While we debate whether Confederate soldiers were or were not traitors, it is important to note three things.
By laws enacted in Congress in 1906, 1929, and 1958, Confederate veterans and their widows and orphans were fully entitled to the full range of U.S. veterans benefits, including old age pensions, widows and orphans pensions, and burial headstones. Second, the majority of Confederate soldiers were not slave holders. While the officers of the Confederacy were drawn from the landed plantation elite, the enlisted ranks were filled with small subsistence farmers and common laborers, most of whom were way too poor to own slaves and many of whom lived in conditions not much better than slaves, except of course that they were free. Third, some Confederate officers were later accepted back into the American army and served honorably during the Spanish-America War.
While labeling Confederate soldiers and their officers traitors may be correct in a sense, it may also violate the spirit of national reconciliation and healing America committed itself to after the Civil War. We need more of that healing now, not less.
Whether statues to Confederate generals should or should not be taken down is another issue altogether.
