James Mitchell Ashley

James Mitchell Ashley (November 14, 1824 – September 16, 1896) was an American politician and abolitionist. A member of the Republican Party, Ashley served as a member of the United States House of Representatives from Ohio during the American Civil War, where he became a leader of the Radical Republicans and authored the Thirteenth Amendment, ending slavery in the United States. He also authored the resolution which started the first impeachment inquiry against Andrew Johnson. After the war, he served as Governor of the Montana Territory and president of the Ann Arbor Railroad.

Early and family life Ashley was born in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, to John Ashley, a bookbinder and Campbellite preacher who evangelized in Kentucky and West Virginia, and his wife Mary A. (Kilpatrick) Ashley of Kentucky. As a boy in the Ohio River valley, Ashley saw coffles of chained slaves being walked to the Deep South, boys his own age being sold, and even white men who refused to let their cattle drink from a stream in which his father had baptized slaves. He grew to hate the "peculiar institution" (which he considered a violation of Christian principles) and the oligarchy that supported it.

Ashley was mostly self-taught in elementary subjects, although his father wanted him to follow family tradition and become a Baptist minister. Rather than attend a seminary, the 14 year old ran away to become a cabin boy on Ohio and Mississippi River boats, and later worked as a clerk on those boats. He had begun helping slaves to escape as early as 1839, and late in his life Ashley relished telling stories of the families he had saved as a 17 year old. He told the story later in life, which came down through the family that, when he left the home at 14, the last words his father said to him as he went off was: "You're on the straight road to Hell, boy!" Twenty years later, when he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, his first act, when he sat down in his office in Washington, D.C., was to pen his father, to whom he had not spoken in twenty years, a letter on the Congressional stationery: "Dear Father, I have just arrived!"

He married Emma Jane Smith in 1851 and together they had four children. He is the great-grandfather of U.S. Representative Thomas W. L. Ashley and a number of other direct descendants, including two James Ashley IVs, a portraitist living in Chicago, and another James Harry Ashley-Bach, born in London, UK.

Ashley was a Freemason, belonging to the Toledo Lodge No. 144 in Toledo, Ohio.

Early political activism In 1848, the burly six-foot tall youth settled in Portsmouth, Ohio, where he became a journalist—first at the Portsmouth Dispatch and later editor of the Portsmouth Democrat. The following year, 1849, he was admitted to the Ohio Bar but did not practice. Instead, by 1851, abolitionist activities caused Ashley and his wife to flee north to Toledo, Ohio to avoid prosecution under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. There, Ashley opened a drug store (which was soon burned down) and also became involved in the new Republican Party, campaigning for its presidential candidate John C. Fremont and congressman Richard Mott.

James Ashley was an active abolitionist who traveled with John Brown's wife to Brown's execution in December, 1859, and reported the event in the still-extant local newspaper, the Toledo Blade. In 1858, he led the Ohio Republican Party. As the year ended, Ashley was elected to U.S. House of Representatives of the 36th United States Congress, and took office the following year.

Congressional career

Ashley served in the United States House of Representatives from 1859 through 1869, representing Ohio's 5th congressional district for two terms (1859–63) and Ohio's 10th congressional district for three terms (1863–69). In early 1860, during the secession crisis, Congressman Ashley accused the Slave Power of plotting to destroy the Union: “They care nothing for the Union, except so far as it subserves their purpose of building up and extending their peculiar institution, and perpetuating their own political power.” Ashley advanced the Radical Republican view that the impoverished, non-slaveholding whites formed a social group antagonistic to the well-to-do planters and therefore “the real point of danger to the ruling class of the South.”

While in Congress (the 37th through 40th sessions), Ashley served as the Chairman of the Committee on Territories, and was instrumental to the creation (naming and borders) of the territories of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and Washington. He also authored the Arizona Organic Act. However, he opposed the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and especially polygamy, and limited Utah's boundaries to reduce Mormon influence. He also authored both Pacific Railroad Acts 1862 and 1864, enabling the construction of the transcontinental railroad.

During the American Civil War, Ashley took an active role in supporting the recruitment of troops for the Union Army. He also became a leader among the Radical Republicans, writing a bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia in 1862. In 1863 he introduced a bill to create a constitutional amendment to end slavery which ultimately (with Ashley as House Majority floor manager) passed in the House, exceeding the needed a 2/3 margin by merely 2 votes on January 31, 1865. This was ultimately ratified as the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, formally abolishing slavery in the United States.

Ashley suspected President Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln as president after Lincoln's death, of complicity in President Lincoln's assassination. Ashley also attempted to persuade the House Committee on the Judiciary of this. He described Johnson as being a," loathing incubus which has blotted our country's history." He also criticized Johnson for attempting to veto extensions of the Freedmen's Bureau, the Civil Rights Bill and the Reconstruction Acts. He suspected Johnson's ties with southern oligarchs. Ashley was among the first to explore impeaching Johnson as president, beginning to desire Johnson's impeachment in late 1866. This inquiry led to a defeated resolution to impeach Johnson which the House voted against on December 7, 1867. However, the following February, the House voted to impeach Johnson.

Some historians have been unkind in their views on Ashley. C. Vann Woodward called him, "a nut with an idée fixe" and Eric McKitrick described him as having, "an occult mixture of superstition and lunacy".

Ashley is played by actor David Costabile in the 2012 Steven Spielberg movie Lincoln.

There is a small village located in Ashley, Michigan (48806) that is named after Ashley, although he did not have any part in settling it. His name was used as he owned the railroad the village was developed around.

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