FREE: William King FDC

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William Rufus King was the 13th Vice President of the United States for about six weeks (1853), and earlier a U.S. Representative from North Carolina, Minister to France, and a Senator from Alabama. He was a Unionist and his contemporaries considered him to be a moderate on the issues of sectionalism, slavery, and westward expansion that would eventually lead to the American Civil War. He helped draft the Compromise of 1850. The only United States executive official to take the oath of office on foreign soil, King died of tuberculosis after only 45 days in office. With the exceptions of John Tyler and Andrew Johnson—both of whom succeeded to the Presidency he remains the shortest-serving Vice President.