Senate Years of Service: 1819-1844; 1848-1852
Party: Democratic Republican; Jacksonian; Democrat

KING, William Rufus de Vane, a Representative from North Carolina, a Senator from Alabama, and a Vice President of the United States; born in Sampson County, N.C., April 7, 1786; attended private schools; graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1803; studied law; admitted to the bar in 1806 and commenced practice in Clinton, N.C.; member, State house of commons 1807-1809; city solicitor of Wilmington, N.C., 1810; elected to the Twelfth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Congresses and served from March 4, 1811, until November 4, 1816, when he resigned; secretary of the legation at Naples and later at St. Petersburg; returned to the United States in 1818 and located in Cahaba, Ala.; planter; delegate to the convention which organized the State government; upon the admission of Alabama as a State into the Union in 1819 was elected as a Democratic Republican to the United States Senate; reelected as a Democratic Republican and as a Jacksonian in 1822, 1828, 1834, and 1841, and served from December 14, 1819, until April 15, 1844, when he resigned; served as President pro tempore of the Senate during the Twenty-fourth through Twenty-seventh Congresses; chairman, Committee on Public Lands (Twenty-second Congress), Committee on Commerce (Twenty-second, Twenty-fifth and Twenty-sixth Congresses); Minister to France 1844-1846; appointed and subsequently elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Arthur P. Bagby and served from July 1, 1848, until his resignation on December 20, 1852, due to poor health; served as President pro tempore of the Senate during the Thirty-first and Thirty-second Congresses; chairman, Committee on Foreign Relations (Thirty-first Congress), Committee on Pensions (Thirty-first Congress); elected Vice President of the United States on the Democratic ticket with Franklin Pierce in 1852 and took the oath of office March 24, 1853, in Havana, Cuba, where he had gone for his health, which was a privilege extended by special act of Congress; returned to his plantation, “King’s Bend,” Alabama, and died there April 18, 1853; interment in a vault on his plantation; reinterment in Live Oak Cemetery, Selma, Dallas County, Ala.
(Source: Biographical Directory of the United States 1774-present.)

WILLIAM R. KING
William R. King was born in North Carolina, in (April 7) 1786. He was not a brilliant boy; but, by constant application, he was enabled to surmount difficulties at which many a genius would have stumbled and fallen. At a very early age he entered into political life, and his fellow-citizens showed their estimation of his abilities and honesty, by intrusting him with several minor offices, the faithful discharge of the duties of which led them to select him to represent their interests in Congress, before he was twenty-five years of age.

In 1811 Mr. King went to the United States House of Representatives, and served acceptably to his constituents for two terms. Not long after the close of this service, he removed into the Territory of Alabama, then about to become a State. When it was admitted into the Union, he was chosen United States Senator from the new State, and continued for twenty-five years, without intermission, a most faithful, diligent, and consistent member of that body.

In 1844, President Tyler appointed him Minister to France, where he represented his country with great credit and satisfaction, and was received by Louis Phillippe with marked distinction. He returned to the United States in 1847, and was called again to the National Senate, by the citizens of Alabama, in 1849. This was the commencement of the administration of President Taylor, as President of the United States, by whose untimely death it passed into the hands of Mr. Filmore. Mr. King was chosen to succeed Mr. Filmore, as President pro tern, of the Senate, and, consequently, acting Vice-President of the United States.

At the Democratic Convention which met at Baltimore in 1852, Mr. King was nominated for Vice-President, with Franklin Pierce, of New Hampshire, for President, and was elected. But he was not permitted to enjoy his new and well-deserved honor. His health, which had long been precarious, now failed him altogether, and his disease assumed the most alarming symptoms.
He soon found himself the doomed victim of that scourge of our climate, consumption. After trying the usual remedies, without success, he was sent to Cuba, at the expense of the Government, to try the effect of change of climate. But death had marked him for his own, and he returned just in season to expire in the bosom of his family, at the age of sixty-seven, in the year 1853.
(Source: Biographies of 250 Distinguished National Men by Horatio Bateman. Published 1871)