"How Will We Remember Them?"

Unlike the well loved souls we remember this morning for Day of the Dead, Thomas Starr King has drifted into obscurity for all but Unitarian Universalists and keepers of California's history. Thomas Starr King, minister and abolitionist, served the Unitarian church in San Francisco during the Civil War. "A fiery Republican clergyman with an oratorical flair," "The New York Times" reported, "King stood shoulder to shoulder with Lincoln . . . barnstorming California to preach the gospel of unity when the nation had split apart and secessionist feeling here was high as well."[1]

Once celebrated and revered, his statue has stood along with the Catholic missionary Junipero Serra, representing California in National Statuary Hall in Washington, D.C. Although Starr King's impact has reverberated for all these years, most Californians today do not even know his name. When the California state legislature voted this September to replace Starr King's statue with one of Ronald Reagan, few people noticed. The vote was not widely reported. Only one state senator, Debra Bowen, a member of our congregation, voted against it. Even the author of the bill, Senator Dennis Hollingsworth, told "The New York Times," "To be honest with you, I wasn't sure who Thomas Starr King was. And I think there's probably a lot of Californians like me."[2]

Senator Bowen and the Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry, joined by California historians and church people, spoke out to the media and appealed to Governor Schwarzenegger, but it was too late. The Governor had already signed the bill, clearing the way for the statue to be replaced. Senator Hollingsworth told "The New York Times" that "the plan was to take [the statue of Starr King] to the State Capitol in Sacramento, a move that . . . may raise [Starr] King's profile."[3] We can only hope that is so.

How we remember - or don't remember - our history tells us a lot about the people we have become. It is only human to set up memorials and to enshrine our love and respect for those who are gone. The day we forget those who deserve to be remembered is a day for sober reflection of another kind. So here is a glimpse at Thomas Starr King. His life is the best argument for why he should never be forgotten.

What every Unitarian Universalist should know is that Thomas Starr King brought our faith tradition to life here in the West. The son of a Universalist minister, self-taught, successful, and charismatic, he moved to California from Massachusetts in 1860, at the age of thirty-six. Sought after by churches in New York and Chicago, Starr King chose the "greatest challenge," San Francisco.[4]

According to William H. Wingfield, his reputation quickly spread all over the Bay Area. [5] A small, slight man, a "fiery passion would be [his] stock in trade during his years in California."[6] Here is what Wingfield wrote about the decisive times of Starr King's ministry:

"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, Senator David C. Broderick, had been killed in a duel the year before. . . .

"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. . . . 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."[7]

Starr King jumped into this volatile environment, using his pulpit and his oratorical skill to persuade the people of California to remain in the Union. He wrote, "'I pledged California to a Northern Republic and to a flag that should have no treacherous threads of cotton in its warp, and the audience came down in thunder.'" Wingfield adds that Starr King draped an American flag over his pulpit and ended every sermon saying, "God bless the president of the United States and all who serve with him the cause of a common country."[8]

Starr King's admirers liked to describe him as "the orator who saved the nation."[9] Saving California for the Union, however, was only one aspect of Starr King's ministry. Wingfield also notes that Starr King was an exceptional fund-raiser, helping the U.S. Sanitary Commission, now the American Red Cross, raise nearly one-quarter of its funds in California alone.

Another historian, Laguna Beach Unitarian Universalist Glenna Matthews, writes about Starr King's broader legacy, in a letter co-signed by California historians addressed to Governor Schwarzenegger: "In addition to his work on behalf of the Union during the Civil War and his fund-raising for the Sanitary Commission . . . there were many other ways in which he was an important part of the founding moment of the State of California. The most significant . . . seem to be the following. He visited Yosemite in July, 1860 and within a few months was writing about it for a very receptive Eastern audience. Thus nine years before John Muir arrived in the Sierra, [Starr] King had begun teaching the rest of the country to value the California landscape. In August, 1860 he gave a talk to the African American community in San Francisco, in which he stated that 'wherever we find many races brought together, there God had his greatest work to do' - in the process becoming one of the intellectual fathers of the idea that diversity is positive. This was a radical statement at that moment and would be for many years to come. Moreover, he mentored young writers, especially Bret Harte. And finally, he was a trustee of the College of California (which evolved into the University of California) in its early stages. In short, Thomas Starr King was one of the founding figures and great intellects of early California state history."[10]

Although his accomplishments were many, his span of time was brief. In 1864, less than four years after he had arrived in California, Thomas Starr King died of diphtheria and pneumonia. He was thirty-nine.

How do we remember those we never knew? The short and eventful life of Thomas Starr King should not be forgotten, but once all that remained was a statue, his impact had long become part of our way of life. Few Californians realize that we might have been a Confederate state, or that a Unitarian Universalist minister played such a decisive role in the outcome of the Civil War. Yet we live in the freedom that he helped win, allowing our cherished values to prevail and develop into what we have today.

History is the awareness of our journey as a people. It is the appreciation of individual lives, long lost to loved ones but not to the beneficiaries of their actions. We live and thrive in what Starr King gave us, though few may know his name.

There is another reason to know our history, however, and this one is sobering. When we forget how we came to be who we are, we become something less than that; we risk repeating the tragic mistakes that shaped our nation; and we go back, instead of forward. While a statue comes down in our nation's capitol because the people have forgotten what he represents, our government dismantles laws representing values that were once part of who we are. The recently voted Military Commissions Act of 2006 has extended the power of our government to torture, to suspend habeas corpus, and to punish enemies of the United States by secret military trials.

I couldn't help think about this while remembering Thomas Starr King. We dare not forget our history, unless we are prepared to give up what our history tells us we once struggled to secure: freedom, equality, human rights, justice in the light of day. So may we take from this day, our Day of the Dead, a renewed sense of those who live on in the ideals that define who we are at our best; their loss makes us less than we could be.

[1] Jesse McKinley, “Reagan Wins Another Vote, to a Place in Congress,” The New York Times, September 5, 2006.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] http://www.sksm.edu/about/thomas_starr_king.php.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Kimberley Geiger, “Fans sing praises of ‘the orator who saved the nation,’” http://www.sfgate.com
October 25, 2006.
[10] Glenna Matthews, Institute of Urban and Regional Development, University of California, Berkeley, Letter to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, October20, 2006.