Vice Presidency and Death
King was elected Vice President of the United States on the Democratic ticket with Franklin Pierce in 1852 and took the oath of office on March 24, 1853, in Cuba, twenty days after he became Vice President. He had gone to La Ariadne plantation, owned by John Chartrand in Matanzas, due to his ill health. This unusual inauguration on foreign soil took place because it was believed that King, then known to be terminally ill with tuberculosis, would not live much longer. Congress passed a special act to enable this in recognition of his long and distinguished service to the government of the United States. Although he did not take the oath until 20 days after the inauguration day, he was legally the Vice President during those three weeks.
Shortly afterward, King returned to his Chestnut Hill plantation, where he died within two days. He was interred in a vault on the plantation and later reburied in Selma's Live Oak Cemetery.
Following King's death, the office of Vice-President was vacant for four years, until March 4, 1857, when John C. Breckinridge was inaugurated. In accordance with the Presidential Succession Act of 1792, the President pro tempore of the Senate was next in order of succession to President Pierce from 1853 to 1857.
Read more about this topic: William R. King
Famous quotes containing the words vice, presidency and/or death:
“Keep your hands clean and pure from the infamous vice of corruption, a vice so infamous that it degrades even the other vices that may accompany it. Accept no present whatever; let your character in that respect be transparent and without the least speck, for as avarice is the vilest and dirtiest vice in private, corruption is so in public life.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“... how often the Presidency has simply meant that a man shall be abused, distrusted, and worked to death while he is filling the great office, and that he should drop into unmerited oblivion when he has left the White House ...”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)
“After my death I wish no other herald,
No other speaker of my living actions
To keep mine honor from corruption,
But such an honest chronicler as Griffith.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)