James Buchanan and William Rufus King

Buchanan.jpg

Print of James Buchanan, circa 1860

President James Buchanan and former United States Vice-President William Rufus King were bachelors. They were partial to one another. In fact, they were inseparable. To King their relationship was a “communion.”[1] President Andrew Jackson dubbed King “Miss Nancy.”[2] But another contemporary, who referred to King as “Aunt Fancy,” also called him Buchanan’s “better half.”[3]

Sources

1. Jonathan Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1976), 647 n. 37.

2. Katz, 647 n. 37.

3. Katz, 647 n. 37.

 

 

 

 

 

King.jpg

Portrait of William Rufus King. King image is a frontis portrait from Obituary Addresses on the Occasion of the Death of the Hon. William R. King . . . Delivered in the Senate and House of Representatives, and in the Supreme Court of the United States, Eight and Ninth December, 1853; Washington: Printed by Robert Armstrong, 1854