| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Randall Lee Gibson of Louisiana: Confederate General and New South Reformer. By Mary Gorton McBride. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007. xvi, 320 pp. $45.00, ISBN 978-0-8071-3234-0.)
In this well-researched biography, Mary Gorton McBride assesses Randall Lee Gibson as symbolic of "one of the most tragic contradictions in nineteenth-century American life"— the contradiction "between the inclusive goal of education and the exclusionary intent of racism" (p. 6). The son of an antebellum slaveholder who owned plantations in Kentucky and Louisiana, Gibson entered Yale University amid the sectional tensions of the early 1850s. McBride posits that exposure at Yale to constant assaults on the South's peculiar institution made Gibson "more aggressively pro-southern" (p. 44). However, genuine friendships with northern classmates brought a desire for "common national ground" (ibid.).	1
After graduation, Gibson moved to New Orleans where he became a lawyer and a planter who staunchly defended slavery. During the Civil War, Gibson served as a Confederate officer but fell victim to the intrigue of the western command. Gen. Braxton Bragg partially blamed Gibson, his subordinate, for failures at Shiloh, Murfreesboro, and Missionary Ridge, so promotions were slow in coming. Interestingly, Bragg's and Gibson's plantations adjoined one another in the antebellum era and prewar jealousies may have been a factor in the wartime disputes.	. . .

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