William Shepperd Ashe was born on August 12, 1814 in Rocky Point, North Carolina, United States. He was the son of Samuel and Elizabeth (Shepperd) Ashe, both representatives of families long prominent in North Carolina. His grandfather was Samuel Ashe, governor of that state and judge of its first supreme court.
Ashe attended school in Fayetteville, pursued classical studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and studied law in North Carolina under the supervision of Judge John De Rossett Toomer.
In 1836 he was elected county solicitor for four counties on the Cape Fear River, but his planting interests, and his social disposition which, according to his son, "was at variance with the exactions of a professional life" led him to abandon his activities as a lawyer. He found time, however, to read widely, especially in the field of politics. In 1846 and 1858 he was in the state Senate, and in 1848 he was elected both to that body and to the national Congress. As a state legislator he is memorable for his opposition to schemes for making alien Charleston the normal railway outlet for the products of all western North Carolina. For it was largely through his influence that certain new traffic lines of his state were built in general eastward to Wilmington rather than southward to Charleston.
During his two terms in Congress at Washington from 1849 to 1852 he maintained the extreme Democratic view-point except when it conflicted with interests which were more immediately local.
He had little hope of efforts to compromise sectional difficulties, and felt that only secession could better the condition of the South. He knew, nevertheless, when he was seeking Federal appropriations for North Carolina river improvements, how to cajole away from the House enough of his Democratic colleagues to let his bill be voted through by his friends among the Whigs, who, fortunately, had declared no policy against bills of that kind.
Becoming in 1854 president of the Wilmington & Weldon Railroad, he filled his office with aggressive energy, and to the profit of the organization.
He was a member of the state convention of 1861, but resigned at the request of his friend Jefferson Davis to assume charge, first as major and then colonel, of Confederate government transportation between New Orleans and Richmond. After a year's service in this capacity, he turned his attention in the summer of 1862 to raising a legion of soldiers of which he was to be commander.
These plans were cut short. One evening, in great distress over a report that one of his two sons had been wounded, he set out immediately for his home some fifteen miles distant in the hope of gaining further information. He had not gone far when the hand-car which he had commandeered was run down by an unlighted train. He survived his injuries for three days.
For all his life he remained active in the Democratic party.
Ashe was married to Sarah Ann Green, they had four children.
