A small gathering of people held a candlelight vigil at the statue of Jefferson Davis early Monday morning.
Mayor Mitch Landrieu said the removal of the Battle of Liberty Place monument early Monday morning will help the city move toward a place of healing.
Liberty Place is one of four Confederate-era monuments the city intends to remove.
A crew arrived around 1:25 a.m.to pull down the Liberty Monument, a tribute to whites who fought against an integrated post-Civil War government in New Orleans.
Because of the security risk and threats placed on contractors seeking to do the work, details about future statue removals will not be provided to the public.
Landrieu said the threats have been aggressive and that led to the monument being removed overnight. Police were also present to barricade the entry points to the monument while snipers were stationed on the parking garage of a hotel overlooking the monument.
As New Orleans' Battle of Liberty Place statue lay in pieces Monday, state offices in MS and Alabama remained closed for Confederate Memorial Day, a holiday celebrated by a handful of Southern states to remember those who died fighting for the Confederacy.
The southern USA city of New Orleans, Louisiana has begun removing four prominent monuments that paid tribute to the city's racially segregated past.
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Davis will be removed in later days now that legal challenges have been overcome. "But let me be clear: we will not be deterred".
The relocations follow debate in recent years in the South about what to do with Confederate symbols, especially after the killings of nine black parishioners in a Charleston, South Carolina, church by a self-described white supremacist in 2015.
He says three more statues will soon be removed - those of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and P.G.T. Beauregard - as well as President Jefferson Davis. In the weeks after the mass killing, SC removed the Confederate flag from state grounds. More than 30 people were killed and federal troops had to be called in to restore order.
New Orleans has begun its removal of several Confederate statues throughout the city, as a means of reflecting the progress it has made since its inception.
The Liberty Place monument taken down Monday was an 1891 obelisk honoring the Crescent City White League, which tried to overthrow a biracial Reconstruction government in New Orleans after the Civil War.
Many residents of New Orleans, a predominantly African-American city, have spoken out in support of the move.
Robert Bonner, a 63-year-old Civil War re-enactor, was there to protest the monument's removal. "You start losing where you came from and where you've been". "Nobody seems to think we've got much of a leg to stand on", Nungesser said. The city became the latest Southern body to divorce itself from what some say are symbols of racism and intolerance but which opponents say are historic.
The monuments will not be destroyed but dismantled and stored until a proper place is found to keep them.
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