Program for Tuesday, September 18

Welcome to SCW’s September meeting. Our featured speaker today is Dr. Glenna Matthews, a Starr King School for the Ministry Visiting Scholar and author of a new book, The Golden State In the Civil War: Thomas Starr King, the Republican Party and the Birth of Modern California.

Her book details the nuances and mystique of Thomas Starr King and his revolutionary advocacy opposing slavery, mixed with the Abraham Lincoln Republican Party's posturing on slavery, and the inner workings of others in the young and emerging State of California. The book devotes attention to the ebb and flow of the two political parties and to the little-known fact that nearly 17,000 California men and women volunteered for military service on behalf of the Union.