In war, the victors always get to write the history. For over century and a half of federal government propaganda about the causes and effects of the War for Southern Independence has been so effective that Granite even believes it...
The words of the Confederacy's founders speak for themselves, doc. These weren't noble patriots fighting for some glorious cause. They were racists dedicated to promoting and protecting white supremacy right to the death. I'm sick of Confederate romanticism. There's nothing romantic about their cause. These men were morally repugnant traitors and their cause and its symbols belong in a museum or dumpster.
It's this spirit of "romantic" lost causes that persists in South Carolina to this day, and with the results that we see in Charleston.
P.S. Let's not forget Jeff Davis, Longstreet, and others had a chance to write their own history (and did so). You can't sugarcoat what these men fought for, and why. Their nation, despite some individual misgivings on the part of some men who wore gray, was dedicated to the proposition that the white man was created to rule the black.