You're sliding down a rhetorical slippery slope. Statues are not all the same. They don't really preserve history as much as they celebrate a very specific vision of it, and celebration is not necessarily about facts and equal justice for all.  The history celebrated by statues is "written by the victors"" as someone said, but unlike historical writing statues cannot be supplanted by the new findings or interpretations of historians.

It's telling, for instance, that a large percentage of Confederate monuments were built in the 1920's, 50's and 60's, long after the Civil War. Hell, about 20 Civil War statues have been erected in North Carolina, apparently, since 1990! 

http://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/politics/a12015570/confederate-monuments/