Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IX.djvu/855

 KING 835 KING, Rnfns, an American statesman, born in Scarborough, Me., in 1755, died in Jamaica, L. I., April 29, 1 827. His father, Richard King, a successful merchant, gave him the best educa- tion then attainable. lie was admitted to Har- vard college in 1773, graduated in 1777, and went to Newburyport to study law under the direction of Theophilus Parsons. In 1778 he served as aide-de-camp to Gen. Glover in the brief and fruitless campaign in Rhode Island. He was admitted to the bar in 1780, and at once entered upon a successful practice in Newburyport. He was an ardent patriot, and in 1782 was chosen a member of the general court or legislature. In that body, to which he was repeatedly reflected, he took a leading part, and successfully advocated, against a pow- erful opposition, the granting of a 5 per cent, impost to the congress, as indispensable to the common safety and the efficiency of the con- federation. In 1784 he was chosen by the legislature a delegate to the continental con- gress, then sitting at Trenton. He took his seat in December, and in March, 1785, moved a reso- lution : " That there be neither slavery nor in- voluntary servitude in any of the states described in the resolution of congress of April, 1784, otherwise than in punishment of crime whereof the party shall have been personally guilty ; and that this regulation shall be made an article of compact and remain a fundamental principle of the constitution between the original states and each of the states named in said resolves." This resolution was, by the vote of seven states (New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland) against four (Virginia, North Caro- lina, South Carolina, and Georgia), referred to a committee of the whole, where for the time it slept. The ordinance offered by Thomas Jefferson in the previous year (April, 1784) proposed the prospective prohibition of slavery in the territories of the United States after the year 1800 ; Mr. King's proposition was for its immediate, absolute, and irrevocable prohibi- tion. When, two years afterward, the famous ordinance of freedom and government for the N. W. territory was reported by Nathan Dane of Massachusetts (July 11, 1787), Mr. King, who was a member of that congress (then sit- ting in New York), had gone to Philadelphia to take the seat to which he had been elected by Massachusetts as a member of the conven- tion for framing a constitution for the Uni- ted States ; but his colleague embodied in the draft of his ordinance the provision, almost word for word, which Mr. King had laid be- fore congress in March, 1785. While occupied with his duties as a member of congress, he was designated by his state as one of the com- missioners to determine the boundary between New York and Massachusetts, and was em- powered with his colleague to convey to the United States the large tract of lands beyond the Alleghanies belonging to his state. On Aug. 14, 1786, Rufus King and James Monroe were appointed a committee on behalf of the congress to wait upon the legislature of Penn- sylvania and explain to them the embarrass- ments of the finances of the United States, and to urge the prompt repeal by that state of the embarrassing condition upon which it had voted its contingent of the 5 per cent, impost levied by the congress on all the states. The speech of Mr. King on this occasion, though no notes of it remain, is commemorated as most effec- tive and brilliant. On May 25, 1787, he took his seat in the federal convention. The jour- nals of the convention and the fragments of its debates which have come down to us attest the active participation of Mr. King in the im- portant business before them ; and, although one of the youngest members of that body, he was selected as one of the committee of five to which it was finally referred to " revise the style of, and arrange the articles " agreed on for the new constitution. Having signed the constitution as finally adopted, Mr. King went back to Massachusetts, and was immediately chosen a delegate to the state convention which was to pass upon its acceptance or rejection. Fierce opposition was made in that convention to this instrument, Mr. King successfully lead- ing the array in defence. In 1788 he took up his permanent residence in New York, where in 1786 he had married Mary, daughter of John Alsop ; and in the following year he was elected a representative of that city in the assembly of the state. In the summer of the same year he was chosen by the legislature the first sena- tor from the state of New York under the new constitution, having for his colleague Gen. Schuyler. In this body he took rank among the leaders of the federal party. In the bitter conflict aroused by Jay's treaty he was con- spicuous in its defence, both in the senate and as the joint author with Alexander Hamilton of a series of newspaper essays, under the sig- nature of Camillus. In 1795 he was reelected to the senate, and while serving his second term was nominated by Washington minister plenipotentiary to Great Britain, having pre- viously declined the office of secretary of state, made vacant by the resignation of Edmund Randolph. He embarked with his family at New York in July, 1796, and for eight years ably fulfilled the duties of the office. No for- eign minister was probably more sagacious in ascertaining or divining the views and policy of nations, or more careful in keeping his own government well informed on all the public questions of the day. His diplomatic corre- spondence is a model both in style and in topics. The federal party having lost its ascendancy in the public councils, Mr. King, shortly after Mr. Jefferson's accession, asked to be recalled. He was however urged by the president to remain, as he had in hand important negotiations. The recurrence of war in Europe, consequent upon the rupture of the peace of Amiens, leaving little hope of success on the point to which his efforts had been chiefly directed, that of se-