Rufus King (March 24, 1755 – April 29, 1827) was an American Founding Father, lawyer, politician, and diplomat.

The son of a prosperous Massachusetts merchant, King studied law before he volunteered for the militia during the American Revolutionary War.

King served as the Federalist vice-presidential candidate in the 1804 and 1808 elections and ran on an unsuccessful ticket with Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina.

King, the de facto Federalist nominee for president in 1816, lost in a landslide to James Monroe.

[1] He was a son of Isabella (Bragdon) and Richard King, a prosperous farmer, merchant, lumberman, and sea captain[1] who had settled at Dunstan Landing in Scarborough, near Portland, Maine, and had made a modest fortune by the time Rufus was born.

His financial success aroused the jealousy of his neighbors, and when the unpopular Stamp Act 1765 was imposed, a mob ransacked his house and destroyed most of the furniture.

[2] John Adams once referred to that moment in discussing limitations of the "mob" for the Constitutional Convention and wrote a letter to his wife, Abigail, in which he described the scene: I am engaged in a famous Cause: The Cause of King, of Scarborough vs. a Mob, that broke into his House, and rifled his Papers, and terrifyed him, his Wife, Children and Servants in the Night.

It is enough to move a Statue, to melt an Heart of Stone, to read the Story....[2][3]Richard King was a Loyalist during the American Revolutionary War, but all his sons became Patriots.

[5] He began to read law under Theophilus Parsons, but his studies were interrupted in 1778, when King volunteered for militia duty during the American Revolutionary War.

[4] Although when he came to the convention, he was still unconvinced that major changes should be made in the Articles of Confederation, his views underwent a startling transformation over the debates.

[4] He worked with Chairman William Samuel Johnson, James Madison, Gouverneur Morris, and Alexander Hamilton on the Committee of Style and Arrangement to prepare a final draft of the U.S. Constitution.

King was one of the most prominent delegates namely because of playing "a major role in the laborious crafting of the fundamental governing character.

[9] King was indirectly responsible for the passing of this ratification because his "learned, informative, and persuasive speeches" convinced a "popular, vain merchant and prince-turned-politicians to abandon his anti-federalism and approve the new organic law.

In 1795, King helped Hamilton defend the controversial Jay Treaty by writing pieces for New York newspapers under the pseudonym "Camillus."

[4][8][9] John Skey Eustace was angry at King, when he was ordered to leave the country and published an offensive pamphlet.

Accordingly, they had no realistic chance against the Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson, and they received only 27.2% of the popular vote and lost by 45.6%, marking the highest recess in presidential election history.

However, some sought to make King the nominee to have a candidate under the Federalist banner on the ballot, and though little came of it, he finished third in the popular vote, with approximately 2% of the total.

He received only 30.9% of the popular vote and lost again, this time to James Monroe, whose running mate, coincidentally, was Tompkins.

Trying to attract the former Federalist voters to their side at the next gubernatorial election in April 1820, both factions of the Democratic-Republican Party supported King, who served another term in the U.S. Senate until March 3, 1825.

During King's second tenure in the Senate, he continued his career as an opponent of slavery, which he denounced as anathema to the principles underlying the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

[9] Some prominent accomplishments that King had from his time as a national diplomat include a term of friendly relations with Great Britain and the United States, at least until it became hostile in 1805.

In a September 13, 1798, letter to the Duke of Portland, King said of potential Irish refugees, "I certainly do not think they will be a desirable acquisition to any Nation, but in none would they be likely to prove more mischievous than in mine, where from the sameness of language and similarity of Laws and Institutions they have greater opportunities of propagating their principles than in any other Country.

Soon after his second term in the Senate ended, King was appointed minister to Great Britain again, this time by U.S. President John Quincy Adams.

"[13] In 1817, he supported Senate action to abolish the domestic slave trade, and in 1819, he spoke strongly for the anti-slavery amendment to the Missouri statehood bill.

In his lifetime, King was an avid supporter of Alexander Hamilton and his fiscal programs and became a director of the Hamilton-sponsored First Bank of the United States.

[17] Mary King was a lady of remarkable beauty, gentle and gracious manners, and well cultivated mind, and adorned the high station, both in England and at home, that her husband's official positions and their own social relations entitled them to occupy.