Michael Hahn, the first Republican Governor of Louisiana

https://grandoldpartisan.typepad.com/blog/2022/11/michael-hahn.html

Grand Old Partisan reveres Michael Hahn, born in Germany, November 24th 1830. His family emigrated to New Orleans, and he graduated from what is now Tulane University.

Hahn entered politics as a Democrat, but that would change with the Civil War. Opposed to secession, when Union forces captured southern Louisiana in 1862 he declared himself a Republican. That December, he won election to the U.S. House of Representatives, replacing a Democrat who had resigned in support of the Confederacy.

February 1864, the Union-held section of the state elected Hahn governor of Louisiana. President Lincoln sent him a congratulatory letter.

During his governorship, Hahn supported measures to facilitate voting by African-Americans and had the state constitution amended to ban slavery and improve education.

Hahn resigned a year later when the legislature elected him to the U.S. Senate. Unfortunately for him, Congress refused to seat any Members of Congress from formerly Confederate states until they had been thoroughly reconstructed as free states. He then accepted a federal government post and edited a newspaper, The New Orleans Daily Republican. He barely escaped being murdered by a Democrat mob during the 1866 'police riot' at New Orleans.

During the 1870s, Hahn won two terms in the state house, briefly serving as speaker. President Rutherford Hayes appointed him superintendent of the United States Mint at New Orleans. For the 1880 elections, he published another newspaper to promote Republican candidates. After several years as a state judge, he was elected to another term in the U.S. House of Representatives, serving a year until his death in 1886.