At the central point of Gettysburg National Cemetery, the Soldiers' National Monument rises in front of you. This memorial honors the battle's soldiers and is meant to tell an allegory of "peace and plenty under freedom … following a heroic struggle. Inch by inch the monument speaks: the shaft with four buttresses rises from a pedestal that carries the last four lines of the Gettysburg Address in an inscription.
Crowned above all is a large statue representing Liberty. Below Liberty, eighteen large bronze stars circle the pedestal, each representing one of the eighteen Union states with buried dead. At each corner near the base you'll find a personified figure: War, History, Peace, and Plenty.
The figure of War is an American soldier who appears to recount the story of the battle to History. History, with stylus and tablet, records the achievements of the battle and the names of the honored dead. Peace is shown as an American mechanic with his tools, and Plenty is a woman holding a sheaf of wheat and the fruits of the earth, symbols of abundance as the soldier's crowning triumph.
War, History, Peace, and Plenty still stand at each corner, eighteen bronze stars circling the base beneath Liberty's watch over your walk through the cemetery.