Story highlights 718 monuments and statues supporting Confederate causes existed last year

Virginia is the state with the most Confederate symbols with 223

Trump on Tuesday said removing a Confederate memorial was "changing history"

Washington (CNN) As a growing number of American cities worked to remove statues commemorating the Confederacy, President Donald Trump defended the statues again Thursday, arguing that removing them uproots American "culture" and history.

"Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments," he said in a series of tweets . "You........can't change history, but you can learn from it. Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson - who's next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish! Also......the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!"

Defending the statues, which have become the center of a raging controversy about whether they glorify racism, was the catalyst for protests that ultimately turned violent in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend.

Centered in the Deep South but stretching from California to Massachusetts, roughly 1,500 Confederate symbols still exist on public land more than 150 years after the conclusion of the Civil War.

Roughly half of those symbols -- 718 of them as of last year -- are monuments and statues. Three in four of them were built before 1950, but at least one in 10 of them were dedicated during the civil rights movement or since the year 2000.

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