William L. Sharkey

William Lewis Sharkey (July 12, 1798 – March 30, 1873) was an American judge and politician from Mississippi. A staunch Unionist during the American Civil War, he opposed the 1861 declared secession of Mississippi from the United States. After the end of the war, President Andrew Johnson appointed Sharkey as provisional governor of Mississippi in 1865.

Early life
William Lewis Sharkey was born on July 12, 1798, in Sumner County, Tennessee. When he was six, he moved with his family in 1804 to Warren County, Mississippi. He was likely privately educated and read the law as an apprentice with an established firm. In 1822, he was admitted to the bar in Natchez, Mississippi.

Career
In 1825, Sharkey moved to Vicksburg. He was later elected for a single term in the Mississippi House of Representatives, where he served from 1828 to 1829.

He served briefly in 1832 as a circuit court judge before being elected to the High Court of Errors and Appeals of Mississippi (today the Supreme Court of Mississippi), where he sat as a justice for 18 years until his resignation in 1851.

Sharkey was appointed Secretary of War by then-President Millard Fillmore; however, he declined the position. He did accept a diplomatic appointment, and from 1851 to 1854, he served as US Consul in Havana, Cuba. While he was serving as Consul, he swore in William R. King as Vice President of the United States on March 24, 1853. This, which was permitted by a special Act of Congress passed on March 2, was, to date, the only occasion that an American vice presidential oath of office or presidential oath of office has been administered on foreign soil. King, who was suffering from tuberculosis, would die on April 18 two days after he arrived at his home in Alabama.

A member of the Whig Party, Sharkey was vehemently opposed to the secession of Mississippi in 1861. Throughout the Civil War, he remained a staunch Southern Unionist and, according to one source, was "tolerated by his Confederate neighbors only because of his towering reputation as a jurist."

Governor Charles Clark appointed him in 1865 as a commissioner (along with William Yerger) to confer on behalf of the state with President Andrew Johnson. On June 13, 1865, Johnson appointed Sharkey the state's provisional governor. Sharkey left office with the election of Benjamin G. Humphreys in October.

He was elected Senator in 1865 but was denied his seat by Congress.

Death
Sharkey died in Washington, D.C., in 1873. He is interred in Greenwood Cemetery in Jackson, Mississippi.

Legacy
Sharkey County, Mississippi, located in the Mississippi Delta region, is named in his honor.