Question for History

Historians say William Rufus King may have been first gay U.S. vice president

By Lou Chibbaro Jr.

Philadelphia Gay News
National Gay History Project

William Rufus DeVane King

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 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 — the likely status of being the first gay U.S. vice president and possibly one of the first gay members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.

King served in the House of Representatives from North Carolina for six years beginning in 1811 and served in the Senate from the newly created state of Alabama from 1819 to 1844, when he became U.S. minister to France.

He returned to the Senate in 1848 and served until 1852, when he resigned after winning election as vice president with President 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 is believed by some historians 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.

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."

Jean H. Baker, professor of history at Maryland's Goucher College, reports in her Buchanan biography that nieces of King and Buchanan 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 of King's political career portray him as a moderate southerner who supported slavery while emerging as a strong unionist. King voiced opposition in the Senate to calls by some of his fellow southerners for the South to secede from the United States during the decade prior to the Civil War.

The Senate biography quotes an unnamed critic of King as describing him as a "tall, prim, wig-topped mediocrity," noting that King wore a wig "long after such coverings had gone out of fashion."

The biography quotes a fellow senator as having this to say about King: "He was distinguished by the scrupulous correctness of his conduct. He was remarkable for his quiet and unobtrusive, but active practical usefulness as a legislator ... To his honor be it spoken, he never vexed the ear of the Senate with ill-timed, tedious or unnecessary debate."

King's relationship with Buchanan, who was from Pennsylvania, could have been a factor in Buchanan's sympathy for the South during Buchanan's tenure as a senator and later as president.

David Durham, a University of Alabama professor of law and history, said that it remains an open question whether King was gay.

"I don't think anybody can prove it one way or the other," he said. "A lot of the speculation comes from misinterpreting, I think, 19th century lifestyles, where men commonly slept in the same bed and thought nothing of it."

"And the kind of terms of affection used in letters and correspondence between males — in our society now it's like, umm, that's very interesting. But they thought nothing of it and it didn't mean there was some kind of romantic attachment," he said. "But that's not to say that there wasn't." -E

Lou Chibbaro Jr. has reported on the LGBT civil rights movement and the LGBT community for more than 30 years. He is senior news reporter for the Washington Blade