Rioters tear down more statues including Ulysses S. Grant, who defeated the Confederacy and 'destroyed the KKK'

A day after Portland rioters tore down a nearly 100-year-old statue of George Washington, vandals toppled more historic statues. On Friday night, saboteurs ripped down monuments that were dedicated to Ulysses S. Grant, Francis Scott Key, and an 18th-century Spanish priest who was canonized as a saint.

Rioters leveled a statue dedicated to Ulysses S. Grant, the Republican who was the 18th president of the United States and the four-star Union general who defeated the Confederacy in the American Civil War.

Grant allegedly owned one slave for "about a year on the eve of the Civil War," according to Sean Kane, interpretations and programs specialist at The American Civil War Museum. "In 1859, Grant either bought or was given the 35-year-old Jones, who was in Grant's service until he freed him before the start of the War."

Grant wrote in his personal memoir, "As time passes, people, even of the South, will begin to wonder how it was possible that their ancestors ever fought for or justified institutions which acknowledged the right of property in man."

Many came in defense of Grant, including U.S. Senators Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who noted that Grant "destroyed the KKK."

Defenders pointed out that famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass praised the Union general and that Grant signed into law an act that empowered him to use armed forces to quash any person or group, such as the Ku Klux Klan, who disenfranchised and terrorized former slaves.

The Ulysses S. Grant statue was one of three monuments that rioters tore down on Friday night at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.

Vandals also brought down a statue of Francis Scott Key, the composer of "The Star-Spangled Banner." The rioters justified taking down Key's statue because he was a slave owner.

Video also shows rioters topple a statue of Junipero Serra, founder of the missions of California. In 2015, Serra was canonized as a saint by Pope Francis I in Washington, D.C., making him the first saint of the Roman Catholic Church to be canonized in the United States.

Rioters deemed the 1907 statue of the Spanish Roman Catholic saint to be torn down because "many Native Americans blame him for the destruction of their culture and the decimation of their ancestors from European diseases, as well as for the brutal punishment he inflicted on those who tried to run away," according to The Mercury News.

No arrests were made in San Francisco.

Also on Juneteenth, the day remembering the freeing of the last U.S. slaves over a century and a half ago, two confederate monuments were brought down in Raleigh, North Carolina. Protests escalated and rioters used ropes to take down statues of Confederate soldiers who died in the Civil War.

The statues were dragged in the streets, and then the rope was tied to light posts to mimic a public hanging. WRAL-TV reported that one person was arrested.

In Washington, D.C., rioters brought down a statue of Confederate General Albert Pike and set it on fire.

President Donald Trump condemned D.C. police for "not doing their job" by allowing the statue, which was standing near D.C. Police Headquarters, to be dismantled. Trump also tagged Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on the tweet.