Thomas Starr King | |
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| Born | (1824-12-17)December 17, 1824 New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Died | March 4, 1864(1864-03-04) (aged 39) San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Minister, orator |
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Thomas Starr King (December 17, 1824 – March 4, 1864), often known asStarr King, was an AmericanUniversalist andUnitarian minister, influential inCalifornia politics during theAmerican Civil War, and Freemason.[1] Starr King spoke zealously in favor of theUnion and was credited byAbraham Lincoln with preventing California from becoming a separate republic. He is sometimes referred to as "the orator who saved the nation".[2][3]
He was born on December 17, 1824, inNew York City to Rev. Thomas Farrington King, a Universalist minister, and Susan Starr King. The sole support of his family at 15, he was forced to leave school.[citation needed] Inspired by men likeRalph Waldo Emerson andHenry Ward Beecher, King embarked on a program of self-study for the ministry. At the age of 20 he took over his father's former pulpit at the Charlestown Universalist Church inCharlestown,Massachusetts.
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In 1849, he was appointed pastor of theHollis Street Church inBoston, where he became one of the most famous preachers inNew England and a noted speaker on thelyceum circuit through New England and as far as Chicago. He was ranked as one of the four greatest lyceum speakers, along withWendell Phillips,Edwin Hubbell Chapin, andHenry Ward Beecher;[4] for some reason, a celebrated fifth speaker,Ralph Waldo Emerson, was not included in this tally. His lyceum lectures for general audiences included "Substance and Show", "Sights and Insights", "The Ideal and the Real", "Existence and Life",[4] and a number of talks onPlato andJohann Wolfgang von Goethe. AsEdward Everett Hale recounts:[5]
King said that a popular lyceum lecture was made of five parts of sense and five of nonsense. "There are only five men in America," said he, "who know how to mix them—and I think I am one of the five." Other people thought so too, and did not detect the nonsense. His carefully wrought lectures are worth anybody's study today. He is the author of another lyceum chestnut. Some one asked him what his honorarium was for each lecture. "F.A.M.E.," said he—"Fifty And My Expenses."
During those years, Starr King vacationed in theWhite Mountains ofNew Hampshire and in 1859 published a book about the area entitledThe White Hills; their Legends, Landscapes, & Poetry. In 1860 he accepted a call from theFirst Unitarian Church ofSan Francisco,California. In July of that year, he visitedYosemite and was moved spiritually by its splendor. Upon returning to San Francisco, he began preaching a series of sermons on Yosemite, published letters about it in theBoston Evening Transcript, and aligned himself with fellow abolitionist and landscape architect,Frederick Law Olmsted, to have Yosemite set aside as a reserve. Yosemite would become aCalifornia State Park and eventually anational park.[6] Starr King joined the Freemasons and was raised to the sublime degree of Master Mason in Oriental Lodge No. 144 in San Francisco, now Phoenix Lodge No. 144, and served as grand orator of the Grand Lodge of California in 1863.[1]
During the Civil War, Starr King spoke zealously in favor of theUnion and was credited byAbraham Lincoln with preventing California from becoming a separate republic. At the urging ofJessie Benton Frémont, Starr King teamed up with writerBret Harte, and Starr King read Harte's patriotic poems at pro-Union speeches.[7] Starr King also read original verses byHenry Wadsworth Longfellow andJames Russell Lowell which captured the imagination of the Californians. In a letter by Starr King wrote toJames T. Fields, the editor of theAtlantic Monthly, "The state must be Northernized thoroughly, by schools, Atlantic Monthlies, lectures, N.E. preachers."[7] On George Washington's birthday in 1861, King spoke for two hours to over a thousand people about how they should remember Washington by preserving the Union:[8]
"I pitched into Secession, Concession andCalhoun, right and left, and made the Southerners applaud. I pledged California to a Northern Republic and to a flag that should have no treacherous threads of cotton in its warp, and the audience came down in thunder. At the close it was announced that I would repeat it the next night, and they gave me three rounds of cheers." ... King covered his pulpit with an American flag and ended all his sermons with "God bless the president of the United States and all who serve with him the cause of a common country."
Starr King's younger brother, Edward Starr King, served as captain of the clipper shipSyren. Capt. Starr King arrived in San Francisco aboardSyren just two days after his elder brother's stirring 1861 speech about Washington and the Union, remarking, "Starr has the brains of the family, and I the brawn."[9]
In addition, Starr King organized the Pacific Branch of theUnited States Sanitary Commission, which raised money and medical materials for wounded soldiers and was the predecessor to theAmerican Red Cross. A fiery orator, he raised more than $1.5 million for the Sanitary Commission headquarters inNew York City, one-fifth of the total contributions from all the states in the Union.
The relentless lecture circuit exhausted him, and he died in San Francisco on March 4, 1864, ofdiphtheria andpneumonia. His dying words were said to be "Beautiful boy", referring to his young son.[10] Over twenty thousand people attended his funeral and several of his friends includingCharles Stoddard,Bret Harte andIna Coolbrith published tributes.[11] King was first interred on the 100 block of Geary Street[12] and is now interred at First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco at Starr King Way and Franklin Street between O'Farrell Street and Geary Street in San Francisco.[13] In the 1940s, most of San Francisco's dead were disinterred and moved to new resting places outside city limits; the grave of Starr King was one of the very few allowed to remain undisturbed.[14]
As part of honors originally paid to Rev. King, he was judged worthy of representing California in theNational Statuary Hall Collection displayed in theUnited States Capitol. In 1913, King was voted one of California's two greatest heroes and funds were appropriated for a statue. In 1931, California officially donated a bronze statue of King to be mounted in Statuary Hall.
On August 31, 2006, however, the California Legislature approved a joint resolution to replace Thomas Starr King's statue in Statuary Hall with a statue ofRonald Reagan.[26] The resolution was authored by Republican State SenatorDennis Hollingsworth, who stated the reason for the resolution as, "To be honest with you, I wasn't sure who Thomas Starr King was, and I think there's probably a lot of Californians like me."[27] He also went on to observe that King was not a native of the state though, of course, neither was Reagan (nor wasJunípero Serra, the other statue representing California in Statuary Hall).
As a result of this resolution, King's statue was removed from Statuary Hall, and the statue of Ronald Reagan was placed in Statuary Hall on June 10, 2009.[28] In November 2009, Starr King's statue was reinstalled within the Civil War Memorial Grove in Capitol Park, which surrounds theCalifornia State Capitol inSacramento. It was formally dedicated in a ceremony held on December 8, 2009.[29]
Box 24, Folder 5: Grave of Thomas Starr King, San Francisco 1856-1885 General Written on back: "ca. 1888; 100 block, Geary St., Grave of Thomas Starr King, S.F., Cal; Watkins photos; B-392."
1143 Franklin St, San Francisco, CA 94109; Located in: First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco
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