Confederate statues removed, taken down in wake of Charlottesville violence

Around the country, lawmakers are considering the fate of Confederate monuments in the wake of the violence in Charlottesville. In some cities, symbols of the Confederacy are already gone.

Overnight in Baltimore, workers removed four monuments, including one to Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson. The city's mayor, Catherine Pugh, said that crews finished work around 5:30 a.m. Wednesday.

"They needed to come down," she told the Baltimore Sun. "My concern is for the safety and security of our people. We moved as quickly as we could."

In Birmingham, crews erected a box-like structure around a monument to Confederate soldiers and sailors on Tuesday night. In Alabama, it's illegal to remove structures, including rebel memorials, according to a law passed earlier this year. Mayoral candidate Frank Matthews said the monument should not be covered because it was not covered after gunman Dylann Roof killed nine people in a church in Charleston, South Carolina.

"That is not right," he told WIAT. "You didn't take it down when nine people was killed. Nine black people in a church."

On Monday in Gainesville, Florida, workers finished removing a statue that was meant to remember locals who lost their lives in the Civil War. "Old Joe," the statue which sat outside the Alachua County Administrative Building, was returned to the Daughters of the Confederacy.

In Durham, protesters took matters into their own hands on Monday, tying a rope around a statue of a Confederate soldier and sending it crashing to the ground. At least one of them was arrested. In North Carolina, permission from the N.C. Historical Commission is required to remove "an event, person or military service that is part of North Carolina's history."

On Wednesday, leaders of a New York Episcopal diocese removed two plaques honoring Robert E. Lee outside of a church in Brooklyn.

Other protesters around the country spray-painted and covered Confederate statues and monuments, including in Atlanta, Nashville and Louisville, Kentucky.

Before the violence in Charleston, the topic was already being hotly debated in cities around the country after the tragic shooting in Charleston. New Orleans and St. Louis were some of the most recent cities to remove Confederate monuments. The rally in Charlottesville was in part to protest plans to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee.http://cms.abcotvs.go.com/SiteEditor/

The Associated Press and ABC News contributed to this report.