Violence in Charlottesville

[Husar]

Just as President Obama pardoned men who are now no longer criminals, so all Confederates were pardoned "unconditionally and without reservation" and were no longer traitors. After the Civil War, the widows, orphans and survivors of Confederate soldiers were allowed to decorate the graves of the fallen and yes, build statues to them. The statues do not honor traitors, because the men were pardoned.

As usual one might ask though: And what about their victims?

Obama mostly pardoned people who got really long sentences for owning a few grams of Marihuana AFAIK, that's a bit different from being a slave owner and being willing to kill others to be able to stay a slave owner.
Besides, your last sentence there is not necessarily correct. Someone does not stop being a traitor the moment they are pardoned, the pardoning means they are no longer prosecuted for their treason. If they were no traitors, they couldn't have been pardoned for treason in the first place.

Their being pardoned also doesn't mean the victims of their crimes have to just shut up and take it when their minions or families want to praise them for their crimes.

About 20% of the Confederate Army owned slaves. However, some of the men who fought for the Union owned slaves, too. Over the previous centuries, African rulers sold prisoners of war, criminals and undesirables into slavery. Arab slavers sold them to Europeans who brought them to the Americas. The economy of much of the world was based on the slave trade.

Except that this type of chattel slavery was pretty new and a particularly nasty form of slavery compared to the forms that had been around before:

http://www.discoveringbristol.org.uk...frica-slavery/

Slavery existed in Africa, but it was not the same type of slavery that the Europeans introduced. The European form was called chattel slavery. A chattel slave is a piece of property, with no rights. Slavery within Africa was different. A slave might be enslaved in order to pay off a debt or pay for a crime. Slaves in Africa lost the protection of their family and their place in society through enslavement. But eventually they or their children might become part of their master’s family and become free. This was unlike chattel slavery, in which enslaved Africans were slaves for life, as were their children and grandchildren.

And the fact that others participated in it for profit does not make it better, it just adds to the depravity.

So, statues were built for pardoned men out of love and respect from family and admirers

Cry me a river, by that logic we can also build statues for the men who hid children in their cellars as sex toys because their wives loved them, too.