William King (politician)

Statue of William King in the National Statuary Hall Collection

William King (born February 9, 1768 in Scarborough , Cumberland County , Province of Massachusetts Bay , †  June 17, 1852 in Bath , Maine ) was an American politician and from 1820 to 1821 the first governor of the state of Maine.

Early years

Born in present-day Maine, William King attended local schools in his homeland. Then he worked in a sawmill, which he later bought. In the further course King also participated in the real estate business and in the shipbuilding industry. King was a member of Thomas Jefferson's Democratic Republican Party . In 1795 he was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Between 1803 and 1806 he was again on this body and from 1807 to 1811 he was State Senator . When the War of 1812 broke out, King was appointed Major General of the Militia to defend the Maine district. The current state of Maine was then part of Massachusetts. In Maine, King campaigned for the separation of the Massachusetts area from 1813. After he had been re-elected to the Massachusetts Senate in 1816, he was able to obtain parliamentary approval for the separation of Maine in 1818. In the meantime, however, the matter had become the subject of nationwide discussions. It was less about Maine than about the admission of new states and the related issue of slavery . US Senator Henry Clay was able to solve this problem in 1820 with the so-called Missouri Compromise . After that, Missouri was admitted to the union as a state that allowed slavery and Maine as a free state.

Governor of Maine

Because of his efforts to secede from Massachusetts, King was very popular in Maine and he was elected the first governor of the new US state. As governor, he had to build a new administration. He also passed new tax laws. William King took up his new office on March 15, 1820. On May 28, 1821, he resigned from it after being appointed special envoy to Spain by President James Monroe .

Further life

In 1824, King was able to negotiate a treaty with the Spanish government that would keep the United States out of the turmoil over Mexican independence. Between 1831 and 1834, King was the chief of Customs at Bath, Maine. In 1835 he unsuccessfully applied for a return to the governor of Maine. After the reorganization of the American party system in those years, he had joined the Whig Party . Then he withdrew from the public. William King died on June 17, 1852. He was married to Ann Frazier, with whom he had one child. His brother Rufus King was also a well-known politician.

Web links

• Online biography (English)
• The governors of Maine (English)
• William King in the database of Find a Grave (English)