William R. King

Biography

William Rufus DeVane King was born in Sampson County, North Carolina, in 1786. He graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1803, read law in Fayetteville and practised in Clinton. He sat in the North Carolina House of Commons from 1807 to 1809, became city solicitor of Wilmington, and in 1811 entered the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served until 1816. He then resigned to become secretary of legation to William Pinkney on missions to Russia and Naples.

Returning in 1818, he moved to the Alabama Territory, where he built a cotton plantation, Chestnut Hill, worked by enslaved people, and helped found the town of Selma. After Alabama became a state in 1819 the legislature sent him to the U.S. Senate, where he served until 1844 as a supporter of Andrew Jackson and was several times president pro tempore. He defended slavery as constitutionally protected while opposing calls for secession.

King was minister to France from 1844 to 1846, then returned to the Senate in 1848 and was again president pro tempore during the debates over the Compromise of 1850. His long friendship with James Buchanan, with whom he shared lodgings in Washington, has drawn much later speculation.

The 1852 Democratic convention nominated him for vice president alongside Franklin Pierce, and the ticket won. Already gravely ill with tuberculosis, he took the oath in Cuba under a special act of Congress, the only vice president sworn in abroad. He died at his plantation on 18 April 1853, six weeks after his term began, without ever performing the duties of the office.