Political Career
King quickly entered politics and was elected as a member of the North Carolina House of Commons from 1807 to 1809, and city solicitor of Wilmington, North Carolina in 1810. He was elected to the Twelfth, Thirteenth and Fourteenth Congresses, serving from March 4, 1811 until November 4, 1816, when he resigned to take a federal appointment. King was appointed as Secretary of the Legation to William Pinkney at Naples, Italy, and later at St. Petersburg, Russia.
When he returned to the United States in 1818, King joined the westward migration to the Deep South, purchasing property at what would later be known as King's Bend on the Alabama River in Dallas County, Alabama, part of the Black Belt. It was between present-day Selma and Cahaba. He developed a large cotton plantation based on slave labor, calling the property Chestnut Hill. King and his relatives, as others moved to Alabama, together formed one of the largest slaveholding families in the state, collectively owning as many as 500 slaves.
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