Francis
Redding Tillou Nicholls
1834
– 1912
Francis Redding Tillou Nicholls was born on August 20, 1834,
in Donaldsonville, Louisiana. He graduated from West Point in 1855, and served
for one year. He resigned his commission and went to the University of Louisiana
to study law. Nicholls practiced law in Napoleonville until the War for Southern
Independence. After joining the Confederate forces in 1861, he took part in the
First Battle of Bull Run, then in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign. In May of
1862, he was wounded at Winchester, and had to have his left arm amputated. On
October 14, 1862, he was promoted to brigadier general. Commanding the District
of Lynchburg until 1863, he later led a brigade in the Chancellorsville
Campaign. During that campaign, his left foot was ripped off by a shell, and he
was unable to return to combat service. Nicholls was transferred to the
Trans-Mississippi Department to direct the Volunteer and Conscript Bureau until
the end of the war.
After the War for Southern Independence ended, he
resumed his former law practice and in 1876 was nominated for governor by the
Democrats in a desperate effort to end the carpetbag rule in Louisiana. He was
thus involved in the disputed state and presidential election returns of 1876
and shared in negotiations that placed him in the governorship and swung the
electoral votes to Rutherford B. Hayes.
A conservative, Nicholls served with ability. He
retired to private life in 1881 but in 1887 ran for governor again as the foe of
the notorious Louisiana Lottery. The destruction of the lottery was the chief
event of his second administration. He was a state supreme court justice from
1892 until 1911.