John Isaac Guion: Seventeenth Governor of Mississippi: February 1851 to November 1851
By David G. Sansing
On February 3, 1851, Union authorities arrested Governor John A. Quitman
in Jackson and took him to New Orleans to be arraigned for violating American
neutrality laws in relation to his dealings with Cuban insurgents. When
the Mississippian and State Gazette announced that Governor
Quitman had resigned and that John Isaac Guion, as president pro tempore
of the state senate, had assumed the governor’s office, the editor
hailed the new governor as “a true Southron in heart and head.”
Guion, who was born in Adams County on November 18, 1802, was one of
antebellum Mississippi’s most notable lawyers. After studying law
in Lebanon, Tennessee, Guion opened a law practice in Vicksburg with William
Sharkey, a classmate at Lebanon. After Sharkey was elected to the state
supreme court, Guion formed a partnership with Seargent S. Prentiss.
From 1842 to 1846, Guion represented Warren County in the Mississippi
Legislature. In 1846, he moved to Jackson and two years later was elected
to represent the city of Jackson in the state senate. In antebellum Mississippi
several large cities elected representatives to the legislature. Guion
was a strong states’ righter and played a prominent role in the
Jackson convention of 1849, which was called to discuss the South’s
response to the possibility of California’s admission to the Union
as a free state.
When Governor Quitman resigned in February 1851, Dabney Lipscomb of Columbus
was the president of the senate, but he was seriously ill and unable to
perform his duties. Consequently, President Pro Tempore Guion became governor
and served until his senate term expired November 4. There was no provision
in the 1832 Constitution that would allow public officials to remain in
office until their successors had been certified and commissioned. Thus,
on November 4, 1851, Governor Guion vacated the office of governor.
In the general election, Guion had not run for re-election to the senate
and instead had been elected a circuit judge. Since the term of the Speaker
of the House had also expired with the November 4 general election, there
was no one in the line of succession as established by the Constitution
of 1832. The office of governor, therefore, remained vacant for twenty
days until November 24. (See James Whitfield profile.)
Guion assumed his judgeship and remained on the Mississippi bench until
his death at Jackson on June 6, 1855.
David Sansing, Ph.D., is history professor emeritus, University of
Mississippi.
Posted December 2003
Sources:
Mississippi Official and Statistical Register (1912), 63.
Rowland, Dunbar. Mississippi Comprising Sketches in Cyclopedic Form
I. 811-815.
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