philanthropy was to provide necessary funds. Again and again it seemed
that the work must stop because the heavily burdened people could give
no more. At sundry critical junctures California came to the rescue, and
made possible the continuance of this "most beneficent of all
charities." But at whose motion, and under whose influence?

Fitz Hugh Ludlow says, "Starr King was the Sanitary Commission of
California." This is but slight exaggeration, for King made it his
peculiar mission to raise money as rapidly as possible for the suffering
soldiers. In the interest of the Commission he traveled to every part of
the Coast, and in the face of the greatest obstacles became the
principal factor in raising $1,235,000, about one-fourth of the entire
sum contributed by the country at large. Under the most favorable
circumstances this would have been a phenomenal achievement, but when we
learn that in 1862 a flood destroyed over fifty million dollars' worth
of property in the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys; that California
shipping to the extent of six and one-half millions was also destroyed;
that in 1863 a drought entirely ruined the wheat crop, and made hay so
scarce that it sold for sixty dollars a ton, resulting in a stagnation
in business which threw thousands of men out of employment, in view of
these multiplied disasters, we wonder by what fire of patriotism and by
what charm of eloquence, Starr King drew from the people so large a sum
for use on distant battle fields. Old Californians still remember those
thrilling appeals which few could resist. We are almost led to believe
in the sober truth of such extreme eulogy as we find in "Lights and
Shadows of the Pacific Coast," by S. D. Woods, a venerable San
Franciscan, who vividly recalls King's heroic service in that far off
time:

"King's personality was magnetic and winning. Gentleness radiated from