Randall Lee Gibson of Louisiana: Confederate General and New South Reformer (Southern Biography) [Hardcover]

Mary Gorton McBride (Author), Ann Mathison McLaurin (Author)

Book Description

Series: Southern Biography | Publication Date: May 2007

Randall Lee Gibson of Louisiana offers the first biography of one of Louisiana's most intriguing nineteenthcentury politicians and a founder of Tulane University. Gibson (1832–1892) grew up on his family's sugar plantation in Terrebonne Parish and was educated at Yale University before studying law at the University of Louisiana in New Orleans. He purchased a sugar plantation in Lafourche Parish in 1858 and became heavily involved in the prosecession faction of the Democratic Party. Elected colonel of the Thirteenth Louisiana Volunteer Regiment at the start of the Civil War, he commanded a brigade in the Battle of Shiloh and fought in all of the subsequent campaigns of the Army of Tennessee, concluding in 1865 with the Battle of Spanish Fort. As Gibson struggled to establish a law practice in postwar New Orleans, he experienced a profound change in his thinking and came to believe that the elimination of slavery was the one good outcome of the South’s defeat. Joining Louisiana’s Conservative political faction, he advocated for a postwar unification government that included African Americans. Elected to Congress in1874, Gibson was directly involved in the creation of the Electoral Commission that resulted in the Compromise of 1877 and peacefully solved the disputed 1876 presidential election. He crafted legislation for the Mississippi River Commission in 1879, which eventually resulted in millions of federal dollars for flood control.

Gibson was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1880 and became Louisiana’s leading "minister of reconciliation" with his northern colleagues and its chief political spokesman during the highly volatile Gilded Age. He deplored the growing gap between the rich and the poor and embraced a reformist agenda that included federal funding for public schools and legislation for levee construction, income taxes, and the direct election of senators. This progressive stance made Gibson one of the last patrician Democrats whose noblesse oblige politics sought common middle ground between the extreme political and social positions of his era. At the request of wealthy New Orleans merchant Paul Tulane, Gibson took charge of Tulane's educational endowment and helped design the university that bears Tulane's name, serving as the founding president of the board of administrators. Highly readable and thoroughly researched, Mary Gorton McBride’s absorbing biography illuminates in dramatic fashion the life and times of a unique Louisianan. AUTHOR BIO: Mary Gorton McBride was professor of English and dean of Liberal Arts at Louisiana State University at Shreveport and at Florida Atlantic University, where she also served as vicepresident of the Broward County Campuses. She lives in Fairhope, Alabama.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Mary Gorton McBride was professor of English and dean of Liberal Arts at Louisiana State University at Shreveport and at Florida Atlantic University, where she also served as vice-president of the Broward County Campuses. She lives in Fairhope, Alabama.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Louisiana State University Press; First Edition, edition (May 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807132349
• ISBN-13: 978-0807132340
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,052,946 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Exciting find, May 30, 2010

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Donna K. Davidson (Virginia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Randall Lee Gibson of Louisiana: Confederate General and New South Reformer (Southern Biography) (Hardcover)

I was excited to find a book written about my Great Great Great Great Grandfather while doing a genealogy of our family.
Feel like I have a bit of "family" in my hands now when I read about RAndall Lee. Thank you!

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent, thorough, balanced, fascinating, September 13, 2010

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Amanda Warren - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Randall Lee Gibson of Louisiana: Confederate General and New South Reformer (Southern Biography) (Hardcover)

First, I respectfully but emphatically disagree with the review entitled "Revisionist History." I am of Southern heritage and as sensitive as anyone about unfair, hypocritical attacks on the South's historic and ongoing race issues. I also deplore dogmatic, academic-speak, one-track, revisionist history, and find it pointless and simplistic to judge prior generations based on modern values--but this book does not fall under either of those categories. Unless you hold to another version of revisionism yourself by denying that slavery had anything to do with the Civil War, you will not have a problem with the way the author deals with the subject here. That is just it: she deals with it--in a straightforward manner, neither condemning nor sugar-coating. Contrary to her presenting Southerners as idiots according to the negative reviewer, the author portrays a wide spectrum of humanity struggling to find its footing after enduring unthinkable hardship. I believe that she treated her primary subject as well as his contemporaries both compassionately and realistically. I almost did not buy this book because of the negative review but did so anyway, because of my keen interest in General Gibson after recently discovering a great-great-grandfather who was his kinsman and figured prominently in his story. Now I am glad that I read this book for reasons beyond my personal family connection.

This is an excellent, beautifully written treatment of Gen. Gibson's life and times. The author takes care to elaborate for the reader the setting, circumstances, and players in each stage of his personal evolution. Personally, I would have liked to read more about the war itself and less about post-war Louisiana politics. I actually found it difficult to follow the ins and outs of the latter (like Grant, who is quoted in the book as saying, "The muddle down there is almost beyond my fathoming"), but this is more my fault than the author's who took pains to explain it in detail. Nevertheless, there are fascinating stories that unfold in this arena--for example, the battle of Canal Street led by General Longstreet!

I highly recommend this book to everyone like me who is interested in Civil War history. I have come across brief references to General Gibson in other reading, but always thought of him as a minor player at best. In fact, after the war he became one of the most prominent, nationally respected congressmen of his time. His contributions and achievements during the war have been downplayed by history probably because of his getting on the wrong side of General Bragg and thus being passed over for deserved promotion. (Come to think of it, the author's treatment of General Bragg exemplifies her fair-and-balanced approach. Unlike many historians who vilify him to the point of caricature, she views him as a complex being and attempts to understand how and why misunderstanding and hostility arose within so many of General Bragg's relationships.) Seeing the war in the West unfold from the point of view of an officer on General Gibson's level--that is, below corps command but high up enough to grasp strategy, good and bad--provided a fresh view for me and lent new insight into the intricacies of the Army of Tennessee.

This is a great book! Get it, read it, learn, and enjoy.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Revisionist History, July 19, 2010

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W. Rome - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Randall Lee Gibson of Louisiana: Confederate General and New South Reformer (Southern Biography) (Hardcover)

For those interested in revisionist history and a distinctly northern view of a southerner and the cause for which the south fought, this book is for you. However, if you are interested in the facts of the war and not a northern slanted fairy tale, you should stay away from this book. Unlike many books about southerner's views and actions in the war, I found this book very easy to put down and was very sorry that I wasted my money in the purchase of it. It is a boring read, which almost sentence for sentence seems to try to cast the view of the south as a sick society made up of psychologically sick people. It is revisionist history at its worst!