spread, so adorned, so colonized, so blessed, should be kept forever,
against all the assaults of traitors, one in polity, in spirit, and in
aim!"

In a way we may say that King found himself in these first months in
California. He was forced by the number of his engagements, as well as
by the more direct demands of a new country, to throw aside his
manuscripts, and, making such preparation as conditions would permit,
launch boldly out upon the dangerous sea of extempore speech. He was
constantly addressing audiences in whole, or in part, hostile. Writing
to an Eastern friend of his experiences in the Sacramento Valley, he
says, "You see in glaring capitals, 'Texas Saloon,' 'Mississippi Shoe
Shop,' 'Alabama Emporium.' Very rarely do you see any Northern state
thus signalized." Men of substance, natural leaders of the people, were
in most communities either for Breckenridge or Douglas. The man was
grappling with the intellectual soldiery of disunion. The same forces
that had transformed Lincoln, the Illinois politician into a national
figure, the standard bearer of a great party, were working upon King.
And the same method which caused Horace Greeley to write of Lincoln, "He
is the greatest Convincer of his day" was followed by the younger
patriot, face to face as he was with incipient disloyalty. He was
accustomed, even as Lincoln, to state his opponent's argument fully and
fairly, and then without unnecessary severity, demolish it. An old
miner, listening to one of Starr King's patriotic speeches, delighting
in the intellectual dexterity displayed, exclaimed, "Boys, watch him, he
is taking every trick." The necessity of "taking every trick," and this
so far as possible without offence, quickened his powers and led to the
full development of his many sided eloquence.

How he was regarded during these early months when he had literally