Robert Gehl reports that under the cover of night, city leaders in Baltimore secretly removed Confederate statues from their bases, with crews using heavy machinery loading them onto flat-bed trucks and hauling them away to an undisclosed location.

Mayor Catherine Pugh promised to remove all four statues in the city that are linked to the Confederacy after the Baltimore City Council unanimously passed a resolution to remove them. But the “when” and “how” was unknown – until now.

After protests and counter-protests that turned deadly in Charlottesville, Va, Saturday, over the removal of a Gen. Robert E. Lee statue, city officials must have thought quietly and quickly taking them down in the middle of the night was the wisest move.

The Baltimore Sun reports that city crews began their work at 11:30 p.m. Tuesday night and were finished before daybreak at 5:30 Wednesday morning.

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Love this. 3am — Baltimore's Confederate statues getting hauled away. Bye-bye.https://t.co/4n6GPP8eqq pic.twitter.com/LAL4U5YUIm — Alec Ross (@AlecJRoss) August 16, 2017

“It’s done,” she said Wednesday morning. “They needed to come down. My concern is for the safety and security of our people. We moved as quickly as we could.”

'It's Done.' Baltimore removes its Confederate statues after Charlottesville violencehttps://t.co/vYJyJBEKNw — TIME (@TIME) August 16, 2017

Mayor Pugh personally watched as the monuments were taken down. She said she was surprised that more wasn’t done to get rid of the statues before she took office. She said they’re in an undisclosed location and she doesn’t know what will happen to them now. Her biggest concern, she says, is to avoid violent conflicts like what happened in Charlottesville.

“I did not want to endanger people in my own city,” she said. “I had begun discussions with contractors and so forth about how long it would take to remove them. I am a responsible person, so we moved as quickly as we could.”

Tuesday, leftists promised they’d tear down one of the statues themselves if the city didn’t act quickly. So the city complied.

Television news crews and a handful of police officers milled about at the Robert E. Lee & “Stonewall” Jackson Monument at Wyman Park Dell near Johns Hopkins University as the sun came up. Derek Bowden came from home, minutes away in Guilford, to take pictures of what was left of the Lee & Jackson Memorial, a vandalized stone platform devoid of the two generals. He agreed with the city’s decision, but said racism and white privilege run deeper than could be addressed solely by the removal of a few statues. “It’s major in it’s own right, but it’s small when it comes to the bigger battle,” the 59-year-old photographer said. “It’s a bigger battle. This is a small victory. There’s a larger issue we have to look at, with being Americans and upholding the Constitution, … to protect all people.”

Other statues being removed included the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument on Mount Royal Avenue, the Confederate Women’s Monument on West University Parkway and the Roger B. Taney Monument on Mount Vernon Place.