William R. King: The Vice President Sworn In on a Plantation in Cuba

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William Rufus King was born in North Carolina in 1786, studied at the University of North Carolina and won a seat in the U.S. House in 1810 at age 24, turning 25 before the 12th Congress convened in November 1811. After diplomatic posts in Naples and Russia, he moved to the Alabama Territory in 1818 and built the Chestnut Hill plantation on the Alabama River. His family became one of the largest slaveholding families in the state, holding as many as 500 enslaved people, and he was elected one of Alabama's first U.S. senators in 1819. Over roughly three decades in the Senate he allied with Andrew Jackson and rose to president pro tempore.

From 1834 to 1844 King shared a Washington boarding house with James Buchanan, a relationship rivals mocked and historians still debate, with some of their letters later destroyed by family members. A defender of slavery who opposed the secessionist fire eaters, he was chosen in 1852 as running mate to Franklin Pierce. Suffering from tuberculosis, he went to Cuba to recover, and under a special act of Congress a U.S. consul swore him in near Matanzas on March 24, 1853. He returned to Chestnut Hill and died on April 18, 1853, at 67, without performing any official duty.

• He supported Senate gag rules that automatically tabled petitions relating to slavery.
• Andrew Jackson mocked King and Buchanan as Miss Nancy and Aunt Fancy.
• While King served as a diplomat in France, Buchanan wrote that he had gone wooing several gentlemen for a new housemate without success.
• King cofounded Selma, Alabama and named it after the poem The Songs of Selma.
• King County, named for him by the Oregon Territorial Legislature in 1852, was rededicated in 2005 to honor Martin Luther King Jr.