Existing comment:
Presidential Recognition
150th Anniversary of the battle
"This is a place of inspiring memories.
"Here less than a thousand men, inspired by the urge of freedom, defeated a superior force....This small band of patriots turned back a dangerous invasion well-designed to separate and dismember the united colonies.
"It was a small army and a little battle, but it was mighty portent. History has done scant justice to its significance, which rightly should place it beside Lexington and Bunker Hill, Trenton and Yorktown, as one of the crucial engagements in our long struggle for independence."
-- Herbert Hoover, October 7,1930
Imagine a throng of 70,000 people covering the hillside where today you see only thickening forest. A President of the United States had come, for the first time, to a Revolutionary War battlefield in the South. His audience that day was said to be the largest assembly ever seen on the East Coast up to that time. President Hoover's words were broadcast by radio coast-to-coast in the United States-and to Great Britain. Within a year of his visit, Congress established Kings Mountain National Military Park-at last giving this battlefield the federal status and protection the Daughters of the American Revolution had long sought. |