Crews removed Baltimore’s Confederate statues early Wednesday, days after the deadly unrest in Charlottesville instigated by white nationalists rallying to defend a downtown Confederate monument.
The quiet and sudden removal of four monuments, with little fanfare and no advance notice, marks an attempt by the city to avoid a long, bruising conflict that has embroiled Charlottesville and other communities rethinking how they honor figures who fought to preserve slavery.
Baltimore Mayor Catherine E. Pugh announced Monday she was in talks with contractors to haul away the statues, and the city council approved a removal plan that night. Some activists had vowed to destroy the monuments before government could act.
Photos and video posted on social media Wednesday morning showed crews using cranes to remove statues of Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. ‘‘Stonewall’’ Jackson, hauled away on a flatbed truck. Statues honoring Confederate women and Roger B. Taney, the former chief justice who authored the notorious proslavery Dred Scott decision, were also removed.
A statue to Confederate soldiers and sailors, which was defaced with bright red paint over the weekend, is also gone.
On the base of the now-empty Jackson and Lee monument are messages saying ‘‘Black lives matter’’ and ‘‘(Expletive) the Confederacy,’’ according to photos shared on Twitter.
At a Wednesday news conference, Pugh said she pushed for the removal of the statues as soon as she was able to find a contractor, and stayed up all night watching as they were hauled away.
‘‘There’s enough grandstanding, speeches being made. Get it done,’’ Pugh recalled thinking as they were removed. ‘‘With the climate of this nation, I think it’s very important we move very quickly and quietly.’’
Just a day earlier, Pugh said she would seek approval from the Maryland Historical Trust, a state agency, to remove the Lee-Jackson monument, then provide a public timeline for removal.
But she defended skipping those steps as necessary for keeping the community safe. She didn’t have an estimate for how much the statue removal would cost taxpayers.
Carolyn Billups, former president of the Maryland Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, criticized Pugh for bypassing rules in the rush to remove the statues.
‘‘That’s an act of lawlessness in my mind,’’ said Billups, who lives in St. Mary’s County. ‘‘This is a public figure, this is the leader of a city. If you expect or hope that your constituents to respect the law, you have to toe the line.’’
Pugh said Wednesday she didn’t know where the monuments were taken, adding that their fates would be determined by a group that was created to address their future. The mayor’s office is also reaching out to cemeteries where Confederate soldiers are buried to see if they want the statues.
