Francis T . Nicholls Francis Redding Tillou Nicholls ( August 20 , 1834January 4 , 1912 ) was an American attorney , politician , judge , and a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War . He served two terms as the 28th Governor of Louisiana , first from 1876 to 1880 and then from 1888 to 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 , Louisiana , the seat of Ascension Parish , the seventh son of Thomas Clark Nicholls ( himself a seventh son ) and Louisa Hannah ( Drake ) Nicholls , a sister of the poet Joseph Rodman Drake and sister - in - law of Francis Redding Tillou . His paternal grandfather was Cornish American Edward Church Nicholls . He attended Jefferson Academy in New Orleans and graduated in 1855 from the United States Military Academy at West Point , New York . Initially assigned as a second lieutenant in the United States 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 . During his first term , he battled political corruption , which was epitomized by Samuel James , 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 . Military Academy . 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 . 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 1990s the high school was renamed for former slave and abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass and is now a part of the KIPP Family Schools as KIPP Renaissance . During the 1960s , the school was integrated and Black students fought to change the mascot from the Confederate flag to the current mascot , the Bobcat . 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 . When speaking to the controller via marine VHF radio , mariners address him or her familiarly as " Governor Nick . "