![]() ![]() He was appointed as Minister to France, and served from 1844 to 1846. King was Chairman of the Senate's Committee on Public Lands and the Committee on Commerce. Later he served as President pro tempore of the United States Senate during the 24th through 27th Congresses. King was honored with a single vote at the Democratic-Republican Party caucus to be the party's candidate for the office of vice president of the United States for the upcoming 1824 presidential election. During this time, in March–April 1824, William R. King was a follower of Andrew Jackson, and was re-elected to the Senate as a Jacksonian in 1822, 1828, 1834, and 1841, serving from December 14, 1819, until his resignation on April 15, 1844. Upon the admission of Alabama as the twenty-second state in 1819, he was elected by the State Legislature as a Democratic-Republican to the United States Senate. William Rufus King was a delegate to the convention which organized the Alabama state government. King and his relatives formed one of the state's largest slaveholding families, collectively owning as many as 500 people. He developed a large cotton plantation based on slave labor, calling the property "Chestnut Hill". ![]() When he returned to the United States in 1818, King joined the westward migration of the cotton culture to the Deep South, purchasing property at what would later be known as "King's Bend" between present-day Selma and Cahaba on the Alabama River in Dallas County of the new Alabama Territory, which had been recently separated from Mississippi. (He did not reach the constitutional age of 25 for service in the House of Representatives until after the term began, but the Twelfth Congress did not convene until November 4, 1811, and King was not sworn in until then.) King was only 24 years old when he became a congressman for the first time. He was elected to the Twelfth, Thirteenth and Fourteenth Congresses, serving from March 4, 1811, until November 4, 1816, when he resigned to become Secretary of the Legation for William Pinkney during Pinkney's appointment as Minister to Russia and to a special diplomatic mission in Naples. King entered politics and was elected as a member of the North Carolina House of Commons, where he served from 1807 to 1809, and he became city solicitor of Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1810. President pro tempore of the United States Senate ![]()
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