The bronze likeness of John C. Calhoun was pulled from its perch and loaded up to be hauled away on Wednesday.
After 17 hours of work, the statue which has stood over downtown Charleston for over 100 years was finally freed from its mooring atop a 110-foot pedestal.
[content-2] Crews worked through the night and into the early evening, pausing at times to repair equipment and determine how to disassemble the stubborn 19th-century statue.
Charleston City Council voted unanimously on Tuesday to support a resolution calling for the statue's relocation to be preserved in an institutional museum-like setting.
Calhoun is credited with championing the theory of nullification, which Southern states used to resist federal laws they deemed unconstitutional and laid the philosophical groundwork for South Carolina's secession in 1860 over pressure by abolitionists.
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