These men, many of them far from home, lifted up their voices, and the sounds surged through that church and echoed, surged again and caught even the preacher in their winding waves. He started in to give one sermon and gave another. The audience, the time, the place, acted upon him.
Oratory is essentially a pioneer product, a rustic article. Great sermons and great speeches are given only to people who have come from afar.
Starr King forgot his manuscript and pulpit manners. His deep voice throbbed and pulsed with emotion, and the tensity of the times was upon him. Without once referring directly to Sumter, his address was a call to arms.
He spoke for an hour, and when he sat down he knew that he had won. The next Sunday the place was again packed, and then followed urgent invitations that he should speak during the week in a larger hall.
California was trembling in the balances, and orators were not wanting to give out the arguments of Calhoun. They showed that the right of secession was plainly provided for in the Constitution. Lincoln's call for troops was coldly received, and from several San Francisco pulpits orthodox clergymen were expressing deep regret that the President was plunging the country into civil war.
The heart of Starr King burned with shame—to him there was but one side to this question—the Union must be preserved.
One man who had known King in Massachusetts wrote back home saying: "You would not know Starr King—he is not the orderly man of genteel culture you once had in Boston. He is a torrent of eloquence, so heartfelt, so convincing, so powerful, that when he speaks on Sunday afternoon out on the sand-hills, he excites the multitude into a whirlwind of applause, with a basso undertone of dissent, which, however, seems to grow gradually less."
Loyalty to the Union was to him the one vital issue. His fight was not with individuals—he made no personal issues. And in several joint debates his courteous treatment of his adversary won converts for his cause. He took pains to say that personally he had only friendship and pity for the individuals who upheld secession and slavery—"The man in the wrong needs friends as never before, since he has ceased to be his own. Do we blame a blind man whom we see rushing towards a precipice?"
From that first Sunday he preached in San Francisco, his life was an ovation wherever he went. Wherever he was advertised to speak, multitudes were there to hang upon his words. He spoke in all the principal towns of California; and often on the plains, in the mountains, or by the seashore, men would gather from hundreds of miles to hear him.
He gave himself, and before he had been in California a year, the State was safe for the Union, and men and treasure were being sent to Lincoln's aid. The fame of Starr King reached the President, and he found time to write several letters to the orator, thanking him for what he had done. It was in one of these letters that Lincoln wrote, "The only sermons I have ever been able to read and enjoy are those of John Murray"—a statement which some have attempted to smile away as showing the Rail-Splitter's astute diplomacy.