Mr.Lincoln had naturally been anxious from the beginning of the war to re-establish civil government in any and every one of the Confederate States where actual resistance should cease.

A military autocracy controlling people who were engaged in the ordinary avocations of life was altogether contrary to his views of expediency, altogether repugnant to his conceptions of right.
At the end of the first year of the war (April, 1862) the rebel fortifications on the Lower Mississippi and the city of New Orleans surrendered to the guns of Farragut, and not long afterwards a movement was made to re-establish in Louisiana a civil government that would be loyal to the Union.

The first step was the election on the third of December, 1862, of Benjamin F.Flanders and Michael Hahn, old citizens of Louisiana, as Representatives in Congress.
On the 9th of February, 1863, when the Thirty-seventh Congress was drawing to its close, Messrs.

Flanders and Hahn were admitted to their seats, though not without contention and misgiving.

They had been chosen at an election ordered by the military governor of Louisiana (General George F.Shepley), and their credentials bore the signature of that official.