William R. King

William Rufus DeVane King (April 7, 1786 – April 18, 1853) was the 13th Vice President of the United States for about six weeks (1853), and earlier a U.S. Representative from North Carolina, Minister to France, and a Senator from Alabama. He was a Unionist and his contemporaries considered him to be a moderate on the issues of sectionalism, slavery, and westward expansion that would eventually lead to the American Civil War. He helped draft the Compromise of 1850.^[1] The only United States executive official to take the oath of office on foreign soil, King died of tuberculosis after only 45 days in office. With the exceptions of John Tyler and Andrew Johnson—both of whom succeeded to the Presidency—he remains the shortest-serving Vice President.

Early life

King was born in Sampson County, North Carolina, to William King and Margaret deVane, and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1803. He was admitted to the bar in 1806 and began practice in Clinton, North Carolina. King was a member of the North Carolina House of Commons from 1807 to 1809 and city solicitor of Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1810. He was elected to the Twelfth, Thirteenth and Fourteenth Congresses, serving from March 4, 1811 until November 4, 1816, when he resigned. King was Secretary of the Legation to William Pinkney at Naples, Italy, and later at St. Petersburg, Russia. He returned to the United States in 1818 and purchased property at what would later be known as King's Bend on the Alabama River in Dallas County, Alabama, between what is now Selma and Cahaba. There he established a large Black Belt cotton plantation that he named Chestnut Hill. King and his relatives were reportedly one of the largest slave-holding families in Alabama, collectively owning as many as five hundred slaves.

Politics

King was a delegate to the convention which organized the Alabama state government. Upon the admission of Alabama as a State in 1819 he was elected as a Democratic-Republican to the United States Senate, and was reelected as a Jacksonian in 1822, 1828, 1834, and 1841, serving from December 14, 1819, until April 15, 1844, when he resigned. He served as President pro tempore of the United States Senate during the 24th through 27th Congresses. King was Chairman of the Committee on Public Lands and the Committee on Commerce.

He was Minister to France from 1844 to 1846. He was appointed and subsequently elected as a Democrat to the Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Arthur P. Bagby and began serving on July 1, 1848. During the conflicts leading up to the Compromise of 1850, King supported the Senate's gag rule against debate on antislavery petitions, and opposed the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.^[2] King supported a conservative proslavery position, arguing that the Constitution protected the institution of slavery in both the Southern states and the federal territories, placing King in opposition to both the abolitionists' efforts to abolish slavery in the territories and the Fire-Eaters' calls for Southern secession.^[2]

On July 11, 1850, just two days after the death of President Zachary Taylor, King was again appointed President pro tempore of the Senate, which made him first in the line of succession to the U.S. Presidency, because of the Vice Presidential vacancy. King served until resigning on December 20, 1852, due to poor health. He served as President pro tempore of the Senate during the Thirty-first and Thirty-second Congresses and was Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations and Committee on Pensions.

Relationship with James Buchanan

King was close friends with James Buchanan, and the two shared a house in Washington, D.C. for fifteen years prior to Buchanan's presidency.^[3] Buchanan and King's close relationship prompted Andrew Jackson to refer to King as "Miss Nancy" and "Aunt Fancy", while Aaron V. Brown spoke of the two as "Buchanan and his wife".^[4][5] Further, some of the contemporary press also speculated about Buchanan and King's relationship. Buchanan and King's nieces destroyed their uncles' correspondence, leaving some questions as to what relationship the two men had, but surviving letters illustrate the affection of a special friendship, and Buchanan wrote of his communion with his housemate.^[4] Buchanan wrote in 1844, after King left for France, "I am now solitary and alone, having no companion in the house with me. I have gone a wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any one of them. I feel that it is not good for man to be alone; and should not be astonished to find myself married to some old maid who can nurse me when I am sick, provide good dinners for me when I am well, and not expect from me any very ardent or romantic affection." While the circumstances surrounding Buchanan and King have led authors such as Paul Boller to speculate that Buchanan was "America's first homosexual president", there is no direct evidence that he and King had a sexual relationship.^[4]

Vice Presidency and death

King was elected Vice President of the United States on the Democratic ticket with Franklin Pierce in 1852 and took the oath of office on March 24, 1853, in Cuba. He had gone to La Ariadne plantation, owned by John Chartrand, in Matanzas due to his ill health. This unusual inauguration took place because it was believed that King, who was terminally ill with tuberculosis, would not live much longer. The privilege of taking the oath on foreign soil was extended by a special act of Congress for his long and distinguished service to the government of the United States. Even though he took the oath 20 days after the inauguration day, he was still Vice President during those three weeks.^[1]

Shortly afterward, King returned to his Chestnut Hill plantation and died within two days. He was interred in a vault on the plantation and later reburied in Selma's Live Oak Cemetery.

Following King's death the office of Vice-President remained vacant until 1857 when John C. Breckinridge was inaugurated. In accordance with the Presidential Succession Act of 1792, the President pro tempore of the Senate was next in order of succession to President Pierce from 1853 to 1857.

Legacy

The King Residence Quadrangle at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, his alma mater, is named in William R. King's honor, and is the site of Mangum, Manly, Ruffin and Grimes house residences. King also maintained membership in The Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies, a debating society at the university which still maintains an 1839 portrait (see above) of him at Phi Hall.

King was a co-founder of (and named) Selma, Alabama. He named the Alabama River town after the Ossianic poem The Songs of Selma.^[1] In recognition of this, city officials in Selma and some of King's family wanted to move his body to Selma, where they believed King's remains should be interred. Other family members wanted his body to remain at Chestnut Hill. In 1882, the Selma City Council appointed a committee to select a new plot for King's body. There are different versions of how his body was taken from the plantation in King's Bend; however, after 29 years of interment at his former plantation, he was re-interred in the city's Live Oak Cemetery under an elaborate white marble mausoleum.^[6]

In honor of his election as Vice President, in December 1852 Oregon Territory named King County for him, as well as Pierce County after President-elect Pierce. These counties became part of Washington Territory when it was created the following year. Washington did not become a state until 1889, and Pierce and King counties still exist. Much later, King County amended its designation and its logo to honor Martin Luther King, Jr.; the county's action was taken by ordinance and was later reinforced in a statutory action (SB 5332, April 19, 2005) by the State of Washington.

References

External links

• William R. King at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• William R. King at Find a Grave
• Who is William Rufus King?
• Obituary addresses on the occasion of the death of the Hon. William R. King, of Alabama, vice-president of the United States : delivered in the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States, eighth of December, 1853