Timeline
Rufus King
1755 Rufus King (RK), born in Scarborough, Maine on March 24.
1773-1777 RK attends Harvard College. He graduated head of class with specific distinctions in mathematics, language and oratory. He was also noted for athletic abilities.
1778 Serves as a major in the patriot army at Newport, Rhode Island.
1780 RK begins to practice law in Massachusetts.
1781 RK becomes a justice of the peace.
1784-1787 RK serves as a Massachusetts delegate to the Confederation Congress.
1786 RK marries Mary Alsop on March 30.
1787 Congress passes the Northwest Ordinance, which includes a ban against slavery in the northwest territories. Rufus King, although not serving in Congress in 1787, had created the ban in 1785.
RK is a Massachusetts delegate to the Philadelphia Convention. As a member of the Committee on Style & Arrangement, Rufus King is one of the framers of the Constitution. He signs the newly created Constitution, which replaces the Articles of Confederation. The Constitution is ratified by all states by 1790.
1788 John Alsop King was born on January 3 in New York City.
1789 RK elected U.S. Senator for New York; he is re-elected in 1794 and serves until 1796.
1796 RK appointed minister to Great Britain by President Washington and later serves under Presidents Adams and Jefferson. King and his family return in 1803.
1804 RK loses bid for vice-presidency to George Clinton.
RK is a founding member of the New York Historical Society.
1805 RK purchases a residence in rural Jamaica, New York.
1806 RK elected trustee of Columbia College (now Columbia University).
1808 RK again loses bid for vice-presidency to George Clinton.
1813 RK re-elected U.S. Senator for New York. He is re-elected in 1818 and serves until 1824.
1815 RK elected Commissioner of Jamaica's Union Hall Academy, serves until 1819.
1816 RK, the last Federalist candidate, loses presidential election to James Monroe.
1818 Re-elected U.S. Senator for New York and serves until 1824.
1819 Mary Alsop King dies June 5th and is buried at Grace Episcopal Church in Jamaica, New York.
1820 RK delivers his famous speeches to U.S. Senate against the entry of Missouri to the Union as a slave state.
1825 RK appointed Minister to Great Britain by President John Quincy Adams, but returns to New York the next year due to poor health.
1827 Rufus King dies in Manhattan on April 29 at the age of 72 and is buried at Grace Church May 2.
John King
1788 Born January 3, eldest son of Rufus and Mary King
1808 Admitted to the Bar in New York
1810 Marries Mary Ray
1812 Commissioned Lieutenant of Cavalry in the War of 1812
1815 Purchased farmland near his father Rufus King’s Jamaica home, King Manor
1819-1821 Member of the NYS Assembly
1823-1825 New York State Senate
1825 Secretary of the Legation at London, while father Rufus King was Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James
1832 Elected to NYS Assembly
1838 Re-elected to NYS Assembly
1839 Delegate to the Whig National Convention
1840 Re-elected to NYS Assembly
1846 Becomes Director of Long Island Railroad Company
1848 Elected President of New York State Agricultural Society, which he founded
1849-1851 Member of the House of Representatives
1850 Favored admission of California as a free state
1850 Opposed the 1850 Compromise: “Upon the question of the extension of Slavery, I never held a concealed opinion; by education, precept, and example I was early taught to think and behave that its extension was adverse to the moral feeling of the great mass of the people, and that it was moreover, neither for the interest and the glory, nor for the strength and the power of this great Republic.”
1850 Opposed the Fugitive Slave Bill, which was part of the proposed 1850 Compromise: "It is the settled, calm and deliberate conviction and judgment of the vast majority of the people of that State, that the soil of freedom should never by their vote or act become the resting-place of slavery."
1850 Argued against reducing expenditures for the defense of New York City, saying “This Government derived through the resources of that city a vast amount of revenue. Let Congress refuse to continue the protection afforded by these public works and the interest of the Government must materially suffer.”
1852 Delegate to the Whig National Convention
1854 Outraged by the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which permitted the admission of territories with slavery; he attended a protest meeting in Saratoga and participated in the formation of the new Republican Party
1855 Co-chaired a joint convention of the New York Whigs and Republicans in which the delegates strongly opposed slavery, condemned the anti-immigrant Know Nothings, nominated a “Republican Ticket,” and appointed a state committee to organize the Republican Party
1856 Delegate to the first Republican National Convention
1857 John Alsop King is the first Republican Governor of New York
1858 Governor of New York; upon the end of his term, a friend noted, “within my recollection no Executive magistrate of this great State has ever been more warmly appreciated in his endeavor to successfully discharge his many duties than yourself. With a single eye to the honor and welfare of the state you have ably discharged your whole duty, for which you now receive the grateful applause of the people – in my opinion – without regard to party.”
1860 Hears Abraham Lincoln's speech at Cooper Union, where Lincoln notes Rufus King's opposition to the Missouri Compromise in 1918.
1860 Served as a New York delegate to the Republican convention in Chicago; chosen as one of the electors for Abraham Lincoln
1861 Member of the peace convention in Washington DC in effort to prevent impending war: “I revere the Constitution of my country. I was educated to love it, and my own father helped to make it…this conference could perform no nobler act than that of sending to the country the announcement that the Union of the States under the Constitution is indissoluble, and that secession is but another term for rebellion.”
1867 John Alsop King dies. He was remembered at his funeral for his “simplicity, kindness, dignity, courtly bearing, integrity and courage, his lifelong advocacy of human rights and his his deep and enduring enmity to slavery and the slave system.”
