Video: 'William Rufus King | Alabama Legacy Moment'

(Monday, April 18, 1853, 6:00 p.m. local time) — William R. King, the 13th vice president of the United States, died today in Selma, Dallas County, Alabama. of tuberculosis after 45 days in office.

Only vice presidents John Tyler and Andrew Johnson, both of whom succeeded to the presidency, have had shorter tenures.

King had been elected in 1852 on the Democratic ticket headed by Franklin Pierce. Pierce and King defeated the Whig nominees Winfield Scott and William Alexander Graham.

Because King was ill with tuberculosis and had traveled to Cuba in an effort to regain his health, he was not able to be in Washington to take his oath of office when his term of office began on March 4, 1853.

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By a special Act of Congress passed on March 2, 1853, he was allowed to take the oath outside the United States and was sworn in on March 24, 1853, near Matanzas, Cuba, by the U.S. consul to Cuba, William L. Sharkey. King is the first and, to date, only vice president of the United States to take the oath of office on foreign soil.

Shortly afterward, King made the journey to return to his Chestnut Hill plantation in Selma, Alabama. He died there on April 18, 1853, aged 67, of tuberculosis.

King was the only U.S. vice president from Alabama.

Following King’s death, the office of vice president remained vacant until John C. Breckinridge was inaugurated with President James Buchanan on March 4, 1857.