On May 31, 1926, Newark unveiled and dedicated “The Wars of America” on the historic acres of the Old Training Place, realizing a purpose first begun in 1826 when citizens placed a foundation stone for a monument in grateful commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of American independence. After one hundred years, that purpose was fulfilled in a memorial dedicated to all soldiers and sailors who contended to conserve America’s institutions and to the spirit of the wars of the republic that perpetuated independence. The completion of what earlier generations had not finished became the voluntary task of Amos Hoagland Van Horn, a Civil War veteran and patriotic citizen of Newark, whose legacy at his death in 1908 provided for the adjacent monument. The monument also recalled the Jubilee Stone deposited on July 4, 1826, as the foundation of a future memorial, with its hope that the light of the Gospel might illuminate the whole world, and it linked that earlier act with Newark’s later effort to honor liberty, responsibility, unity, and the sacrifices of the nation’s soldiers and sailors.