relevant to my interests

Turns out Americans have a history of taking down statues of oppressors. From the New York Times:

His Majesty’s protuberant eyes were fixed cruelly on his New York subjects. His voluptuous lips were set in steely resolve. Towering on a marble base above the Bowling Green, the gilded equestrian statue of King George III evoked a Roman emperor. With right arm upraised over the heads of the rabble, his message to a colony in revolutionary turmoil was plain enough: Don’t even think about it. 

On July 9, 1776, however, after hearing the newly adopted Declaration of Independence publicly proclaimed, 40 American soldiers and sailors under the command of Capt. Oliver Brown stole down to the Bowling Green in Lower Manhattan under cover of night. They lashed ropes around the statue, pulled until their ropes broke and then pulled again. At last, the symbol of a detested monarchy lay in pieces on the ground. Pieces of precious lead. 

“His statue here has been pulled down to make musket ball of, so that his troops will probably have melted Majesty fired at them,” Ebenezer Hazard, the New York postmaster, wrote to Gen. Horatio Gates. 

Reduced to 42,088 musket balls, a pedestal and a few barely recognizable scraps, the statue all but disappeared. 

And lookit, here's a painting from the New York Historical Society that documents the day:

And an engraving based on the painting!