Here's Where It Gets Interesting - 1. Alabama - The Man Who Almost Wasn't Vice President with Abi Ayres

Episode Date: July 19, 2021

In this episode, Sharon is joined by Abigail Ayres, an average person, in her own words, bringing love, life, laughter, and joy to Instagram. Sharon and Abigail discuss the life and legacy of William Rufus King, the 13th vice president of the United States, who served a term of a few weeks before his untimely death. William Rufus King’s lifelong political career was a far cry from those who are expected to follow the ethical, democratic process we uphold today, and Sharon shares how King’s social status, wealth, race, and outdated electoral systems influenced his pursuit of the “American Dream.” As a proponent of slavery and founding member of Selma, Alabama, Sharon and Abi examine the irony of the civil rights marches led by Martin Luther King Jr. on the soil of King’s former plantation one century later and discuss how we can extract the contributions of historical figures in America while also condemning their immorality. For more information on this episode including all resources and links discussed go to https://www.sharonmcmahon.com/podcast  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yay, you're here! I am pumped. There is just no other way to say it. So glad you're here. Have I got a story for you. This is about a man who almost wasn't vice president. Almost wasn't, but did, did become vice president while he was not even in the country. And then he was only vice president for a short, short period of time. You've got to hear this story. You're going to have some mind blown brain tangle moments when you're listening to this. I'm chatting with my friend, Abby Ayers. I just love her so much. You're going to get a kick out of listening to our conversation. Let's dive in. Let's do the man who almost wasn't vice president. I'm Sharon McMahon and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast.

Abby, hello, my friend. Hey, how are you? It's so nice for you to join me. I've decided that I will be calling you Abigail. Oh, good. Is that- Like Abigail Adams. Like Abigail Adams, one of my favorite first ladies. Oh, good. Abigail Adams.

Like Abigail Adams. Yes. One of my favorite first ladies. Oh, good. So I invited you today because I have a story that I think you're going to be interested in. I cannot even wait. This is like up your alley. Is it? I think so.

I think you're going to enjoy it. I feel like this story is going to tell me a lot about what you think of me. No, no. There's nothing unflattering about you in it or no. First of all, let me just ask you a couple of questions. Do you know who William Rufus King is? No. Okay. I hardly know. Like, I don't know five presidents off the top of my head. Like I am am this I did not do well in school like I'm straight smart but like no oh yeah you as a teacher yeah like as a teacher you probably would have been like um let's put you like in the corner because I would just talk to people yeah no I I would have been

your best friend but I definitely would have gotten a hard c probably a d so i also think it's funny that you think that you have street smarts you've got one or the other maybe i don't have either he's like living utah yeah i'm in utah i'm in salt lake city utah the least streety place in the world. No, no. Okay. So I can't even wait. William Rufus King, born in the late 1700s, born into a wealthy family, becomes an attorney. And of course, during that time frame, there was no law school, right?

You just apprenticed with other lawyers. And when they figured out that you had learned enough, then you could take the bar exam and you could become an attorney yourself. He becomes an attorney and he quickly, because of his family connections, he quickly gets elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. When he was 24 years old, he finally takes the oath of office after he turns 25 because the constitution says you have to be 25 in order to be a U.S. representative. So after a period of time, he resigned being a member of Congress so that he could go to Russia to work for the U.S. minister to Russia. Back then, of course, you didn't just have satellite connections where you could just like, you know, Right. So he resigns Congress goes to Russia. And while he's in Russia, he starts getting word that like, things are starting to things are starting to pop in the American South, like, you might want

to buy some land down here, because it's gonna soon this reads regions are going to become states you might want to move here it seems real great so he he's getting this information from russia like he's living his dream life in russia he's working through the grapevine he's like he hears this louisiana yeah through the grapevine he gets a letter saying i just bought like a big plantation down here. You might want to buy a big plantation down here before all the big plantations get bought up. So these are undeveloped area. So he buys a large plot of land and he returns to the United States, returns to the United States in like 1818, after having worked in Russia for a

couple of years, he again comes from money, has made money for himself, begins to acquire slaves. And eventually, over the course of his trajectory of his career, had acquired over 500 slaves, was one of the largest slave owners in the area from the time the constitution was written until the early 1900s, Abby, people did not get to vote for their own Senator. Senators were chosen by the state government. They were elected by the state state legislature until the early 1900s when we changed the law to allow senators to be directly elected by the population. So he becomes very wealthy and well-known and is elected to the U.S. Senate and goes to become a senator. And of course, still had his giant plantation. He just wasn't living there full

time because he becomes a senator. And he, to this day is one of the longest serving Senators. He was in the Senate for almost 29 years. So he is in the, he's been in the Senate. He was in the Senate from 1819 to 1844. Okay. A couple of other little interesting tidbits about this gentleman is that he never he never married he never married a woman he lived with a man for 13 years that man's name was james buchanan james buchanan later wanted to become the president of the united states okay that that name i knew shockingly i know um there has been 150 plus years of speculation about the relationship between King and Buchanan. People who knew them at the time referred to them as Miss Nancy and Aunt Fancy. Are you kidding?

That was what people called them during that time period. I love this. oh my gosh so i cannot imagine this like this is in today's world this is so turned like a gay man owning a plantation like so some people have said they just had a really close friendship the rules of friendship at the time were different than they are today and men often had very close relationships in ways that some people have said they just had a really close friendship. The rules of friendship at the time were different than they are today. And men often had very close relationships in ways that are socially unacceptable today. Some people have said that those nicknames of like Miss Nancy and Aunt Fancy, that those were nicknames that people called others who just like had manners and wore clean clothes. So again, we don't have any like,

and this is my life partner. You know what I mean? Like we don't have that kind of evidence, but yet there's been a lot of speculation. Let's just say that. Okay, so in the constitution, there are really only two jobs that it talks about that are in relationship to Congress.

So when you hear about somebody who's like, oh, they're the Senate majority leader, they're the, you know, House minority leader, like you hear about all that kind of stuff. None of that is in the Constitution. Those are all jobs that Congress has invented for itself in an effort to make things run more smoothly. But there are two jobs that are mentioned in the Constitution for Congress, and one of them is the Speaker of the House, and the other is the President pro tempore of the Senate. And what the President pro tempore does is— That sounds like tempura shrimp. Yes.

The President is pro tempura shrimp. Yeah. Absolutely. Now you will remember that name. Yeah, absolutely. Now you will remember that name. So the job of the president pro tempore is essentially to stand in, act as the president of the Senate. The constitution also talks about how the vice president of the United States is supposed to do things like break ties in the Senate, things along those lines. And so they are essentially acting like the vice president would if the vice president was there in the Senate to just like,

make sure that things are running the way they're supposed to run. And everybody's doing what they're supposed to do. Like a temporary shrimp job, like let me babysitter. Uh-huh. Right. Like, just kind of in charge. It's a big deal. It's a big deal to be the president pro-temporary. It's a big deal to that. You're fourth in the line of succession as the president pro tempore. So president, vice president, speaker of the house, president pro tempore. So it's a big deal to be essentially the head of the Senate. Have you heard of president Zachary Taylor? Do you remember him? Okay. So do you, do you think right now. I thought I cleared that up in the beginning. But then you knew about James Buchanan.

I know. I don't even know. I know. I know some, but no. You don't need to know anything. You need to know nothing. I'm going to tell you what you need to know. So Zachary Taylor, you know, like he had been this big kind of war hero. He is in office for 16 months and he attends this big gathering, this big party

at the Washington Monument. And he eats a couple of big bowls of cherries. This is in July. I thought you literally were going to say temporary shrimp. No, Zachary Taylor eats a bunch of cherries. He drinks a couple of glasses of iced milk. And then goes back to the White House and starts not feeling too good. And he starts having some very serious digestive problems, kind of like coming out both ends. He drinks some water to try to feel better. Within a few days, he was dead. Literally, just like few days, the president died. The president died from eating some cherries and drinking some milk. Iced milk.

Iced milk. I just love that. I was thinking like, why does she know this? Like, how does she know this? Okay. Then he dies. Oh, that escalated quick. That escalated quickly. Yes.

Okay. Yes. He was dead within a few days. No drinking milk and eating cheese. Well, they hypothesize. I mean, it's hard to know. Of course, this is 1850. So obviously medicine was very different then than it is now. Some people think that he died of, you know, like from a bacterial

infection, bacteria that was in either the milk or the water that he consumed. Other people think he got gastroenteritis, like an intestinal infection from the combination of eating cherries and drinking this and kind of potentially infected milk. Those kinds of infections were very prominent in that region during that time. Okay. Like we didn't have refrigeration. So he dies. He dies.

And he died 16 months after becoming the president, right? Like it's unusual for a president to die that quickly, even during the 1800s. Yeah. unusual for a president to die that quickly, even during the 1800s. And for him to have his death so strongly associated with eating cherries and drinking milk, it was like, it was so unexpected because he wasn't known to be like a sickly man that just shows. It just seems suspicious, right? Okay. So Millard Fillmore, who was the vice president at the time, quickly has to become the president because Zachary Taylor is dead 16 months after getting elected. So during that time, this is not true anymore, but during that time,

we had no way to fill the seat of vice president. If something happened to the president and the vice president had to become the president, or the vice president died the seat of vice president was just left open they did nothing about it now we have a method to replace the vice president they're like we should probably fix we should probably like it's actually a national security issue to have no presidential backup yeah Yeah. Right. Right. Like that's a bad idea. So 1851, a man who was new to this story named Franklin Pierce gets nominated to be the president of the United States. We're moving past Fillmore and all that kind of stuff. We're moving ahead to 1851. 1851. Yes. Franklin Pierce gets nominated to be the president and William Rufus King was nominated to be the vice president. You know, the system is not the same as it is now, where you have a candidate who says,

I'm running for president, and this person is my vice presidential pick. At the time, parties selected the tickets for themselves, and they decided who's going to be our presidential nominee and who's going to be our presidential nominee and who's going to be our vice presidential nominee that was done at the actual conventions so this was decided at the democratic convention which was held in baltimore in 1851 i kind of like that actually yeah that it's a third party like other groups of people are making these decisions about who would be good at this job. I get it. Yeah. Franklin Pierce and William Rufus King win the election.

I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends. And together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind the scenes stories, hilarious guests, and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve! It is my girl in the studio! Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from The Office and our friendship with brand new guests, and we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your

questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office Lady 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. So King is going to become the vice president. Pierce is going to become the president all through this campaign period. By the way, campaign periods did not last two and a half years like they do now. Yeah know where it's like how long

is this gonna take um it was much shorter 50 states either that's true true very true they weren't going out to california that's right that's right um so late in 1852 after you know after the election had been won king starts getting sicker and sicker and sicker. He had, he had experienced some sickness during the campaign. And by mid December, like December 20th, King decides to resign his seat in the Senate so that he can really focus on his own health and getting well before he becomes the vice president. So when did he become like, when is it the same now where it's like you start, like, when do you start becoming the vice president or the president? March. So same. Okay. It used to be March and we have moved it to January now. Oh, so it used to be,

yep. It used to be the same. No, it's the same March and March and January are the same. It's the same. The next year though. Okay. So they get elected and then. He left office, left his Senate seat on December 20th and he had tuberculosis. King did. And his doctor at the time was like, you know, what you don't need is to stay here in damp, crowded Washington, DC with your tuberculosis.

Yeah. What you should do is go to Cuba. That's what you should do. Not, not, not go to Cuba. Don't go to your plantation, go to Cuba. So he, on advice of his doctor, decides, okay, I'm going to go to Cuba, where hopefully I will be able to recover enough to assume the vice presidency at the beginning of March. In early January, so this is the interim period before Franklin Pierce and William Rufus King assumed their roles in the White House. In January, Franklin Pierce was attending a funeral. Pierce was from New Hampshire. He was pro-slavery, but he was from the North. And he was attending a funeral in Massachusetts. Quick little backstory about Franklin Pierce and his wife. They had three sons. Their first son, Franklin Pierce Jr. died a few days after he was born.

Their second son, who they named Frank, died when he was four from an illness. They had one son left named Benny. So Pierce and his wife and their son were leaving Massachusetts to go back to New Hampshire, leaving a funeral. Shortly after they boarded the train to return home, an axle on the train broke and the train fell off of the tracks and tumbled down a 20 foot embankment. And Franklin Pierce's son, Benny was, was decapitated and died. And so this I'm legit going to start crying. Can you imagine all three of your sons, um, being killed and your son being killed in such a dramatic accidental fashion in front of your eyes a couple of months before you're supposed to become the president of the United States. King is sick with tuberculosis in Cuba and Pierce's son was just killed in a freight train accident. So he considered what,

you know, like, do I even go ahead with this? Finally, the Pierce's get to Washington, D.C. This is March 4th. Meanwhile, King is too sick. Oh, no. Too sick to come back to Washington, D.C. for the inauguration. Congress hearing from King, like, I don't know if I can make it. I'm real sick. They decide a couple of

days before the inauguration, okay, let's pass a special resolution that will allow King to be sworn in as vice president while he's in Cuba. And again, bear in mind, this is the early 1850s. They can't just be like, hey, let me let's just call him be like sure we'll swear you in how do they get a message to him they have to send it like send it maybe physical piece of paper somebody needs to transmit the message to him so it takes a while to get these kind of messages so they they decide march 2, we're going to let King get sworn in down there in Cuba, Pierce over here. Like he, is he even going to make it? I don't know. So he, he makes, he finally makes it to Washington DC. His wife was so distraught that she could not attend his inauguration. He felt that God was punishing him for something,

he felt that god was punishing him for something um which is why all three of his children died and he refused to take the oath of office on the bible like he refused to put his hand on the bible and he's like i because he felt like god was punishing him it was not until march 24th that they finally swore in william rufus as vice president. So the message got delayed on the boat. Yeah. It took a while. It took a while. Yes. So we had a president on March 4th, you know, three weeks later, they finally swear William Rufus King in as vice president. And he's like, well, I'm the vice president. i should probably try to return to the country that i am the vice president of right like that might be handy but while he was being sworn in he he was too weak to even stand up to take the oath of office. Oh my gosh. Literally just like lying in bed. Two weeks after he becomes

the vice president, he finally is like, okay, I'm going to try to, I'm going to try to make it back to the United States. He leaves Cuba on April 6th. He left Cuba. This is how long it took to get back to his house it took from April 6th to April 17th to get back to his house that's actually that's actually shorter than I thought honestly I mean like people float from Cuba on a raft like how why is it taking weeks like i live in utah i live in utah so i'm like for me to get home from cuba with like no yeah it probably would take you this is like yeah it would take way longer but like yeah you can float to cuba on a so he finally arrived home on aprilth, and then he died the next day. His office is left vacant.

Franklin Pierce has no vice president for the remainder of his time. Franklin Pierce developed a very serious drinking problem. His wife had very serious depression for his entire presidency. When he tried to run again to become the president. Wait, why would he even try the opposition to pierce was very strong and the slogan that was used was like anyone but pierce literally anyone but pierce and get and then everyone's like no you're a loser anyone but you anyone but you and guess who became president after pierce left office buchanan james buchanan yes yes james buchanan became president was he depressed because of rufus i don't know that's a good question i want to know so buchanan

never married pierce later died just a few years later after leaving office from cirrhosis of the liver. He literally drank himself to death. Here's the last little tidbit of this story. Okay. Oh my gosh. Where William Rufus King purchased his plantation and where he enslaved hundreds and hundreds of people was in Selma, Alabama. And he founded the city of Selma, Alabama. He was one of the co-founders of the city of Selma, which of course, a little less than 100 years later, Martin Luther King led the Selma marches where they were marching from Selma to try to get voting rights for everyone. And Lyndon Johnson was president at that time. And Lyndon Johnson eventually signed the Voting Rights Act during that time period. But that started in the city the city that William Rufus King the plantation owner

founded only vice president for a few weeks and was vice president in the United States for one day no not even a day not even a whole day okay so I want to know what your thoughts are on him like what do you feel like because I I'm going back and forth between like, oh my gosh, I feel so sorry for him. And then I'm like, oh yeah, he had like, he like owned slaves and stuff. Like, yeah. No, I don't feel bad for him. You got what was coming to him. Like, what do you do? I think that is the question that people, modern students of history, modern historians wrestle with. That is the question. How do we make sense of the fact that so many of our predecessors for so many years owned human beings? owned human beings? How do we tease out their contributions to America and also reconcile the idea that they did something that is morally reprehensible to us today? How do we reconcile the idea that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson were very, very wealthy, large plantation owners

owned hundreds and hundreds of slaves. And sometimes even in the case of George Washington, he later expressed his like, I don't know, I don't know if this is the right thing to do, but their loyalty was to the union. Their loyalty was to keep the institution alive today. It seems like there should be no choice today. The choice is don't do that. Isn't that like kind of the prevailing? Yes. Give up your trappings of wealth to do the right thing. That's our current perspective. Yeah. And so I totally get where you're coming from it. I don't have a, a magic formula to say, here's how we separate the good that somebody did from the bad that somebody did. We have a natural tendency to categorize people into good and bad. We do have that natural

tendency because it's easier for our brains to make sense of them. If we can be like, these are the, you know, like the allies in world war II were the good guys. Hitler was the bad, right? Like we want to, we want to be able to categorize people into those two camps. And in reality, humans are much more complicated than that. And I don't think it serves us to just categorize people as good guys and bad guys. It helps us to look at the totality of the picture of who they were. We can absolutely say that Hitler did nothing worth saving. Like we're not going to be like, here's all the good things Hitler did. Nope. There's none of that. You know what I mean? But I do think we absolutely

have to be honest about what has happened in history. We have to be honest, look at the totality of somebody's contribution, determine what the positives of their contribution were. We can't pretend that George Washington did nothing good. You know, like this, right? We can't pretend he didn't win the revolutionary war. We can't pretend he did nothing positive, but yet we also can't pretend that he did nothing bad. We can't, we can't move forward if we're going to just pretend that Americans have always gotten along and done the right thing. We have to continue to work for progress. I love it. Yes. I love this story. I love talking to you. Could talk all day. It's fine. We really could. Thank you so much. I love that you asked me to do this.

Yes. Seriously. Tell everybody where they can find you on Instagram. Okay. So my handle, it's Abby Ayres. Spell it. Abby Ayres. A-B-I-A-Y-R-E-S.

Yes. You have to go. On Instagram. And follow her. So fun. And watch her stories about Carol for President. You will die of laughter. And she's just an absolute, you, I don't need to talk about you in the third person.

You are a delight. I love you. Yes. Okay. Thank you so much. I love the Rufus story. Yes. Hey, Rufus.

Rufy. The frat boy who everything was handed to. Frat boy, Russia, Cuba, whatever. Shrimp tempura. The end. Shrimp tempura, the end. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am truly grateful for you.

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