Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: William King

Episode Date: October 10, 2018

Did you know that the United States has had one Vice-President who was sworn in on foreign soil? Well it turns out that may be the least interesting part of the story of William Rufus King.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. Short stuff, I should say. I'm Josh, there's Chuck, there's Jerry.

Let's get to it. And they're off with another shorty. So, we're about to talk about something I had no idea about previous to this. Yeah, and this one has a couple of layers that are super interesting to me. It is an onion for sure. Yeah.

So, we're gonna dive into the history of a guy named William Rufus Devane King. And he was an early senator. He was a diplomat for the United States. Well, I think he was a congressman first. Then he was a diplomat, and then he was a senator for like 29 years or something like that. And then eventually he became vice president.

And the way that he apparently progressed through the ranks in the Democratic Party was by being pretty middle of the road, vanilla mediocre. Yeah, and I interpreted that as also, he was a good guy that, you know, he wasn't one of these blustery blowhards of the day. He was an attorney first, of course, probably like most of these dudes were and still are.

And he was described as various things, tall prim, wig topped mediocrity. But other things that they said were like, he wanted people to address each other with decorum. And whenever people were arguing, he was known to come in and kind of try and reconcile things. So I kind of like this guy's style, the more I read about him.

Yeah, no, I'm with you. I think to be middle of the road at this time was actually kind of a badge of honor. Oh, interesting. I mean, this is during the lead up to the civil war. So the country is not getting along very well, right? Yeah. So he started out again in Congress

and then he went on to serve as diplomat to Russia and then Naples, the kingdom of Naples, no less. Yeah, and in France at 1.2, I think. Oh, yeah, you're right. And then by 1818, he returned to the US and he said, I'm going to find my fortunes way out west. So we went to Alabama. Which is way out west at the time.

Yeah. And he was born the son of a plantation owner and he became a plantation owner there. He owned 500 slaves, became one of the largest slaveholders in this newly formed state. And he named his estate Chestnut Hill. And from there, that's where he became the senator for 29 years.

He was a senator from Alabama for 29 years. And actually was instrumental in ironically naming the town of Selma. Oh, wow. Did you see that? No. So there was a poem, a book of poems about called like Songs of Selma that he was, that he loved

and when they were naming the county seat of the county where his plantation was, he was basically instrumental in getting it named Selma, the city of Selma, Alabama. Yeah, so he would eventually go on through the Democratic Party at the time to be vice president, to be a presidential running mate to hopeful Franklin Pierce.

And this is where things get a little bit interesting because many historians, and this has some, but I did some research on this. And most historians now look back and say, President James Buchanan was clearly a gay man. Right. And it's interesting to think about our past being a little more open to that.

But there's a guy that wrote a book, Jim Lohan called Lies my teacher told me, everything your American history teacher got wrong. And he clearly states that James Buchanan was gay and not only that, it was not a big secret and America was actually a little more open to that kind of thing and permisses that kind of thing back then.

Right, right. It wasn't like his career, his political career wasn't ruined, it wasn't like blackmail held against him. And that just so goes against what most people think of with history, that it's like an arrow that progresses ever forward. And that by default then, like the time we live in must be more tolerant and more progressive

than 100 something years ago, 150 years ago. And that's just not the case. And this is a good example of that. Yeah, so he calls it, this author says that the idea that we started great and just got greater and greater chronological ethnocentrism, which is a fancy way of saying what you just said, which is in the 19th century, it was okay at least to, you know,

he got elected president. Yeah, and speaking of fancy, one of the examples that they point to is that this was an open secret or just known around DC is that Andrew Jackson had a nickname for James Buchanan and William King, Miss Nancy and Aunt Fancy. Yeah, cause here's the deal. Buchanan never married, he and King lived together

and spent a lot of time together. And that was basically sort of known around town that that was the deal when Buchanan died, he had all of his correspondences burned upon his death, which is sort of a weird thing to do. But a few of the letters did survive and one of them from 1844, addressed to a Mrs. Roosevelt, said, when King moved to Paris to be ambassador to France,

he said, I am now solitary and alone, having no companion in the house with me. I've gone wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any of them. Tough to take that the wrong way. It is, I mean, of course we're saying, you know, it's pretty clear now, but you know, who knows, they might make the argument in this article

that could have just been close male friends. But I think most people kind of agree now that James Buchanan was our first gay president. Yeah, which is pretty awesome actually. Yeah, of course. And then that same letter, Chuck, that you just read a quote from goes on to say that, if this keeps up, he may very well just marry an old maid

who can cook and care for him and won't expect ardent romance from him in return. So yeah, there's just, the evidence is that, what little evidence there is certainly points to this. And the idea that as this article puts it, that this is just like a bromance or something, that seems pretty thin, all signs point to him being gay. But also in defense of this article on how stuff works,

they say that they had zero bearing whatsoever on his political aptitude. It was just an interesting fact of history that kind of makes us examine our own times a little more. Yeah, and I'll tell you one thing. I don't know much about the 19th century, but I do know that gay men existed and bromances did not. There you go.

You know? Yeah. That's a stupid modern conceit. Yeah, and I think what you just said is a t-shirt too, a long t-shirt, maybe front and back. A sleep shirt. All right, so we're gonna take a quick break and we're gonna come back to let you know

why we titled this one, how King actually took his Oath of Office in Cuba, right after this. ["Oath of Office"] On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses

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or wherever you listen to podcasts. And inside me, gosh, you are the shock. So, William King, I want to call him Rufus King so bad, because it's William Rufus the vain king, but that's not what he was called, Josh. Not what he's called, but William King had another claim to fame historically, in that he was the only person in the United States history

elected to high office, who was sworn in off of US soil. Yeah. And that was, the way that it happened is, it's interesting, but it's not anything that William King wanted. No, he got tuberculosis, got very sick, and from the time of his election in November, 1852,

as Pierce's vice president, to when he would eventually take office in March of 1853, this was sort of the time when they were like, go to a good, hot, warm climate, because that will help you out, which is, you know, it probably does help along, but it's not a cure all, you know? Yeah, the muggy air of Cuba

will really clear out your tuberculosis. It doesn't, that doesn't seem right to me. Yeah, that's true. I didn't think about the humidity. But that's where he went. He went down to Havana to restore his health between the election and the swearing in, but his health just got worse and worse and worse.

And by the time he was to be sworn in within like a week or so, I think maybe even more than that, because he wouldn't have been able to make it from Havana to DC within a week at that time. On a boat? Yeah, but within that time, he realized like, I'm not gonna be able to make it to DC.

I'm still too sick. The time is too short. I'm just gonna have to sask if I can be sworn in down here. And Congress said, do you know what? We like you, Will. We think you're great. We give you a lot of BS about you and Buchanan,

but we think you're a pretty great person. So yeah, we're gonna pass an act of Congress to make that happen. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. They passed this legislation, allowing him to be sworn in in Cuba. And on March 24th, 1853, he did just that at an office near Matanzas.

Matanzas? Matanzas. That has a little more flair. Yeah. And this is a seaport town about 60 miles east of Havana. He was so sick, he couldn't even stand up without help. But he repeated the oath. He became our 13th vice president,

which is pretty remarkable on Cuban soil. And then after about a month, he was like, I really would kind of like to get back to the US, set sail for Alabama. Yeah, yeah. And imagine this, Chuck, can't you see like a Cuban sea captain go, you want to go to Alabama?

Okay. I like your Cuban sea captain. Thank you. That's great. I've been working on it all day. Oh, is that why you're wearing that shirt? Uh-huh. It's very nice.

Now it all makes sense. So he set sail and eventually he would die April 18th, the day after he got back to United States soil. Yeah, he made it back to Chestnut Hill and expired, post-haste. Yeah, and here's something I didn't know. Apparently you didn't really need a vice president back then because we went four years without one. Well, I don't know if you didn't need one or not,

but Franklin Pierce is, in my opinion, the worst president the United States has ever had. He and King were elected because they were so middle of the road and so vanilla and so plain on the, especially on like the slavery issue, that they were elected to try to keep the U.S. from the Civil War, but they, well, not King, but definitely Pierce laid the groundwork for it,

almost single-handedly with this terrible administration. So Franklin Pierce is terrible. And I could see him being like, I don't need a vice president, I can screw it all up myself. Like that, I didn't know about your longstanding Franklin Pierce grudge. Yeah, it's hot. You got anything else?

No, that's it. Well, thanks for hanging out with us for this brief time. Yeah. While you made it through your bag of carrot sticks on your lunch break. If you want to hang out with us, go to our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com and look us up.

I'm also at rucerclark.com and we're all over social media and we'll see you next time, everybody. Bye. [(dramatic music playing)] On the podcast, HeyDude the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the one southern star show, HeyDude,

bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to, Hey Dude, the 90s called

on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.