#WILLIAM RUFUS FULL#

They soon shared similar views on slavery, the most divisive issue of the day. By the 1830s, both men had been pulled into the political orbit of Andrew Jackson and the Democratic Party. King was a Jeffersonian Democrat, or Democratic-Republican, who held a lifelong disdain for the national bank, was opposed to tariffs, and supported the War of 1812. Buchanan started out as a pro-bank, pro-tariff, and anti-war Federalist, and held onto these views well after the party had run its course. They came from different parts of the country: Buchanan was a lifelong Pennsylvanian, and King was a North Carolina transplant who helped found the city of Selma, Alabama. The year was 1834, and Buchanan and King were serving in the United States Senate. While exploring a same-sex relationship that powerfully shaped national events in the antebellum era, Bosom Friends demonstrates that intimate male friendships among politicians were-and continue to be-an important part of success in American politics Buy Simply put, the characterization underscores a powerful force at work in historical scholarship: the search for a usable queer past.Д«osom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King In the rush to make new meaning of the past, I have come to understand why today it has become de rigeur to consider Buchanan our first gay president. This understanding of male friendship pays close attention to the historical context of the time, an exercise that requires one to read the sources judiciously. Simply put, friendships provided the political glue that bound together a nation on the precipice of secession. In the years before the Civil War, friendships among politicians provided an especially important way to bridge the chasm between the North and the South. A generation of scholarship has uncovered numerous such intimate and mostly platonic friendships among men (though some of these friendships certainly included an erotic element as well). My findings suggest that theirs was an intimate male friendship of the kind common in 19th-century America. My research led me to archives in 21 states, the District of Columbia, and even the British Library in London. My new book, Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King, aims to answer these questions and set the record straight, so to speak, about the pair.

The premise raises many questions: What was the real nature of their relationship? Was each man вЂњgay,вЂќ or something else? And why do Americans seem fixated on making Buchanan our first gay president? It doesnвЂ™t take much longer to discover that the popular understanding of James Buchanan as our nationвЂ™s first gay president derives from his relationship with one man in particular: William Rufus DeVane King of Alabama. Google James Buchanan and you inevitably discover the assertion that American history has declared him to be the first gay president. The problem, of course, is that James Buchanan, our nationвЂ™s only bachelor president, had no woman to call his вЂњbetter half.вЂќ But, as BrownвЂ™s letter implies, there was a man who fit the bill.

Buchanan looks gloomy & dissatisfied & so did his better half until a little private flattery & a certain newspaper puff which you doubtless noticed, excited hopes that by getting a divorce she might set up again in the world to some tolerable advantage.вЂќ In a вЂњconfidentialвЂќ letter to future first lady Sarah Polk, Brown savaged Buchanan and вЂњhis better half,вЂќ writing: вЂњMr.

#WILLIAM RUFUS FULL#

A recent spat in the Washington Daily Globe had stirred his political rivals into full froth-Aaron Venable Brown of Tennessee was especially enraged. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, 1942ДЄt the start of 1844, James BuchananвЂ™s presidential aspirations were about to enter a world of trouble. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution transfer from the National Gallery of Art gift of the A.W. Detail of portrait of President James Buchanan by artist George Peter Alexander Healy

William rufus