William R. King

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William Rufus DeVane King (April 7, 1786-1853) was an American politician and diplomat.

Before his death, he was the 13th vice president of the United States for six weeks in 1853.

He had been elected as both a representative from North Carolina and a senator from Alabama earlier this year.

During the reign of King Louis Philippe I, he served as Minister to France. As a Democrat, he was a Unionist, and his contemporaries thought him to be a moderate on the topics of sectionalism, slavery, and westward expansion, which contributed to the American Civil War.

He drafted the Compromise of 1850.

He is the first United States executive to take the oath of office on foreign soil; he was inaugurated in Havana, Cuba, due to poor health.

After 45 days in office, the king died of tuberculosis.

He is the shortest-serving vice president with the exceptions of John Tyler and Andrew Johnson, both of whom died in office. King was Alabama's first vice president and served in the country's highest political office.

He was the third vice president to die in office.

Early life

King was born in Sampson County, North Carolina, to William King and Margaret DeVane. His family was large, wealthy, and well-connected. He graduated from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill in 1803, where he was also a member of the Philanthropic Society. William Alexander Graham, who would later condemn the monarch in the 1852 election, attended the University at the same time (Graham was a member of the rival Dialectic Society). After reading the law with Judge William Duffy of Fayetteville, North Carolina, he began practicing in Clinton, he was admitted to the bar in 1806. King Fayetteville's Phoenix Lodge No. 61 was a devoted Freemason who served as a member of Fayetteville's Phoenix Lodge No. 87. 8.

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Political career

King entered politics and was elected as a member of the North Carolina House of Commons, where he served from 1807 to 1809, and he became 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 to become Secretary of the Legation for William Pinkney during Pinkney's appointment as Minister to Russia and to a special diplomatic mission in Naples. King was only 24 years old when he became a congressman for the first time. (He did not reach the constitutional age of 25 for service in the House of Representatives until after the term began, but the Twelfth Congress did not convene until November 4, 1811, and King was not sworn in until then.)

When he returned to the United States in 1818, King joined the westward migration of the cotton culture to the Deep South, purchasing property at what would later be known as "King's Bend" between present-day Selma and Cahaba on the Alabama River in Dallas County of the new Alabama Territory, which had been recently separated from Mississippi. He developed a large cotton plantation based on slave labor, calling the property "Chestnut Hill". King and his relatives formed one of the state's largest slaveholding families, collectively owning as many as 500 people.

William Rufus King was a delegate to the convention which organized the Alabama state government. Upon the admission of Alabama as the twenty-second state in 1819, he was elected by the State Legislature as a Democratic-Republican to the United States Senate.

King was a follower of Andrew Jackson, and was re-elected to the Senate as a Jacksonian in 1822, 1828, 1834, and 1841, serving from December 14, 1819, until his resignation on April 15, 1844. During this time, in March–April 1824, William R. King was honored with a single vote at the Democratic-Republican Party caucus to be the party's candidate for the office of vice president of the United States for the upcoming 1824 presidential election. Later he served as President pro tempore of the United States Senate during the 24th through 27th Congresses. King was Chairman of the Senate's Committee on Public Lands and the Committee on Commerce.

He was appointed as Minister to France, and served from 1844 to 1846. After his return, King resumed serving in the Senate, appointed and subsequently elected to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Arthur P. Bagby. He held his seat from July 1, 1848, until his resignation on December 20, 1852, because of ill health and his having been elected vice president of the United States.

During the conflicts leading up to the Compromise of 1850, King supported the Senate's gag rule against debate on antislavery petitions and opposed proposals to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, which Congress administered. King supported a pro-slavery position, arguing that the Constitution protected the institution of slavery in both the Southern states and the federal territories. He opposed both the abolitionists' efforts to abolish slavery in the territories as well as the Fire-Eaters' calls for Southern secession.

On July 11, 1850, two days after the death of President Zachary Taylor, King was appointed Senate President pro tempore. Because Millard Fillmore ascended to the presidency, the vice presidency was vacant, making King first in the line of succession under the law then in effect. He also served as Chairman of the Senate's Committee on Foreign Relations and the Committee on Pensions.

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