mately cast. What a remarkable record of public service was his! Without the influence of birth or fortune, born in a foreign land, almost from infancy the son of a widow, he had scarcely attained his majority when be was selected for school director, and from that time onward the rolling years succeed each other not so rapidly as honor succeeded to honor and trust to trust, until in the plenitude of his influence and usefulness, but it may be believed not in the plenitude of his honors, we mournfully draped his chair in this national House of Representatives, and tenderly escorted his remains to their last resting-place among the people who loved him so well and trusted him so much.
Nor were his public trusts more remarkable for their number than their variety. In all departments of public service, educational, legislative, judicial, and executive, he seemed equally at home. It may not perhaps be said that in any special attribute was he notably endowed. Others may be undoubtedly named who were more eloquent than he, others more learned, others of stronger intellects. But he was eloquent, he was learned, he was strong, because he was faithful—faithful with an ingenuous, noble, inspiring faithfulness, which bore him successfully and triumphantly through the rugged and sometimes dangerous paths of his eventful career, and made him equal to the performance of every duty. In war and in peace he was ever the same calm, conservative, faithful man.
He loved his country. He never forgot his allegiance to her. When the war of the rebellion carried the whole people of the South willingly or unwillingly into its vortex, Michael Hahn stood aloof, and was foremost in all measures for the maintenance of the Federal Union as our fathers had established it. Considering the circumstances in which he was placed, this part of his career distinguishes him as a remarkable man. By his election as the first governor of Louisiana as a free State, by his position as military governor under Abraham Lincoln, by his advocacy of the emancipation of the slaves,
