the people of Louisiana who came in contact with him at that time felt that in him they had a safe adviser, a true and warm and steadfast friend.
This man, as has already been stated, was born under a foreign sky beyond the sea. In early life he sought the shores of America. He came to this country as thousands had come before him, believing that here was larger scope and verge and room for those who desired to enjoy the blessings of liberty for themselves and their posterity; and Louisiana became his foster-mother. As the years went by he grew into the full stature of American citizenship and manhood.
The great civil war which was then before us, which was too much for the wisdom of Clay and Calhoun and Webster and the sages of that now elder time to avert, because the reasons and the causes of it lay back almost within the Middle Ages—that great civil war was in front of Michael Hahn in his early manhood. Through that dark ordeal he passed as did the citizens of his State and his section of the Union.
When the war closed, divergent interests, sharp passions, keen antagonisms, virulent partisanship had their influence and their power, as we all know, over the States that had thrown their interests with the Confederacy. We look back upon it now as we look back upon the history of the Revolution or the great rebellion in the time of Cromwell. A generation of men have been born since that time. Today and now we can come, and with calmness and clearness of mind can measure men not as they would have been measured in the olden days, but as we now see them, surrounded by the circumstances which environed them in that time, and in the light which subsequent experience has cast upon it.
It is well for any one of us that, when life's journey is done, it can be said of him he was honest, he was true, he was discreet, he was patriotic, he desired and loved the just.
Knowing Michael Hahn a generation ago, and then having been
