For more than a year, members of the Baltimore City Council, like officials in many communities across the nation, had drifted indecisively about the fate of the city’s increasingly controversial Confederate monuments. Then, last weekend, white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., violently resurrected the frightening ghosts of the Civil War.

That settled the issue in Baltimore: On Monday night, the Council voted unanimously to take down the statues. On Tuesday night, in an unannounced, unceremonious action, four statues were torn from their pedestals as the city slept, with no throng of witnesses or protesters in attendance.

“It’s done,” Mayor Catherine Pugh told her city on Wednesday morning. She explained, “With the climate of this nation, that I think it’s very important that we move quickly and quietly.”

That is sound advice. The racist rage in Virginia and President Trump’s shamefully sympathetic response have prompted local and state politicians to encourage community peace by weighing the future of Confederate monuments civilly and unapologetically, even if the president has not.