In 1858 he died of yellow fever in Mobile at the age of sixty-two. Naturally endowed with the highest gifts and most varied talents, he gave to these substantial expression in the conspicuous ability which he displayed in the exalted stations which he occupied uninterruptedly for more than thirty-five years. Arthur Pendleton Bagby adorned with signal ability every position to which he was called, and throughout maintained with happy blend and even balance a most courtly dignity and a charming companionableness which put the plainest citizen in his presence at perfect ease. Those who knew him best found it difficult to determine which more to admire, his superior native dignity or his unaffected cordiality, so undefinable was the charm which invested this gifted gentleman. No chafe or worry of stress in public strain impaired the affableness of his intercourse with others, and while he was honored by his fellow citizens they were amply repaid in the splendid service which he rendered the state and the nation.
WILLIAM R. KING
A native of North Carolina, William Rufus King, removed to Alabama in 1818. Lured to a region destined soon to take its place in the galaxy of states, Mr. King was no novice in public affairs when he reached Alabama. Indeed, he came crowned with unusual distinction for one so young in years when he migrated to a territory which was just budding into statehood. Though at the time only thirty-two years old, he had served with honor to himself and to his native state as a legislator, solicitor and congressman. When only twenty-four years old he had been sent to Congress from North Carolina. His entrance into Congress in 1810 was simultaneous with the beginning of the congressional careers of Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun and William Lowndes.
Mr. King served with distinction in Congress for six years when he was chosen secretary to the American Legation at St. Petersburg, under William Pinkney, who was at that time minister to the court of Russia. After spending two years in this honorable capacity, King returned to North Carolina and subsequently removed to Alabama.
Buying a plantation near Cahaba, in 1819, he had scarcely located when he was chosen a representative to the first constitutional convention of the state. Together with Honorables Henry Hitchcock of Washington County, and John M. Taylor of Madison, Mr. King drafted the first constitution of this state. His clearness of perception, soundness of judgment and ability in adjustment of matters of great moment arrested the attention of the leaders of the coming state, during the session of the first constitutional convention, and he was marked as one of the men of the hour in laying the foundation stones of a great commonwealth. In recognition of his ability, Mr. King was chosen one of the first national senators from Alabama when the first legislature met in 1819. Of this prospective distinction he must have been unaware, for at the time of his election he was on a visit to North Carolina.
Mr. King lived in an atmosphere above that of ordinary men. He was a man of solid rather than of shining qualities, and his life was redolent of purity and of exalted conception of duty. There was a delicacy of sentiment which characterized his conduct, an affableness and quietness of demeanor, an utter absence of display or of harshness, a serenity and gentleness, with no unbecoming speech to soil his lips, no action to repel even the humblest civilian. On the floor of the Federal Senate the Honorable R. M. T. Hunter, of Virginia, said on the occasion of Mr. King’s death: “He was a man whose whole soul would have sickened under a sense of personal dishonor.” He was far more forward in his assertion of the claims of others than of those for himself.
No man in the public life of America ever more won by dint of intrinsic merit than William Rufus King. Such was his bearing on all occasions that men instinctively honored him. To him as a public man principle was the path of the highest expediency. He wore his honor on his sleeve, and would not scramble on a low plane for place, and would never learn the art of petty politics. He engaged in political contests, but they were in the open field and in full view of the eyes of the world.
Mr. King came to be the first citizen of the state, becoming Vice President of the United States, but it was entirely due to his worth and not to any of the arts of the struggling politician. Utterly without assumption he was as spectacular on one occasion as another. His was a quiet knightliness without dash, the stamp of a nobleman of nature, without lordly port.