By Thomas F. Schwartz
“This is a place of inspiring memories,” declared President Herbert Hoover marking the 150th anniversary of the battle on October 7, 1930. “Here less than a thousand men, inspired by the urge of freedom, defeated a superior force intrenched in this strategic position. This small band of patriots turned back a dangerous invasion well designed to separate and dismember the united Colonies. It was a little army and a little battle, but it was of 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.”
Hoover’s comments might strike some as patriotic hyperbole. Both Thomas Jefferson and later Theodore Roosevelt shared Hoover’s high opinion on the importance of the battle. Modern military historians also note its significance. The battle was entirely waged between colonists: those loyal to King George III led by Patrick Ferguson and those loyal to the Continental Congress led by William Campbell and others. The loyalists used traditional military tactics of bayonet charges in open fields with muskets while the patriots used frontier tactics hiding behind trees firing more accurate rifles. Fought on a rugged hilltop in South Carolina, the battle prevented Ferguson from joining his forces with the British General Lord Charles Cornwallis, forcing Cornwallis to retreat to North Carolina and eventually Virginia, ending a further threat of British activity in the deep south. As Hoover also notes, the battle “revived the courage of the despondent Colonies and set a nation upon the road of final triumph in American independence.”
In 1931, Congress created the Kings Mountain National Military Park at the site of the battle as a place of commemoration. Hoover’s address of the previous year had a larger purpose than merely discussing the importance of the victory to the ultimate military success of the American Revolution. The bulk of the address discussed how the ideals of the Revolution distinguished America from all other systems of government and why American uniqueness must be preserved for future generations.
Hoover explained:
Our political system was a revolt from dictatorship, whether by individuals or classes. It was founded upon the conception that freedom was inalienable, and that liberty and freedom should rest upon law, and that law should spring from the expressed wisdom of the representatives of the majority of the people themselves. This self-government was not in itself a new human ideal, but the Constitution, which provided its framework with the checks and balances which gave it stability, was of marvelous genius. Yet of vastly more importance than even the machinery of government was the inspired charter of the rights of men which it guaranteed. Under them we hold that all men are created equal, that they are equal before the law, and that they should be safeguarded in liberty and, as we express it latterly, in equality of opportunity to every individual that he may achieve for himself and for the community the best to which his character, his ability, and his ambition entitle him.
No student of American history can fail to realize that these principles and ideals grew largely out of the religious origins and spiritual aspirations of our people. From them spring at once the demand for free and universal education, that the door of opportunity and the ladder to leadership should be free for every new generation, to every boy and girl. It is these human rights and the success of government which has maintained them that have stimulated the initiative and effort in each individual, the sum of which has been the gigantic achievement of the Nation. They are the precious heritage of America, far more important, far more valuable, than all the riches in land and mines and factories that we possess. Never had these principles and ideals been assembled elsewhere and combined into government. This is the American system.