This is the first comprehensive biography of Randall Lee Gibson, one of Louisiana's most fascinating nineteenth-century politicians. Gibson was a founder of Tulane University in New Orleans, the owner of a large sugar plantation in Lafourche Parish, a member of the pro-secession faction of the Democratic Party, and a brigadier general in the Army of Tennessee during the Civil War. However, Gibson changed his mind about slavery after the war and went on to advocate for a postwar unification of government that included African Americans. He was elected to Congress in 1874, and participated in the backroom deals that resulted in the "Compromise of 1877," which solved the dispute over the 1876 Presidential election. Gibson participated in some of the darkest and most dramatic incidents of nineteenth-century history, all of which are illuminated here.