I grew up in the deep South, and the Confederacy was a proud part of our legacy, UNTIL all things confederate were co-opted to stand for segregation. For example, as soon as the Supreme Court ruled in Brown Vs. Board of Education, my home state of Georgia put the stars and bars on to the Georgia flag in 1956:
It didn't stop there, of course, it is no longer the symbol of the confederacy. It is the tool of redneck racists.
UNTIL all things confederate were co-opted to stand for segregation.
Nobody, subsequent to the Confederacy's defeat, "co-opted all things Confederate" to stand for slavery, segregation and white supremacy. In the words of
Alexander Stevens, Vice President of the Confederate States of America:
"The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization."
"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery -- subordination to the superior race -- is his natural and normal condition."
"With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system."
Nobody co-opted history and thereby misrepresented the central belief about what the CSA stood for. Quite simply, and as seen from the words of the VP of the CSA, the Confederates' central belief about white supremacy and slavery formed the cornerstone upon which the CSA was built. Period.