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.
Contents
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.