Presidential Recognition

At Kings Mountain, fewer than a thousand men, inspired by the urge of freedom, defeated a superior force and turned back a dangerous invasion designed to separate and dismember the united colonies. Though it was a small army and a little battle, Herbert Hoover called it an engagement of mighty portent that deserved to stand beside Lexington and Bunker Hill, Trenton, and Yorktown among the crucial struggles for independence. On October 7, 1930, Hoover became the first President of the United States to visit a Revolutionary War battlefield in the South, speaking before a crowd said to number 70,000 and to be the largest assembly yet seen on the East Coast. His address was broadcast by radio across the United States and to Great Britain, and within a year Congress established Kings Mountain National Military Park, granting the battlefield the federal status and protection long sought by the Daughters of the American Revolution.

South Carolina · United States