Thomas Starr King

Thomas Starr King (December 17, 1824 – March 4, 1864), often known as Starr King, was an American Universalist and Unitarian minister, influential in California politics during the American Civil War, and Freemason. Starr King spoke zealously in favor of the Union and was credited by Abraham Lincoln with preventing California from becoming a separate republic. He is sometimes referred to as "the orator who saved the nation". Early life He was born on December 17, 1824, in New 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. Inspired by men like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry 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 in Charlestown, Massachusetts. Career In 1849, he was appointed pastor of the Hollis Street Church in Boston, where he became one of the most famous preachers in New England and a noted speaker on the lyceum circuit through New England and as far as Chicago. He was ranked as one of the four greatest lyceum speakers, along with Wendell Phillips, Edwin Hubbell Chapin, and Henry Ward Beecher; 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", and a number of talks on Plato and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. As Edward Everett Hale recounts: 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."