Francis T. Nicholls

Francis Redding Tillou Nicholls (August 20, 1834ndash January 4, 1912) was an American attorney, politician, judge, and a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army during the U.S. Civil War. He served two terms as the Democratic governor of Louisiana from 1876 - 1880 and 1888 - 1892.

Nicholls and such fellow Democrats as Richard Coke of neighboring Texas and Wade Hampton of South Carolina were called "Redeemer" governors because their elections, coupled with the accession to the White House of moderate Republican President Rutherford B. Hayes, essentially ended the power of Radical Republicans during Reconstruction. As things developed, the "Redeemers" imposed a one-party system on the defeated South which lasted for nearly a century.

Early life and career

Nicholls was born in Donaldsonville, the seat of Ascension Parish, the seventh son of Thomas Clark Nicholls (himself a seventh son) and the former Luisa Hannah Drake. His paternal grandfather was Edward Church Nicholls. He attended Jefferson Academy in New Orleans and graduated in 1855 from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. Initially assigned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army, he served in the third war against the Seminoles in Florida, but resigned his commission after a year and returned home.

He then attended the University of Louisiana (subsequently Tulane University) in New Orleans. He practiced law in Napoleonville, the seat of Assumption Parish, until the start of the Civil War.

Two weeks after the surrender of Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, Nicholls wed the former Caroline Zilpha Guion, the daughter of George Seth Guion and the former Caroline Lucretia Winder. The couple had one son, Francis Welman Nicholls (born 1863), and six daughters, Caroline (born 1865), Louisa (born 1868), Harriet (born 1870), Virginia (born 1873), Margaret (born 1875), and Elizabeth (born 1877).

Civil War

Nicholls joined the Confederate Army in 1861 and participated in the First Battle of Bull Run and in the Shenandoah Valley campaign in Virginia, where he lost his left arm. On October 14, 1862, Nicholls was promoted from lieutenant colonel to the rank of brigadier general and given command of a brigade of Louisiana infantry. During the Battle of Chancellorsville, Virginia, in May 1863, a shell ripped off Nicholls' left foot.

Disabled and unfit for further field command, he was transferred to the Trans-Mississippi Department to direct the Volunteer and Conscript Bureau until the end of the war.

Postbellum

After the war, Nicholls returned to his law practice. In 1876, he ran for governor against the Republican Stephen B. Packard. The outcome was disputed, and both men claimed victory. Nicholls garnered a majority of 8,000 votes, but the Republican-controlled State Returning Board cited irregularities and declared Packard the winner. As part of the Compromise of 1877 to resolve the disputed presidential election of 1876, President Hayes recognized the Democrat Nicholls as the winner. [cite book
title=Appletons' Annual Cyclopaedia and Register of Important Events
author=
year=1878
publisher=D. Appleton and company
isbn=
url=http://books.google.com/books?id=Do4EAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA455&dq=455]

Nicholls believed in having less government through lower taxes and fewer official functions. During his first term, he battled political corruption, which was epitomized by Samuel Jones, the operator of the convict lease system, state Treasurer Edward A. Burke, and Lieutenant Governor Louis A. Wiltz, who supported the corrupt Louisiana lottery.

Nicholls chaired the Louisiana Constitutional Convention of 1879, and returned the state Capitol from New Orleans to Baton Rouge. He also accepted an appointment from President Grover Cleveland to the Board of Visitors for the U.S. Army Military Academy in West Point, New York.

After his tenure as governor closed, Nicholls became Chief Justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court in 1892, a post which he held until 1911. He also grew sugar cane and other crops on his Ridgefield Plantation near Thibodaux, the seat of Lafourche Parish. He died at Ridgefield. Francis and Caroline Nicholls, Thomas Clark Nicholls, and other family members are interred in St. Johns's Episcopal Cemetery in Thibodaux.

Nicholls State University is named for Francis Nicholls.

Memorialization

From 1913 to about 1950, there was a vocational school at 3649 Laurel Street in New Orleans named for Nicholls. It opened as the Francis T. Nicholls Industrial School for Girls, and offered secondary vocational training, concentrating on apparel manufacturing. The school was later renamed Nicholls Vocational School for Girls, and even later Nicholls Evening Vocational School. [cite news
url=http://www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/2006-02-14/blake.php
title=Blake Pontchartrain, New Orleans Know-It-All
work=Gambit Weekly
date=2006-02-14
accessdate=2006-04-29]

In 1940, a new public high school, Francis T. Nicholls High School, was opened at 3820 St. Claude Avenue in New Orleans. In the late 20th century the high school was renamed for former slave and abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass. [cite news
first=Frank
last=Etheridge
url=http://www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/2005-07-05/news_feat.php
title=Derailing Plessy Park
work=Gambit Weekly
date=2005-07-05
accessdate=2006-04-29]

There is a "Governor Nicholls Street" in New Orleans. Where it meets the Mississippi River near the downriver end of the French Quarter, there is a Governor Nicholls Street Wharf. Atop the wharf shed there, the United States Coast Guard built a manned control tower with a red and green traffic signal to control vessel traffic rounding Algiers Point. [cite web
title=Vessel Traffic Service Lower Mississippi River
work=EPA: Federal Register
date=26 April 2000
url=http://www.epa.gov/fedrgstr/EPA-IMPACT/2000/April/Day-26/i10298.htm
accessdate=2006-04-29] When speaking to the controller via marine VHF radio, mariners address him or her familiarly as "Governor Nick."

References

* "Francis Tillou Nicholls," "A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography", Vol. 2 (1988), p. 603.

Notes

External links

* [http://www.sos.louisiana.gov/tabid/385/Default.aspx State of Louisiana - Biography]
* [http://www.multied.com/Bio/CWcGENS/CSANickolls.html Biography from History Central]
* [http://www.la-cemeteries.com/Governors/Nicholls,%20Francis%20T/Nicholls,%20Francis%20T.shtml Cemetery Memorial] by La-Cemeteries
* [http://webl1.nicholls.edu/ Nicholls State University]

succession box |title=Governor of Louisiana
Francis Tillou Nichols (D) | before=William Pitt Kellogg (R)| after=Louis A. Wiltz (D) | years=1877–1880succession box |title=Governor of Louisiana
Francis Tillou Nichols (D) | before=Samuel D. McEnery (D)| after=Murphy James Foster, Sr., (D) | years=1888–1892