one point or another. They are as follows: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson and Ulysses S. Grant. Half of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence owned slaves and half of the 55 delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia owned slaves.

Lincoln lays out his objectives concerning slavery in a letter to Horace Greeley as follows:

Executive Mansion,
Washington, August 22, 1862.

Hon. Horace Greeley:
Dear Sir.

I have just read yours of the 19th. addressed to myself through the New-York Tribune. If there be in it any statements, or assumptions of fact, which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not now and here, argue against them. If there be perceptible in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right.

As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing" as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.

Yours,
A. Lincoln.

In addition, the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to slaves in the Confederate States. It did not free slaves in States that were not part of the Confederacy. Complete abolition of slavery only came about with the passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution on December 2, 1865.

As to being racist, I suspect that almost all the early Presidents were and not a few of the more modern Presidents as well, but one stands out, Woodrow Wilson. He regretted the loss of the South in the Civil War and re-segregated the Federal Civil Service which had been desegregated during reconstruction. He also told a group of black professionals who appeared at the White House to protest the new policies that “segregation is not a humiliation but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen.” He also segregated the Armed Forces putting all blacks in all black regiments with white officers. Another outstanding example is senator Robert Byrd (D W. VA) who was Kleagle and Exalted Cyclops of his local KKK who frequently used the “N” word. His name is on numerous public buildings, highways, and other assorted public works. Then there is Earl Warren, who when he was Attorney General of California, urged the removal of all Japanese from the West Coast after the attack on Pearl Harbor. His remarks on the matter were entirely racist. There are many more who could be named, but if we want to cleanse all traces of slave owners and racist, we have a huge job ahead including our currency. Slave owner George Washington on the $1 bill, slave owner Thomas Jefferson on the $2 bill, slave owner Ulysses S. Grant on the $50 bill and slave owner Benjamin Franklin on the $100 bill.