Randall Lee Gibson of Louisiana: Confederate General and New South Reformer

Journal of Southern History, August, 2008 by Dan R. Frost

Randall Lee Gibson of Louisiana: Confederate General and New South Reformer. By Mary Gorton McBride with Ann Mathison McLaurin. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007. Pp. [xvi], 320. $45.00, ISBN 978-0-8071-3234-0.)

This work is an overdue biography of Confederate officer and Louisiana politician Randall Lee Gibson. Born in Kentucky in 1832 but raised in southern Louisiana as the son of an extremely wealthy sugar planter, Gibson typified many youthful antebellum southerners of his class. He graduated from a northern college, toured Europe, defended slavery, and embraced secession. In September 1861 Gibson became colonel of the Thirteenth Louisiana regiment. Although he lacked military training, he demonstrated surprising competence. Nonetheless, Gibson's commanding general, Braxton Bragg, refused to promote the young officer. Personality conflicts and Gibson's criticism of Bragg's leadership of the Army of Tennessee prevented Gibson's rise through the ranks. After Bragg's removal following the battle of Chattanooga, Gibson received a promotion to brigadier general. He performed well in the subsequent Atlanta, Tennessee, and Mobile campaigns.

Defeat dramatically transformed Gibson's view of the South. Like many former Confederate officers, Gibson wanted to leave the Old South and slavery behind and remake the region into a New South of diversified agriculture and industry. Moreover, he recognized that the South needed northern capital to accomplish this transformation, and that required sectional reconciliation. Gibson performed his own personal act of reconciliation in 1868 by marrying Mary Montgomery, the daughter of a wealthy northern businessman who had antebellum financial interests in New Orleans. Another wealthy northerner with ties to New Orleans, Paul Tulane, later trusted Gibson to organize Tulane University, an institution Gibson hoped would train the men--and women--necessary to build the New South.

Gibson embarked on a postbellum career in law and politics. The war changed him politically from an ideologue who rejected compromise into a pragmatist who believed compromise was necessary to his region's recovery. As a Democratic congressman, Gibson played a crucial role in the Compromise of 1877. Ignoring much of the intrigue surrounding the negotiations, he wrote a memorandum that helped convince Republican leaders to guarantee the only things Gibson really wanted: withdrawal of federal troops from Louisiana and federal recognition of the state's Democratic government. He eschewed both the overtly racist politics of the Bourbons and the promotion of racial equality by Radical Republicans. Gibson identified with patrician Louisiana Democrats who accepted some civil rights for African Americans so long as they did not threaten Democratic control of the state. His moderation led Republican president Rutherford B. Hayes to ask Gibson if he would accept a cabinet position, but Gibson declined. He eventually won a seat in the Senate, where, as in the House, he defended hard money, sugar interests, and federal Mississippi River projects. He died a senator in 1892.

There is little to criticize in this thoroughly researched and well-written biography, although a more critical evaluation of Gibson's military judgment is wanting. Gibson, while recognizing Bragg's failings as a commander, found John Bell Hood's reckless leadership of the Army of Tennessee exemplary. Gibson approved of direct assaults even against superior numbers in entrenchments, like that ordered by Hood at Jonesboro. Yet while Gibson apparently remained unscathed during nearly four years of fighting, his troops suffered staggering casualties. Gibson's approach to combat resembled the "attack and die" tactics that served the Confederacy so badly, as described by Grady McWhiney and Perry D. Jamieson (Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage [University, Ala., 1982]).

This biography truly excels, however, in delineating Gibson's transformation from an uncompromising proslavery secessionist into a pragmatic New South advocate, which is made perfectly understandable in light of his wartime experience. Following the course of this transformation makes this book one of the most relevant biographies of a minor Civil War general in a long time.

DAN R. FROST

Dillard University