New Orleans has removed the second of four Confederate statues, with a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis being the latest one.

Early Thursday, crews wearing masks and protective helmets arrived in the dead of night unannounced to take down the statue. Ongoing protests for and against the statue's removal came to a head this week, with reports of altercations between the two opposing groups having occurred.

The Jefferson Davis statue is the second of four that has been removed, in an effort to reflect the progress the city has made since its inception.

"The monuments are an aberration," New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said in a recent interview with the Associated Press. They're actually a denial of our history and they were done in a time when people who still controlled the Confederacy were in charge of this city, and it only represents a four-year period in our 1,000-year march to where we are today."

"There's a better way to use the property these monuments are on and a way that better reflects who we are," Landrieu added.

The first statue to be removed was the Liberty Monument. The Liberty Monument was made in 1891 to honor the Crescent City White League, an organization created in 1874 to turn Republicans out of office and intimidate freedmen from voting and political organizing.

Monuments such as those of Gens. Robert E. Lee and P.G.T. Beauregard, are slated to be removed in the following several days.

The city hopes to relocate the statues to a museum or another suitable facility.