Thomas Samuel Ashe was an American politician and lawyer. He was a Representative from North Carolina in the United States House of Representatives from 1873 to 1877.
Background
Thomas Samuel was born in 1812 in Hawfield, North Carolina, United States. He was the son of Pasquale Paoli and Elizabeth Strudwick Ashe. A member of an old and venerated North Carolina family of Revolutionary heroes, the younger Ashe was raised as an aristocrat. For a brief interlude, his father emigrated with his family to Alabama but soon returned to live in New Hanover County, North Carolina.
Education
Thomas Ashe attended the Bingham School in Orange County. He then entered The University of North Carolina and was graduated third in his class in 1832.
Thomas Samuel Ashe was admitted to the bar in 1834. Ashe practiced law in Wadesboro, North Carolina.
A cousin of William Sheppard Ashe, he served as a delegate from Anson County in the North Carolina House of Commons in 1842, as a solicitor for the Fifth Judicial District from 1847 to 1851, and as a member of the North Carolina Senate in 1854.
Thomas was a member of the Confederate House of Representatives from 1861 to 1864. He served on both the Conference and Judiciary Committees. In 1864, Ashe soured on the war, and he ran as a peace candidate for the Confederate Senate against the avowed administration loyalist, William Dortch, and defeated him.
But the war ended before he could take his seat. Ashe initially supported conciliation with the North, but he soon joined the conservative or anti-Holden party and resisted Reconstruction. In 1866, he served as a state councilor, and in 1868 he lost the North Carolina gubernatorial race to William W. Holden.
He served as a Democrat in the United States House of Representatives from 1873 to 1877 where he gained a reputation as a watchdog of corrupt Republican party practices. As an associate justice of the state Supreme Court from 1878 to 1887, he became involved in landmark civil rights cases. Ashe also managed to practice law when he was not in public office.
Achievements
Religion
Ashe became a vestryman in the Episcopal church.
Politics
Ashe was a Clay Whig and a unionist until 1861 when he became a Democrat after Lincoln called for North Carolina troops to assist in putting down the Confederate insurrection. He became a secessionist. He strongly supported the war effort but opposed the Davis administration.
Views
Ashe quietly but firmly opposed every major effort made there to enlarge the powers of the central government at the expense of the states or of individuals. He apparently believed, however, that the Confederacy could win its independence without such legislation and deplored the peace agitation that developed during 1863.
Connections
Thomas married Caroline Burgwin in June 1837, he became the father of eleven children.