Traditionally, America is mostly about winning (“Americans love a winner, and will not tolerate a loser.” — G.S. Patton, 1944). So the most famous losers in America history, the Confederates honored in the statues being torn down, had a countercultural glamor. As a Canadian observer of America noted:
Virgil Caine is the name, and I served on the Danville train‘Till Stoneman’s cavalry came and tore up the tracks again …
Like my father before me, I will work the land
Like my brother above me, who took a rebel stand
He was just eighteen, proud and brave, but a Yankee laid him in his grave
I swear by the mud below my feet,
You can’t raise a Caine back up when he’s in defeat
But Americans are not terribly appreciative anymore of ambiguity or ambivalence.
