Confederate statues are, to me, more akin to statues of Timothy McVeigh than Washington or Jefferson.
I am not sure it is valid to compare Confederates to the likes of Timothy McVeigh. A lot of people boil the Confederacy down to slavery and racism. I am willing to bet the truth is a bit more complicated.
People retroactively apply all sorts of alternate intentions on the Confederates. Fortunately, the Confederates documented their intentions when they wrote their various Causes for Secession. Slavery and racism were right there in black and white: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world”. “Fighting for southern hospitality and the right to sip sweet tea under the willow oaks” didn’t make the cut. South Carolina even included language explicitly opposing the principle of states’ rights (which is the one thing most commonly retroactively misattributed to the Confederate cause). Not a lot of scholars think the Confederates weren’t truthful when they wrote down their causes for secession, but I suppose the argument’s been made.
But all that is a little beside the point, since the statues were put up long after the Confederates were defeated, during the reign of terror (End of Reconstruction to Civil Rights Act), when Confederate identity was already undergoing changes, and was less about slavery specifically and more about white supremacy in general.
McVeigh isn’t a perfect analog for the Confederates, he’s just the best I could come up with. But the primary difference is he had a much lower body count.