When Thomas Starr King first walked to the pulpit of the San Francisco Unitarian Church, the eyes of the congregation turned to the small, frail man. Many asked, "Could this youthful person with his beardless, boyish face be the celebrated preacher from Boston?" King laughed . "Though I weigh only 120 pounds," he said, "when I'm mad, I weigh a ton." That fiery passion would be King's stock in trade during his years in California, from 1860 to 1864. Abraham Lincoln said he believed it was the Rev. Thomas Starr King who kept California from seceding from the Union during the early days of the Civil War. King's reputation as a noted orator led the San Francisco congregation to ask him to become its minister, with little hope he would agree to come west. During his 11 years as minister of Boston's Hollis Street Unitarian Church, King increased the congregation to five times its original size and pulled the church out of bankruptcy. Ralph Waldo Emerson, noted essayist and poet, said after hearing one of King's sermons, "That is preaching!" Churches in Chicago and Brooklyn sought King as their minister, but this popular Boston pastor rejected them. San Francisco, he decided, offered the greatest challenge.

CALIFORNIA IN CRISIS

He was right. At that time, California was headed into a crisis. At hand was a showdown between the free states of the Union and the slave states. California's governor and most members of the state legislature were sympathetic to the Confederacy. The only effective voice against slavery, Sen. David C. Broderick, had been killed in a duel the year before. The congregation's initial disappointment at King's slender, boyish appearance soon gave way to wonder, then delight at his rich, golden voice. Not only was his reputation as an orator and preacher established in San Francisco that first Sunday, but it soon spread statewide, attracting worshipers from Stockton and Sacramento. Less than a month after King arrived in California, the Republican National Convention met in Chicago and nominated Abraham Lincoln as its presidential candidate. In the following election, Lincoln carried California by only 711 votes. Southern states soon left the Union. The crucial question was, would California join them and deliver its immense resources of gold into the hands of Confederate President Jefferson Davis? Support for secession was strong in southern California, where the Confederate flag had flown over Los Angeles's main plaza on the Fourth of July. At that time, the U.S. Congress was so convinced of a secessionist plot that it required Easterners to secure passports for travel to California. Justifying Congress's fears was a secret paramilitary secessionist organization in the state of about 16,000 members, called the Knights of the Golden Circle. On George Washington's birthday in 1861, King fired an opening salvo in support of his country. He spoke for two hours to over a thousand people about how they should remember Washington by preserving the Union.

PLEDGING CALIFORNIA

"I pitched into Secession, Concession and (John C.) Calhoun (former U.S. vice president), right and left, and made the Southerners applaud," said King. "I pledged California to a Northern Republic and to a flag that should have no treacherous threads of cotton in its arp, 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." Speaking up and down the state, King visited rugged mining camps and said he never knew the exhilaration of public oratory until he faced a front row of men armed with Bowie knives and revolvers. His friend, Edward Everett Hale, who made a similar contribution to saving the Union through his moving story, "The Man Without a Country," said, "Starr King was an orator no one could silence and no one could answer." King's pulpit at the San Francisco church was covered by an American flag. He 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." At one mass rally in San Francisco, 40,000 turned out to hear him speak. A group of Americans living in Victoria, B.C., sent him $1,000 to carry out his work of preserving the Union. King was beginning to turn the tide. In 1861, he threw himself into the gubernatorial campaign of his parishioner, Leland Stanford. Often King and author Bret Harte accompanied Stanford on speaking tours. Stanford won an overwhelming victory and King sighed with relief. "What a privilege it is to be an American!" he said. "What a year to live in! Worth all other times ever known in our history or any other!"

THE BATTLE WON, HE TURNS HIS ATTENTION

The battle to keep California in the Union won, King now turned his attention to the needs of its soldiers. The Union Army lacked provisions and medical personnel. Much of its food was rotting because war profiteers sold the Army spoiled goods. There were no sheets and blankets for soldiers. Disease took a greater toll on their lives than Confederate bullets. In response, the Rev. H.W. Bellows of New York organized the U.S. Sanitary Commission, a forerunner of the American Red Cross. Starr King immediately pitched in to help. Out of the $4.8 million the commission raised throughout the U.S., King raised $1.25 million in California. About $200,000 came from San Francisco, a figure all the more impressive because during those years California was hit by a series of natural disasters, including a massive flood that turned the whole Sacramento-San Joaquín Valleyinto a vast lake and a drought that wiped out the valley's wheat crop. Now King found himself raising funds for flood and drought relief. He also carved out time to work for the rights of San Francisco's African Americans and Chinese. "We know," said Edward Everett Hale of King, "that here is a heart as large as the world, so that you can not make it understand that it should hold back from any service to be rendered to any human being." Because of King's success in patriotic and charitable causes, his powerful friends encouraged him to run for the U.S. Senate. But he refused, saying he feared it would lead to political compromise and impair his ability to speak forthrightly. "I would rather," he said, "swim to Australia." Relaxation and joy came from exploring California's wilderness. He was among the first one hundred white men to visit Lake Tahoe. The blueness of the lake and the greenness of the pines seemed to him in harmony with the deepest religion of the Bible. Yosemite Valley and its big trees gave him special delight. Back in New England he enjoyed exploring the White Hills of New Hampshire and wrote a book about them, "The White Hills-Their Legend, Landscape and Poetry." On entering California's great valley, he said, "The (Beethoven's) Ninth Symphony is the Yosemite of music! Great is granite and the Yosemite is its prophet!" He climbed above the falls, attracted by a dome of granite towering13,600 feet over the valley. Today it bears his name, Mt. Starr King.

CHURCH HAS FIRST CALL

Despite his many commitments in California, King's church always took first precedence. When he arrived in San Francisco in 1860, the church struggled with a $30,000 debt. Within the first year, it was paid off. Now he turned his attention to an expanding congregation in a too-small building. King set an $80,000 goal in October 1862. By December of that year, the cornerstone of a new church was laid. The completed structure was dedicated in January 1864 and still stands today on the corner of Franklin and Starr King streets in San Francisco. His church now prosperous, the Union Army driving to victory and the Sanitary Commission on solid footing, King decided to take a much-needed sabbatical. He planned to rest, travel and write a book on the Sierras.

DECLINING HEALTH

But his Herculean efforts had taken a toll. Only devotion to what he considered God's will and "being mad" kept him going. On February 28, 1864, he came down with diphtheria, then pneumonia. A few days later his doctor told him he had only a half-hour to live. King glanced at a calendar. "Today is the fourth of March," he said. "Sad news will go over the wire today." He dictated his will and turned to his wife. "Do not weep for me," he said. "I know it is all right. I wish I could make you feel so, I wish I could describe my feelings. It is strange. I see all the privileges and greatness of the future. It already looks grand, beautiful. Tell them I went lovingly, trustfully, peacefully." A NATION MOURNS Across San Francisco, flags dropped to half-mast. The state legislature in Sacramento adjourned for three days of mourning after passing a resolution that "he (King) had been a tower of strength to the cause of his country." As King lay in state, wrapped in an American flag, a military honor guard stood by his casket. Twenty thousand people came to his church to pay their last respects. Cannons boomed a memorial tribute and Bret Harte composed a eulogy, "Relieving Guard." A Star? There's nothing strange in that. No, nothing; but above the thicket Somehow it seemed to me that God Somewhere had just relieved a picket King's body was buried in the front lawn of his newly completed church, where it remains today. In 1913, the state legislature voted Thomas Starr King and Father Junipero Serra, the Catholic missionary, as California's two greatest heroes and appropriated $10,000 for a bust in King's memory at the U.S. Capitol. In the 1960s, the state designated King's church and tomb as a historical monument. In addition to Yosemite's granite mountain, one of the great trees within the park that King admired was also given his name. Another mountain in the White Hills of New Hampshire is known as Mt. Starr King, and several schools throughout California bear his name.