Baltimore city contractors removed a statue depicting the fifth Chief Justice of the United States along with three Confederate monuments in an overnight operation that started on Tuesday, Aug. 15.
Workers used heavy machinery to tear the statues from their pedestals and load them onto trucks to be haled away. The move ends a year of indecision in Baltimore about relics to the city’s Confederate history, The Baltimore Sun reported.
It is unclear how the statue depicting Roger B. Taney was lumped in. Taney was the fifth chief justice of the United States and personally administered the oath of office to Abraham Lincoln. Although Taney’s views on race were in opposition to Lincoln’s, he never went South to join the Confederate states during the Civil War.
The removal was ordered by Mayor Catherine Pugh, a Democrat, and backed unanimously by the Baltimore City Council, which is made up entirely of Democrats.
