King: Queen or Tyrant?
By Bill Kauffman

Vice President William Rufus King of Alabama may have been a "prim, wig-topped mediocrity," as historian Roy F. Nichols judged him, but King was also about as flaming a queen as the1840s would allow. As Steve Tally wrote in his popular account of the Vice Presidents, "King did nothing to dispel the stereotype of the effeminate homosexual. He was a flowing dandy who favored silk scarves, brilliant stickpins, and glittery accoutrements."

The Veep made Oscar Wilde in full flower look like Ernest Borgnine. But what inquiring minds have really wanted to know is just what kind of friend he was to his roommate, Pennsylvania senator (and later President) James Buchanan. While there is little question of King’s proclivities, the matter of Buchanan’s sexuality remains a mystery. His only serious courtship was of a rich Lancaster girl named Anne Coleman, who seems to have committed suicide after breaking off their engagement under murky circumstances. (Letters that might have illuminated the affair were burned--at the President’s request--after his death.) Historian Nichols argued that Buchanan used the "romantic legend" of Anne’s suicide "to shield himself" from later suspicions that he lacked an interest in women. For 50 years, his mourning gave him excuse to avoid female companionship.

Instead, he consorted with Democratic Senator King, with whom he roomed from 1836 until 1844.While same-sex cohabitation was common, their relationship clearly was not. Washingtonians called them "Siamese twins" and "Mr. and Mrs. Buchanan." King was widely referred to as "Aunt Fancy," while Andrew Jackson called him "Miss Nancy."

Their household broke up when King was appointed minister to France, though he wrote "Dear Buchanan" from Paris, "I am selfish enough to hope you will not be able to procure an associate ho will cause you to feel no regret at our separation."

Subtlety was shoved into the closet when opposition papers described either man. As one anti-Buchanan newspaper sketched him, "Mr. B has a shrill, almost female voice, and wholly beardless cheeks; and he is not by any means, in any aspect the sort of man likely to cut his throat for any Chloe or Phillis in Pennsylvania."

The friends had but one serious political disagreement. Buchanan, stalwart of the imperialist wing of the Democratic Party, wished the U.S. to acquire Cuba and Central America, while King opposed expansion in any direction, even westward.

The roomies promoted each other’s career with an avid mutuality. To no avail, Buchanan urged King upon his party in 1840 as a replacement for Van Buren’s Vice President Richard M. Johnson. When Buchanan served as Secretary of State under Polk, he tried, unsuccessfully, to maneuver Polk into appointing King as his successor. For his part, King tirelessly boosted Old Buck for President. In 1852, after Buchanan had lost yet another Democratic nomination, he was appeased by the selection of King as Franklin Pierce’s running mate.

King, alas, was tubercular and dying.

He sought recuperation in Cuba and by an act of Congress was allowed to take his oath of office on that island so coveted by Buchanan. He came home to Cahaba, Alabama to die, and did so just six weeks into his Vice Presidency.

Four years later, Dear Buchanan became our only bachelor President. Though vilified as a weakling by conventional historians, Buchanan has had the posthumous good luck to fascinate his fellow Pennsylvanian John Updike, who has devoted a novel and a marvelous if obscure play (Buchanan Dying) to the Keystone State’s only President. Updike has been an able and imaginative defender of Buchanan, whose "cautious and literal constitutionalism" he finds maligned in "history books written by Lincolnophiles and neo-abolitionists."

As for William Rufus King, this homosexual slave-owning defender of th South’s peculiar institution embodies a classic P.C. contradiction. So much so that in 1986, the sensitive solons of King County, Washington decided to change their county’s eponym from the nineteenth-century Vice President to Martin Luther King, Jr.

But--was this not homophobia? A hate crime committed by Seattle liberals? So asserted one gay-rights activist, who has launched a campaign to once more honor William R. King--or at least that half of him that loved men, not the half that owned them.