Notes

"This design has become a recognized symbol of racism and white supremacy to some, especially in the Southern United States." (in regards to the modern confederate flag)

"A June 2020 Politico-Morning Consult poll of 1,995 registered voters reported that 44% viewed it as a symbol of Southern pride while 36% viewed it as a symbol of racism. A July 2020 Quinnipiac poll showed that 55% of Southerners saw the Confederate flag as a symbol of racism, with a similar percentage for Americans as a whole. A YouGov poll of over 34,000 Americans reported that 41% viewed the flag as representing racism, and 34% viewed it as symbolizing heritage."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_of_the_Confederate_States_of_America


"Unlike many slaveholders in the age of Thomas Jefferson, Confederate soldiers from slaveholding families expressed no feelings of embarrassment or inconsistency in fighting for their liberty while holding other people in slavery. Indeed, white supremacy and the right of property in slaves were at the core of the ideology for which Confederate soldiers fought."
— James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (1997), p. 106.

"Although only 20 percent of the soldiers avowed explicit proslavery purposes in their letters and diaries, none at all dissented from that view."
— James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (1997), p. 110, emphasis in original.


In 1894, Virginian and former Confederate soldier John S. Mosby, reflecting on his role in the war, stated in a letter to a friend that "I've always understood that we went to war on account of the thing we quarreled with the North about. I've never heard of any other cause than slavery."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_States_Army



These charts show how many words were devoted to the issues raised in each state's Declaration as a percentage of the whole. "Context" refers to procedural language and/or historical exposition that is not connected to a specific argument.
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/reasons-secession


The Confederates built an explicitly white-supremacist, pro-slavery, and antidemocratic nation-state, dedicated to the principle that all men are not created equal. Emboldened by what they saw as the failure of emancipation in other parts of the world, buoyed by the new science of race, and convinced that the American vision of the people had been terribly betrayed, they sought the kind of future for human slavery and conservative republican government that was no longer possible within the United States. This is the cause that the statues honor.
https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/613309/