October 10, 2018 • 12 mins
Did you know that the United States has had one Vice-President who was sworn in on foreign soil? Well it turns out that may be the least interesting part of the story of William Rufus King.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. Short stuff, I should say,
I'm Josh, there's Chuck, there's Jerry. Let's get to it,
and they're off And another shorty. So, um, I were
about to talk about something I had no idea about
previous to this. Yeah, and this one has a couple
of layers that are super interesting to me. Is it
(00:25):
is an onion for sure? Um, So we're going to
dive into the history of a guy named William Rufus
Devane King, and he was an early senator. He was
a diplomat for the United States. Um, well, I think
he was a congressman first, then he was a diplomat,
(00:47):
and then he was a senator for like twenty nine
years or something like that, and then eventually he became
vice president. And the way that he apparently progressed through
the ranks in the Democratic Party was by being pretty
middle of the road, vanilla mediocre. Yeah, and I interpreted
that as also he was a a good guy that
(01:11):
you know, he wasn't one of these blustery blowhards of
the day. Um. He was an attorney first, of course,
probably like most of these dudes were and still are.
And he he was described as various things tall prim
Wig topped mediocrity, but other things that they said were
like he he wanted people to address each other with decorum,
(01:33):
and whenever people were arguing, he was known to come
in and kind of try and reconcile things. So I
kind of like this guy's style the more I read
about him. Yeah, no, I'm with you, Like you know,
I think to be middle of the road at this
time was actually kind of, um, a badge of honor. Interesting.
I mean, this is during the lead up to the
(01:54):
Civil War. The country is not getting along very well, right, yeah,
so he he um. He started out again in Congress. Uh.
And then he went on to service diplomat to Russia
and then Naples, the Kingdom of Naples, no less in France.
At one point too, I think, oh, oh, yeah, you're right.
And then by eighteen eighteen he returned to the US
(02:15):
and he said, I'm going to find my fortunes way
out west. So we went to Alabama, which is way
out west at the time, and he was he was
born the son of a plantation owner, and he became
a plantation owner there. He owned five hundred slaves. Um
became one of the largest slaveholders in this um newly
(02:36):
formed state, and he named as the state Chestnut Hill.
And and from there that's where he became the senator
for twenty nine years. He was a senator from Alabama
for twenty nine years UM and actually was instrumental in
UM ironically naming the town of Selma. Oh did you
see that? So there was a poem, a book of
(03:00):
poems about called like Songs of Selma, UM that he was,
that he loved. And when they were naming the county
seat of the county where his his plantation was, he
was basically instrumental in getting it named Selma, the city
of Selma, Alabama. Yeah. So he would eventually go on
through the Democratic Party at the time to be vice president,
(03:24):
to be a presidential running mate to UM hopeful Franklin
Pierce Uh. And this is things where things get a
little bit interesting because many historians and it says some
but I did some research on this, and most historians
now look back and say President James Buchanan was clearly
(03:45):
a gay man, right, And it's interesting to think about
our past being a little more open to that. But
there's a guy that wrote a book Jim Lohan called
um lies, teachers lies. My teacher told me everything. You're
American history teacher got wrong. And he clearly states that
(04:06):
that James Buchanan was gay, and not only that it
was not a big secret and America was actually a
little more open to that kind of thing and premisses
of that kind of thing back then, right right, It
wasn't like like his career, his political career wasn't ruined.
It wasn't like blackmail held against him. And that just
so goes against what most people think of with history,
(04:29):
that it's like arrow that progresses ever forward and that
by by default then like the time we live and
must be more tolerant, more progressive than you know, a
hundred something years ago, a hundred and fifty years ago,
And that's just not the case. And this is a
good example of that. Yeah, So he calls it. This
author says that the idea that we started great and
(04:50):
just got greater and greater chronological ethnocentrism, which is a
fancy way of saying what you just said, which is
in the nineteenth century it was okay at least too
you know him he got elected president. Yeah, And speaking
of fancy, one of the um examples that they point
to is that this was an open secret or just
known around d C. Is that Andrew Jackson um had
(05:14):
a nickname for James Buchanan and William King miss Nancy
and aunt Fancy. Yeah, because here's the deal, Uh, Buchanan
never married. He and King lived together and spent a
lot of time together, and that was basically sort of
known around town that that was the deal. When Buchanan died,
(05:36):
he had all of his correspondence is burned upon his death,
which is sort of a weird thing to do. But
a few of the letters did survive, and one of
them from four addressed to a Mrs Roosevelt, said when
King moved to Paris to be ambassador to France, he said,
I am now solitary and alone, having no companion in
the house with me. I've gone wooing to several gentlemen,
(05:58):
but have not succeeded with any of them. Tough to
take that the wrong way it is. I mean, of
course we're saying, you know, it's pretty clear now, but
you know, who knows. They might make the argument in
this article that could have just been close male friends.
But I think most people kind of agree now that
James Buchanan was our our first gay president. Yeah, which
(06:19):
is pretty awesome actually, Yeah, of course. Um. And then
that same letter, Chuck that you just wrote a quote from,
goes on to say that, um, if this keeps up,
he may very well just marry an old maid who
can cook and care for him, and w would expect
ardent romance from him in return. So yeah, there's just
the evidence is that what little evidence there is certainly
points to this, and and the idea that, as this
(06:43):
article puts it, that this is just like a bromance
or something, and that seems pretty thin, all signs point
to him being gay. But also in defense of this
article on how stuff works, they say that, um, that
that had zero bearing whatsoever on his political aptitude. U. Um,
it was just an interesting fact of history that kind
(07:03):
of makes us examine our own times a little more. Yeah.
And I'll tell you one thing, Um, I don't know
much about the nineteenth century, but I do know that
gay men existed and bromances did not. You know, that's
a stupid modern conceit. Yeah. And I think what you
just said is a T shirt to a long T
shirt maybe front and back, the sleep shirt all right,
(07:26):
So we're gonna take a quick break and we're gonna
come back to let you know why we titled this one. Um,
how King actually took his oath of office in Cuba
right after this. So so William King, I want to
(07:57):
call him Rufus King so bad because it's William Rufus
Devan King. But it's not not what he's called, Josh
now what he's called. But William King had another claim
to fame historically, and that he was the only person
in the United States history elected to high office, um
who was sworn in off of US soil. And that
(08:20):
was the way that it happened. Is it's interesting, but
it's not anything that William King wanted. No, he got tuberculosis,
got very sick, and from the time of his election
in November eighteen fifty two as Pierce's vice president to
when he would eventually take office in March of eighteen
fifty three, this was sort of the time when they
(08:42):
were like, um, go to a good, hot, warm climate
because that will will help you out, which is, you know,
it probably does help along, but it's not a cure
all you know. Yeah, the muggy air of Cuba will
really clear out your tuberculosis. It doesn't that doesn't seem
it doesn't seem right to me. Yeah, that's true. I
didn't think about the amity, but that's where he went.
He went down to Havannah to to restore his health
(09:04):
between the election and the swearing in, but his health
just got worse and worse and worse. And by the
time he was to be sworn in within like a
week or so, I think maybe even more than that,
because he wouldn't have been able to make it from
Havannah to d C within a week of that time
on a boat. Yeah. Um, but within that time he realized, like,
(09:25):
I'm not going to be able to make it to
d C. I'm still too sick. The time is too short.
I'm just gonna have to ask if I can be
sworn in down here. And Congress said, you know what,
we like you will. We think you're great. We give
you a lot of a lot of bs about you
and Buchanan, but we think you're a pretty great person.
So yeah, we're gonna pass an Act of Congress to
(09:46):
make that happen. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. They passed this
legislation allowing him to be sworn in in Cuba, and
on March eighteen fifty three, he did just that at
an office near uh Matanzas. Matanzas has a little more flair. Uh.
And this is a seaport town about sixty miles east
(10:07):
of Havana. He was so sick he couldn't even stand
up without help, but he repeated the oath. He became
our thirteen vice president, which is pretty remarkable on Cuban soil.
And then after about a month he was like, I
really would kind of like to get back to the US.
Set sail for Alabama. Yeah. Yeah, and imagine this, Chuck,
can't you see like a Cuban sea captain. Go, you
(10:29):
want to go into Alabama? Okay, I like your Cuban
sea captain. Thank you. That's great. I've been working on
it all day. Uh. Oh, is that why you're wearing
that shirt? Very nice? Now it all makes sense. So
he set sail and uh. Eventually he would die April eighteen,
(10:49):
the day after he got back to United States soil. Yeah,
he made it back to Chestnut Hill and expired post taste. Yeah,
and here's something I didn't know. Apparently you didn't really
need a vice president back then because we went four
years without one. Well, I don't know if you didn't
need it or not, but Franklin Pierce is, in my opinion,
the worst president of the United States has ever had.
(11:12):
He and um King were elected because they were so
middle of the road and so vanilla and so plain
on the especially on like the slavery issue. That that
they were elected to try to keep the U s
from civil war, but they will not. Not King, but
definitely Pierce laid the groundwork for it almost single handedly
(11:32):
with this terrible administration. So um he, Franklin Pierce is terrible,
and I could see him being like, I don't need
a vice president. Can screw it all up myself like that.
I didn't know about your long standing Franklin Pierce scrudge.
It's it's hot. You got anything else? Now? That's it. Well,
thanks for hanging out with us for this brief time
(11:55):
for you while you made it through your bag of
carrot sticks on your lunch break. Um, if you want
to hang out with us, go to our home on
the web stuff you should know dot com and look
us up. I'm also are you serious? Clark dot com?
And we're all over social media and we'll see you
next time. Everybody by
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. Short stuff, I should say,
I'm Josh, there's Chuck, there's Jerry. Let's get to it,
and they're off And another shorty. So, um, I were
about to talk about something I had no idea about
previous to this. Yeah, and this one has a couple
of layers that are super interesting to me. Is it
(00:25):
is an onion for sure? Um, So we're going to
dive into the history of a guy named William Rufus
Devane King, and he was an early senator. He was
a diplomat for the United States. Um, well, I think
he was a congressman first, then he was a diplomat,
(00:47):
and then he was a senator for like twenty nine
years or something like that, and then eventually he became
vice president. And the way that he apparently progressed through
the ranks in the Democratic Party was by being pretty
middle of the road, vanilla mediocre. Yeah, and I interpreted
that as also he was a a good guy that
(01:11):
you know, he wasn't one of these blustery blowhards of
the day. Um. He was an attorney first, of course,
probably like most of these dudes were and still are.
And he he was described as various things tall prim
Wig topped mediocrity, but other things that they said were
like he he wanted people to address each other with decorum,
(01:33):
and whenever people were arguing, he was known to come
in and kind of try and reconcile things. So I
kind of like this guy's style the more I read
about him. Yeah, no, I'm with you, Like you know,
I think to be middle of the road at this
time was actually kind of, um, a badge of honor. Interesting.
I mean, this is during the lead up to the
(01:54):
Civil War. The country is not getting along very well, right, yeah,
so he he um. He started out again in Congress. Uh.
And then he went on to service diplomat to Russia
and then Naples, the Kingdom of Naples, no less in France.
At one point too, I think, oh, oh, yeah, you're right.
And then by eighteen eighteen he returned to the US
(02:15):
and he said, I'm going to find my fortunes way
out west. So we went to Alabama, which is way
out west at the time, and he was he was
born the son of a plantation owner, and he became
a plantation owner there. He owned five hundred slaves. Um
became one of the largest slaveholders in this um newly
(02:36):
formed state, and he named as the state Chestnut Hill.
And and from there that's where he became the senator
for twenty nine years. He was a senator from Alabama
for twenty nine years UM and actually was instrumental in
UM ironically naming the town of Selma. Oh did you
see that? So there was a poem, a book of
(03:00):
poems about called like Songs of Selma, UM that he was,
that he loved. And when they were naming the county
seat of the county where his his plantation was, he
was basically instrumental in getting it named Selma, the city
of Selma, Alabama. Yeah. So he would eventually go on
through the Democratic Party at the time to be vice president,
(03:24):
to be a presidential running mate to UM hopeful Franklin
Pierce Uh. And this is things where things get a
little bit interesting because many historians and it says some
but I did some research on this, and most historians
now look back and say President James Buchanan was clearly
(03:45):
a gay man, right, And it's interesting to think about
our past being a little more open to that. But
there's a guy that wrote a book Jim Lohan called
um lies, teachers lies. My teacher told me everything. You're
American history teacher got wrong. And he clearly states that
(04:06):
that James Buchanan was gay, and not only that it
was not a big secret and America was actually a
little more open to that kind of thing and premisses
of that kind of thing back then, right right, It
wasn't like like his career, his political career wasn't ruined.
It wasn't like blackmail held against him. And that just
so goes against what most people think of with history,
(04:29):
that it's like arrow that progresses ever forward and that
by by default then like the time we live and
must be more tolerant, more progressive than you know, a
hundred something years ago, a hundred and fifty years ago,
And that's just not the case. And this is a
good example of that. Yeah, So he calls it. This
author says that the idea that we started great and
(04:50):
just got greater and greater chronological ethnocentrism, which is a
fancy way of saying what you just said, which is
in the nineteenth century it was okay at least too
you know him he got elected president. Yeah, And speaking
of fancy, one of the um examples that they point
to is that this was an open secret or just
known around d C. Is that Andrew Jackson um had
(05:14):
a nickname for James Buchanan and William King miss Nancy
and aunt Fancy. Yeah, because here's the deal, Uh, Buchanan
never married. He and King lived together and spent a
lot of time together, and that was basically sort of
known around town that that was the deal. When Buchanan died,
(05:36):
he had all of his correspondence is burned upon his death,
which is sort of a weird thing to do. But
a few of the letters did survive, and one of
them from four addressed to a Mrs Roosevelt, said when
King moved to Paris to be ambassador to France, he said,
I am now solitary and alone, having no companion in
the house with me. I've gone wooing to several gentlemen,
(05:58):
but have not succeeded with any of them. Tough to
take that the wrong way it is. I mean, of
course we're saying, you know, it's pretty clear now, but
you know, who knows. They might make the argument in
this article that could have just been close male friends.
But I think most people kind of agree now that
James Buchanan was our our first gay president. Yeah, which
(06:19):
is pretty awesome actually, Yeah, of course. Um. And then
that same letter, Chuck that you just wrote a quote from,
goes on to say that, um, if this keeps up,
he may very well just marry an old maid who
can cook and care for him, and w would expect
ardent romance from him in return. So yeah, there's just
the evidence is that what little evidence there is certainly
points to this, and and the idea that, as this
(06:43):
article puts it, that this is just like a bromance
or something, and that seems pretty thin, all signs point
to him being gay. But also in defense of this
article on how stuff works, they say that, um, that
that had zero bearing whatsoever on his political aptitude. U. Um,
it was just an interesting fact of history that kind
(07:03):
of makes us examine our own times a little more. Yeah.
And I'll tell you one thing, Um, I don't know
much about the nineteenth century, but I do know that
gay men existed and bromances did not. You know, that's
a stupid modern conceit. Yeah. And I think what you
just said is a T shirt to a long T
shirt maybe front and back, the sleep shirt all right,
(07:26):
So we're gonna take a quick break and we're gonna
come back to let you know why we titled this one. Um,
how King actually took his oath of office in Cuba
right after this. So so William King, I want to
(07:57):
call him Rufus King so bad because it's William Rufus
Devan King. But it's not not what he's called, Josh
now what he's called. But William King had another claim
to fame historically, and that he was the only person
in the United States history elected to high office, um
who was sworn in off of US soil. And that
(08:20):
was the way that it happened. Is it's interesting, but
it's not anything that William King wanted. No, he got tuberculosis,
got very sick, and from the time of his election
in November eighteen fifty two as Pierce's vice president to
when he would eventually take office in March of eighteen
fifty three, this was sort of the time when they
(08:42):
were like, um, go to a good, hot, warm climate
because that will will help you out, which is, you know,
it probably does help along, but it's not a cure
all you know. Yeah, the muggy air of Cuba will
really clear out your tuberculosis. It doesn't that doesn't seem
it doesn't seem right to me. Yeah, that's true. I
didn't think about the amity, but that's where he went.
He went down to Havannah to to restore his health
(09:04):
between the election and the swearing in, but his health
just got worse and worse and worse. And by the
time he was to be sworn in within like a
week or so, I think maybe even more than that,
because he wouldn't have been able to make it from
Havannah to d C within a week of that time
on a boat. Yeah. Um, but within that time he realized, like,
(09:25):
I'm not going to be able to make it to
d C. I'm still too sick. The time is too short.
I'm just gonna have to ask if I can be
sworn in down here. And Congress said, you know what,
we like you will. We think you're great. We give
you a lot of a lot of bs about you
and Buchanan, but we think you're a pretty great person.
So yeah, we're gonna pass an Act of Congress to
(09:46):
make that happen. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. They passed this
legislation allowing him to be sworn in in Cuba, and
on March eighteen fifty three, he did just that at
an office near uh Matanzas. Matanzas has a little more flair. Uh.
And this is a seaport town about sixty miles east
(10:07):
of Havana. He was so sick he couldn't even stand
up without help, but he repeated the oath. He became
our thirteen vice president, which is pretty remarkable on Cuban soil.
And then after about a month he was like, I
really would kind of like to get back to the US.
Set sail for Alabama. Yeah. Yeah, and imagine this, Chuck,
can't you see like a Cuban sea captain. Go, you
(10:29):
want to go into Alabama? Okay, I like your Cuban
sea captain. Thank you. That's great. I've been working on
it all day. Uh. Oh, is that why you're wearing
that shirt? Very nice? Now it all makes sense. So
he set sail and uh. Eventually he would die April eighteen,
(10:49):
the day after he got back to United States soil. Yeah,
he made it back to Chestnut Hill and expired post taste. Yeah,
and here's something I didn't know. Apparently you didn't really
need a vice president back then because we went four
years without one. Well, I don't know if you didn't
need it or not, but Franklin Pierce is, in my opinion,
the worst president of the United States has ever had.
(11:12):
He and um King were elected because they were so
middle of the road and so vanilla and so plain
on the especially on like the slavery issue. That that
they were elected to try to keep the U s
from civil war, but they will not. Not King, but
definitely Pierce laid the groundwork for it almost single handedly
(11:32):
with this terrible administration. So um he, Franklin Pierce is terrible,
and I could see him being like, I don't need
a vice president. Can screw it all up myself like that.
I didn't know about your long standing Franklin Pierce scrudge.
It's it's hot. You got anything else? Now? That's it. Well,
thanks for hanging out with us for this brief time
(11:55):
for you while you made it through your bag of
carrot sticks on your lunch break. Um, if you want
to hang out with us, go to our home on
the web stuff you should know dot com and look
us up. I'm also are you serious? Clark dot com?
And we're all over social media and we'll see you
next time. Everybody by
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