GIBSON, Randall Lee, senator, was born near Versailles, Woodford county. Ky., Sept. 10, 1832; son of Tobias and ——— (Preston) Gibson, and grandson of Randall and Harriet (McKinley) Gibeon. Randall Gibson was an American soldier in the war of the Revolution, who settled after the war at Oakley, Warren county, Miss., and built the first church and founded Jefferson college, the first college in the Mississippi valley. Randall Lee was prepared for college at Lexington, Ky., and at Terre Bonne, La., where his father had a sugar plantation, and he was graduated at Yale in 1803, valedictorian of his class. He was graduated LL.B. at the University of Louisiana in 1855; travelled in Europe, and while there declined the secretaryship of the Spanish legation; and in 1860 was an aide-de-camp on the staff of Governor Moore of Louisiana, in which state he had settled as a planter. From the governor's staff he passed to the Confederate army, serving in the army of the Tennessee under Generals Hood, S.D. Lee, Breckinridge, Johnston, Hardee and Dick Taylor, as colonel of the 13th Louisiana, brigadier-general in command of Adams's brigade, and major-general. He led his brigade in a charge at Shiloh, won promotion at Perryville, and fought gallantly at Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, Atlanta, Nashville and in defence of Spanish Fort, Mobile, Ala. At the close of the war he practised law in New Orleans, and was elected to the 45th congress, but was not allowed to take his seat. He represented the first district of Louisiana in the 44th–47th congresses, 1873–83, and was a senator in congress from Louisiana, 1868–93. In the senate he was chairman of the committee on manufactures and a member of the committees on agriculture and forestry, commerce, interstate commerce, naval affairs, fisheries, District of Columbia, transportation routes to the seaboard and the select committees to establish the University of the United States and of the Quadro-Centennial. He was elected president of the board of administration of the Tulane university of Louisiana, founded by a gift of $1,500,000 from Paul Tulane; an administrator of the Howard memorial library of New Orleans, trustee of the Peabody education fund and regent of the Smithsonian institution. He was married to Mary, daughter of R.W. Montgomery of New Orleans. La. Senator Gibson was obliged in 1803 to seek relief from continued ill health and he died at Hot Springs, Ark., Dec. 15, 1892.
