In retaliation the local Patriots, dubbed Sons of Liberty, ransacked the family's home in 1766. A strong supporter of Royal authority, the elder King defended the unpopular Stamp Act, a measure enacted by Parliament to raise revenues in the colonies to defray the cost of the French and Indian War. His ability to dominate affairs in Scarboro provoked considerable envy, an emotion that turned ugly as the rift between the colony and the mother country widened. Shortly after that victory he left the Boston area to settle on the northern frontier of Massachusetts, where he quickly rose to prominence as a well-to-do farmer and merchant. His father had served as a citizen-soldier during the early stages of Britain's contest for North America, participating in the successful assault on the French fortress at Louisbourg, Canada, in 1745. King was born in Scarboro, in that part of Massachusetts which subsequently became Maine.
The last of the Founding Fathers to pass from the scene, he served in various political and diplomatic offices until 1826. King also served as an important transitional figure, passing on to a new generation of leaders the ideals that had animated the Revolution. King's military experience would also make him a leading exponent of strong national defense, but one who always demanded that the nation's military forces remain subordinated to the needs and purposes of the civilian government. The King family was the victim of one such breakdown, and the incident turned the young Patriot into a passionate advocate of the rule of law and the rights of the individual. Like other major social and political upheavals, the Revolution was accompanied by local breakdowns of justice and public order. The Revolutionary War marked a watershed in King's life. Throughout a lengthy public career he employed his considerable diplomatic and oratorical skills to promote the twin causes of nationalism and civil liberty, fighting in the last decade of his life to extend those liberties to the nation's enslaved minority.
The lessons of a classical education and certain tragic events in his family's history combined to convince him that idealism had to be tempered with vigilance and that a fledgling nation would need a strong government to protect the rights of its citizens while defending its interests in a hostile world. Rufus King, who represented Massachusetts in the Constitutional Convention, was a political realist. Oil, by Charles Willson Peale (1818) Independence National Historical Park. Maine achieved statehood in 1820 prior to that time Interment: Grace Episcopal Church Cemetery, Jamaica, New York Birth: 24 March 1755, at Scarboro, Massachusetts*
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