Nicholls, Francis Redding Tillou

Life Span
to
    Full name
    Francis Redding Tillou Nichols
    Place of Birth
    Birth Date Certainty
    Exact
    Death Date Certainty
    Exact
    Gender
    Male
    Race
    White
    Sectional choice
    South
    Origins
    Slave State
    Education
    West Point (US Military Academy)
    Other
    Other Education
    University of Louisiana
    Occupation
    Politician
    Attorney or Judge
    Government
    Governor
    Military
    US military (Pre-Civil War)
    Confederate Army

    Francis Reddin Tillou Nicholls (American National Biography)

    Scholarship
    Although reluctant to support secession, Nicholls had a distinguished career serving the Confederacy. He and his brother Lawrence raised an infantry company, the Phoenix Guards, in which he served as captain. He later served as the commander of the Eighth Louisiana Regiment, participating in the first battle of Manassas and in Stonewall Jackson's Valley Campaign. He lost his left arm from a wound received at the battle of Winchester in May 1862 and his left foot at the battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863. By this time he had risen to the rank of brigadier general. Although his wounds forced him to retire from the field, Nicholls served the Confederacy as superintendent of the conscript bureau of the Trans-Mississippi department until the end of the war, when he returned to his law practice in Napoleonville.

    Nicholls became governor of Louisiana in 1877 after a hotly contested election in which both sides manipulated the vote count. Nicholls's supporters, the Bourbon Democrats, prevented blacks from voting in the country parishes where they were a majority and padded the voting rolls in New Orleans with thousands of deceased persons. Both Nicholls and his opponent claimed victory and organized governments, but a promise that Nicholls would be recognized as governor was part of the Compromise of 1877. Nicholls immediately appointed new justices to the Supreme Court of Louisiana to replace those appointed by his Republican predecessors and sent a force of state police to capture the building that housed the court.
    Judith K. Schafer, "Nicholls, Francis Redding Tillou,” American National Biography Online, February 2000, ttp://www.anb.org/articles/05/05-00566.html.
    How to Cite This Page: "Nicholls, Francis Redding Tillou," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/6315.