OBITUARY ADDRESSES ON THE Occasion of the Death OF THE HON. WILLIAM R. KING, OF ALABAMA, VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: DELIVERED IN THE Senate and House of Representatives, and in the Supreme. EIGHTH AND NINTH DECEMBER, 1853. UNIVERSITY WASHINGTON: PRINTED BY ROBERT ARMSTRONG. In the House of Representatives of the United States. DECEMBER 19, 1853. Resolved, That the members of the House Committee on Printing cause to be published, and bound in pamphlet form, in such manner as may seem to them appropriate, for the use of the House, thirty thousand copies of the proceedings of the Senate and House of Representatives, and the addresses of the members, in regard to the death of the late Vice-President of the United States, the Hon. WILLIAM R. KING, together with so much of the President's Message of the present Session as relates thereto, and the proceedings of the Supreme Court of the United States on the same subject. Attest, JOHN W. FORNEY. Clerk H. R. U. S. Death of William R. King. Extract from the Annual Message of the President of the United States to Congress. "SINCE the adjournment of Congress, the Vice-President of the United States has passed from the scenes of earth, without having entered upon the duties of the station to which he had been called by the voice of his countrymen. Having occupied, almost continuously, for more than thirty years, a seat in one or the other of the two Houses of Congress, and having by his singular purity and wisdom secured unbounded confidence and universal respect, his failing health was watched by the nation with painful solicitude. His loss to the country, under all the circumstances, has been justly regarded as irreparable." Obituary Addresses. SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 8, 1853. Mr. HUNTER, of Virginia, rose and addressed the Senate as follows: SINCE the adjournment of the last Congress, an event has occurred which it becomes us to notice. The American people have lost a Vice-President, and the Senate a Presiding Officer, by the death of WILLIAM R. KING, who departed this life in April last, at his home in the State of Alabama. I rise, as the Senators from that State are unavoidably absent, to ask that we may pause for a day at least in our deliberations upon the affairs of life, to devote it to the memory of one who was bound to us by so many personal and official ties. Surely, sir, there are none within the limits of this wide-spread Confederacy, to whom the life and services of WILLIAM R. KING are known, who would not be ready with some offering, either of public respect or personal affection, to bestow upon his tomb. There have been few public men, whose lives have been as long and 5 |