Faces of the Civil War: An Album of Union Soldiers and Their Stories

He Heard the Call

68 Capt. John Fletcher Ashley, Company G, Fifty-third Massachusetts Infantry Carte de visite by unidentified photographer, about 1862 69 He Heard the Call On January 30, 1863, the Union transport steamer Continental chugged into the port of New Orleans, battered but intact, three weeks after it had departed from New York City. The ship and its cargo, the Fifty-third Massachusetts Infantry, had run into stormy weather and been bombarded by rough seas. To celebrate its safe passage, the officers of the Fifty-third arranged a special breakfast and nominated Capt. John Ashley to write and read a set of resolutions , “which embodied the sentiments of all, respecting the untiring and sleepless vigilance of the captain of the steamer and the efficiency of his subordinates.”102 Ashley was a natural choice to deliver words of thanks and praise to the captain and crew of the Continental, because the thirty-four-year-old combat officer was an ordained Baptist preacher. The Nova Scotia, Canada, native had been schooled at seminaries in Rhode Island and Massachusetts in the mid1850s . At the start of the Civil War, he ministered to congregations in Gardner, Massachusetts, and nearby villages, with the help of his wife, Maria. When the Fifty-third began forming for nine months’ service in the summer of 1862, he heard the call and enlisted as captain of Company G. He had been more effective as a minister than he was as a fighting man. After its harrowing voyage, the regiment spent the next seven months in Louisiana and Mississippi. Ashley contracted malaria within weeks of his arrival and was hospitalized. He rejoined his company a month later but the next day turned over command to a lieutenant and returned to the hospital, where he remained until the Fifty-third left for home. Ashley mustered out with the regiment in September and re- 70 turned to Gardner, where he slowly regained his health. Soon after , he left his congregation for a Connecticut seminary, where he taught for many years. In the 1880s, suffering from heart disease, he returned to Gardner. His health fell into a steady decline after 1888, and he died in 1893 at age sixty-four. ...