[1] Starr King spoke zealously in favor of the Union and was credited by Abraham Lincoln with preventing California from becoming a separate republic.

[citation needed] Inspired by men like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Ward Beecher, King embarked on a program of self-study for the ministry.

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 on Plato and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

[1] During the Civil War, Starr King spoke zealously in favor of the Union and was credited by Abraham Lincoln with preventing California from becoming a separate republic.

[7] Starr King also read original verses by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and James Russell Lowell which captured the imagination of the Californians.

... 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.

"[9] In addition, Starr King organized the Pacific Branch of the United States Sanitary Commission, which raised money and medical materials for wounded soldiers and was the predecessor to the American Red Cross.

A fiery orator, he raised more than $1.5 million for the Sanitary Commission headquarters in New York City, one-fifth of the total contributions from all the states in the Union.

[10] Over twenty thousand people attended his funeral and several of his friends including Charles Stoddard, Bret Harte and Ina Coolbrith published tributes.

[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.

King, he was judged worthy of representing California in the National Statuary Hall Collection displayed in the United States Capitol.