3727
(1 vote, average 5.00 out of 5)
Written by Lou Chibbaro Jr., Special to WiG
Oct 6, 2011
William Rufus DeVane King, the 13th United States vice president, has the distinction of having served in that office for less time than any other vice president.
He died of tuberculosis on April 18, 1853, just 25 days after being sworn into office, according to an official biography of King prepared by the Office of the Historian of the U.S. Senate.
Other historians have speculated that King holds yet another distinction: He was likely the first gay U.S. vice president.
King (1786-1853) served in the House of Representatives from North Carolina for six years beginning in 1811. He later served in the Senate from the newly created state of Alabama from 1819 to 44, when he became U.S. minister to France.
King returned to the Senate four years later, in 1848, where he served until December 1852. He resigned after winning election in November 1852 as vice president on the ticket of Franklin Pierce.
A lifelong bachelor, King lived for 15 years in the home of future U.S. president James Buchanan while the two served in the Senate. Buchanan, also a lifelong bachelor, is believed to be the nation’s first gay president.
“They certainly didn’t have the word gay back then,” said Paul F. Boller Jr., professor emeritus of history at Texas Christian University and author of several books on presidential politics, including the book “Presidential Campaigns: From George Washington to George W. Bush.”
In a telephone interview, Boller said Washington insiders at the time speculated over whether King and Buchanan’s well-known close friendship had evolved into a romantic relationship.
“I don’t think the word homosexual was used either,” Boller said. “So they’d sort of use the term ‘a little feminine’ and all of that.”
Boller and historian Jean H. Baker, professor of history at Maryland’s Goucher College and author of a biography of Buchanan, each cite reports that President Andrew Jackson referred to King as “Miss Nancy” and “Aunt Fancy.” Aaron V. Brown, who became U.S. postmaster general while Buchanan was president, reportedly referred to King as Buchanan’s “wife.”
Baker reports in her Buchanan biography that King’s and Buchanan’s nieces reportedly destroyed their uncles’ correspondence with each other, fueling speculation that the two men were in a gay relationship that their families wanted to conceal.
Most accounts by historians of King’s political career portray him as a moderate southerner who supported slavery but voiced opposition to calls by some of his fellow southerners for the South to secede from the union during the tense decade prior to the Civil War.
“From such a calamity may God in His mercy deliver us,” King wrote in expressing opposition to the growing calls for secession.
The Encyclopedia of Alabama reports in a 2003 article that rumors circulating in Washington about King’s sexual orientation increased as his close friendship with Buchanan became widely known.
“Neither man ever married, and by 1836 they were sharing a residence in Washington,” the encyclopedia article says. “Any negative reactions to their relationship appear to have had little effect, and the men continued with their living arrangement and their work as legislators.”
By 1840, newspapers in Alabama supportive of the Democratic Party, of which King was a prominent member, promoted King as a vice-presidential running mate for incumbent President Martin Van Buren. Although King received little support outside Alabama for the vice-presidential nomination, he continued to position himself behind the scenes as a possible vice-presidential candidate for the next two decades, the Alabama Encyclopedia reports.
The Senate biography of King says President John Tyler interrupted King’s vice-presidential ambitions in 1844 when he nominated him to become U.S. minister to France and the Senate quickly confirmed the nomination by a lopsided margin.
The bio says King succeeded in his main mission to persuade France not to oppose U.S. plans to annex Texas, which the U.S. acquired following the Mexican-American War.
King returned to the Senate in 1848, two years after completing his service in France. In July 1850, King became the defacto U.S. vice president when President Zachary Taylor died in office and then-Vice President Millard Filmore became president, leaving the office of vice president vacant.
King’s Senate colleagues unanimously selected him as president pro tempore of the Senate, which normally would have placed him third in line to become president. With the vice president’s post vacant, King emerged as first in line to become president if Filmore were to die in office.
In 1852, after nominating Franklin Pierce for president on the 49th ballot, the Democratic Convention, convening in Baltimore, nominated King as Pierce’s running mate. In the ensuing months, King campaigned aggressively for the Pierce-King ticket, playing some role in Pierce’s victory.
But King’s coughing spells became increasingly frequent and painful, leading to a diagnosis of tuberculosis. In December 1852, King resigned from the Senate and made arrangements to spend the winter in Cuba, where he hoped the warm, tropical climate would help him regain his health.
In early February 1853, King realized his condition was getting worse and he would not be well enough to travel to Washington in time for the March 4 inauguration ceremony. Congress took the unusual step of passing a law allowing him to take the oath of office for vice president on foreign soil.
“On March 24, 1853, near Matanzas, a seaport town 60 miles from Havana, the gravely ill statesman, too feeble to stand unaided, became the nation’s 13th vice president,” his Senate biography says.
King boarded a ship to return to the U.S. in April 1853 and arrived home at his Alabama plantation on April 17. He died one day later at age 67.
Lou Chibbaro Jr. has reported on the LGBT civil-rights movement and the LGBT community for more than 30 years, currently as senior news reporter for the Washington Blade. In 2011, he became the first reporter from the LGBT press to be inducted into the Society of Professional Journalists D.C. Professional Chapter’s Hall of Fame. He received the Justice for Victims Crime Award from the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia in 1998.
