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 after the Reconstruction era ended and from 1888 to 1892. Early life and career Nicholls was born at Prevost Memorial Hospital 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 2nd U.S. Artillery Regiment, he served in the Third Seminole War 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 as a captain in the 8th Louisiana Infantry Regiment and participated in the First Battle of Bull Run and in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign in Virginia, where his left arm was amputated. In July 1862 he became colonel of the just formed 15th Louisiana Infantry and on October 14, 1862, Nicholls was promoted to the rank of brigadier general and given command of a brigade of Louisiana infantry. While leading a brigade during the Battle of Chancellorsville, a shell ripped off Nicholls' left foot, forcing him to retire from combat service. According to James Whitcomb Brougher Sr., in Life and Laughter, (p. 89) he lost an eye at Richmond. Disabled and unfit for further field command, he was transferred to the Trans-Mississippi Department to direct the Volunteer and Conscript Bureau until the