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; was 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
Republican to the United States Senate; reelected as a 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 4, 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. - - Biographical
Data courtesy of the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
