That our orator knew how to be sarcastic as well as severe must have been plain to those who heard him exclaim:
"There are those who say that they are Union men, and in favor of the Government, and yet they are bitterly opposed to the administration, and cannot support its policy. But in a war for self existence, this divorce is impossible. One might as well say at a fire, while his house is beginning to crackle in the flames, 'I am in favor of this engine, I go for this water; the hose meets my endorsement. Certainly, I am for putting out the fire, but don't ask me to help man the brakes, for I am conscientiously opposed to the hose pipe. Its nozzle isn't handsome. It wasn't made by a Democrat.'"
How ardently King longed for the liberation of the Blacks is seen in the following, addressed in all probability more to the President of the United States than to the people:
"O that the President would soon speak that electric sentence,—inspiration to the loyal North, doom to the traitorous aristocracy whose cup of guilt is full! Let him say that it is a war of mass against class, of America against feudalism, of the schoolmaster against the slave-master, of workmen against the barons, of the ballot-box against the barracoon. This is what the struggle means. Proclaim it so, and what a light breaks through our leaden sky! The war-wave rolls then with the impetus and weight of an idea."
Closing his greatest patriotic lecture, most in demand by the public along the entire Coast, "Daniel Webster," Starr King quotes Webster's noble peroration in the "Reply to Hayne," "Liberty and Union, Now and Forever, One and Inseparable," and in lofty strain of patriotic prophecy announces that:
"Mr. Webster's thought breaks out afresh in the proclamation of the President that America is one and cannot be broken; it bursts forth in the banners thick as the gorgeous leaves of the October forests that have blossomed all over eighteen or twenty States; it shows itself in the passion of the noble Union men of the South who will not bow to Baal; it floats on every frigate that rides the sea to protect our shipping; it leaps forth and brightens in the sacred steel which patriots by the hundred thousand are dedicating, not to ravage, not to murder, not to hatred of any portion of the southern section of the confederacy, but to the support of the impartial Constitution, to the common flag, to the majestic and beneficent law which offers to encircle and bless the whole republic; it utters itself in the thunder-voice of twenty millions of white citizens of the land, that in America the majority under the Constitution must rule, and the public law must be obeyed.
"And when the work of the government shall be accomplished,—when the stolen money of the nation shall be refunded; when hostile artillery shall be with-drawn from the lower banks of the Mississippi; when the flag of thirteen stripes and thirty-four stars shall float again over Sumter, over New Orleans, over every arsenal that has seen it insulted, over Mount Vernon and the American dust of Washington, over every State Capitol and along the whole coast and border line of Texas; when every man within the present limits of the immense republic shall have restored to him the right of pride in the American Navy, and of representation on common terms in the National Capitol, and of citizenship on the whole continent; when leading traitors shall have been punished, and the Constitution vindicated in its unsectional beneficence, and the doctrine of secession be stabbed with two hundred thousand bayonet wounds, and trampled to rise no more,—then the debate between Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Webster will be completed, the swarthy spirit of the great defender of the Constitution will triumph, and a restored, peaceful, majestic, irresistible America will dignify and consecrate his name forever."
"A restored, peaceful, majestic, irresistible America,"—this was the vision that nerved King to herculean labor, to a most real martyrdom. Condemned to the slow suicide of over-work, he gave his life a conscious offering to freedom. "What a year to live in," he writes, "worth all other times ever known in our history or any other." Again,—"I should be broken down if I had time to think how I feel. I am beginning to look old, and shall break before my prime."
Why is the song so sweet, and why does it move us so strangely? The singer's heart is breaking. Why is the word so effective? It is laden with love and winged with sacrifice. A man is dying that others may live in verity, not longer in shadow; a hero is suffering crucifixion that the sad ages may a little change their course. Not only is it true that the "blood of martyrs slain is the seed of the church," but it is also true that a man never touches the heights of power until he has made a total, irreversible, affectionate surrender to the cause he professes to serve. When he has done this the cause becomes incarnate in the man; and he speaks as one inspired. And this was the power of Starr King in that great Summer and Fall of 1861 in California. Of course he did not speak in vain. Leland Stanford, backed by a Union Legislature, was elected Governor of California, and by October, King joyfully writing an Eastern friend was able to say "the State is safe from southern tampering."