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Chapter Three

“We Want an Honest Board of Commissioners and No Broken-down Political Demagogues”

Building His Business and Political Base for Civic Reform, 1865–1868

WITH THE COUNTRY struggling to find a new equilibrium in the aftermath of the Civil War, Shepherd—and Washington—faced numerous challenges. Shepherd used the years after the war to build his fortune and establish himself as a major player on the local scene while crafting a strategy to consolidate the District of Columbia and change its form of governance. An additional distraction—and spur to action—was the per sis tent campaign to “remove” the nation’s capital closer to the geographic center of the expanding nation. Membership on the Levy Court¹ would provide Shepherd with a vehicle for launching trial political balloons on Washington’s future.

Shepherd’s tactics, if not his strategy, on one issue—the civil rights aspirations of Washington’s black citizens—appeared to change after he resigned from the Common Council and was defeated in his bid for alderman in 1864. He had repeatedly offered views on racial issues in the past, opposing both the black franchise and attempts to put blacks “on an equality” with whites. His use of what would today be considered racist language (e.g., “darkies”), while not uncommon at the time, suggests a paternalistic attitude at minimum. As the 1860s drew to an end and the District’s black citizens obtained the vote, Shepherd downplayed his racial views by promoting consolidation of the District of Columbia charter in the name of government efficiency and economic prosperity. He abandoned explicit calls for black subordination, despite continuing to champion policies that would eliminate black suffrage.

Washington’s black residents were well aware of the changed political environment brought about by the defeat of the Confederacy. Following the District of Columbia Emancipation Act of April 16, 1862, the city’s black population intended to push for full rights as Americans. Black Washingtonians, with Radical Republican congressional support, fought for the vote.² More than 2,500 of the city’s leading black residents petitioned Congress in fall 1865, arguing for political equality on the grounds that “we are intelligent enough to be industrious, to have accumulated property, to build and sustain churches and institutions of learning. . . . We are intelligent enough to be amenable to the same laws and punishable alike with others for the infraction of said laws. . . . Without the right of suffrage we are without protection and liable to combinations of outrage.”³ Partly in response to such pleas, the Thirty-Ninth Congress opened its first session in December 1865 with submission of bills in both houses to extend the franchise to all black male D.C. residents over the age of twenty-one.

White Washingtonians overwhelmingly opposed black voting rights and in a December plebiscite voted resoundingly against it. In Washington City, whites were 6,591 against and 35 in favor, while in Georgetown, the vote was 712 against, with only one in favor. Washington mayor Richard Wallach complained that supporters of black voting rights had “little association, less sympathy, and no community of interest with the city of Washington,” describing them as only temporary residents who “claim and invariably exercise the right of franchise elsewhere.”⁴ Radical Republicans in Congress were outraged by such views. Representative George Julian (R-Ind.) summarized the Radical perspective in a House speech: “The ballot should be given to the negroes as a matter of justice to them. It should also be done as a matter of retributive justice to the slaveholders and rebels. . . . That contempt for the negro and scorn of free industry which constituted the mainspring of the rebellion cropped out [in Washington] during the war in every form.”⁵

While he followed these matters closely, Shepherd had other, pressing concerns. He had set his sights on using his plumbing and gas fitting as well as his home construction operations to make himself a major economic force in Washington. What motivated him to pursue this goal is unknown, but it is not a stretch to think that the premature death of his father, the collapse of family finances, and the necessity for his mother to open a boarding house to pay the bills played an important part. It was already apparent that he was by nature an active and determined person. Shepherd demonstrated a talent for business that suited the freewheeling era after the Civil War that came to be known as the “Gilded Age.” This period, given its nickname by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in their novel of the same name published in 1873, was characterized by weak or ineffectual presidents, congressional malleability, and the creation of some of the nation’s largest fortunes at the time. It was a time when ambitious men (and women) would reject waiting their turn or for approval from their social betters to pursue personal ambition.

New interest in the nation’s capital made it attractive to newcomers, many from the North or West, with money, ambition, or both. Shepherd was among the most consequential of this new generation of Washingtonians. Despite his financial success, the “old citizens” of Washington, whose families were not necessarily more than a generation or two older than his, closed their social ranks to him. Boston, Philadelphia, New York, even Baltimore, all had urban pedigrees going back much farther than Washington, so Shepherd considered himself an ideal candidate to thrive in the changing environment in Washington.⁶

While he concentrated on building his commercial and social base, Shepherd continued to devote time and energy to laying the groundwork for his vision of remaking Washington. He was well suited in several respects for this role: he was a staunch Republican but socially conservative, thus able for a while to bridge the gap between the Radical Republicans in Congress pushing for integrating blacks into the mainstream of America and the hostile but influential Washington white population who wanted nothing to do with the political equality of the races. Through his tenure on the Levy Court, Shepherd carried on, as he had during his three terms on the Washington City Common Council, experimenting with forms of local government.

Shepherd’s business efforts were rewarded with success. His rapidly increasing wealth tracked closely with his growing influence in Washington affairs. He first made the list of well-to-do Washington taxpayers in 1865, with reported taxable income of $3,350 (local banker George Washington Riggs topped the list with $54,681). Shepherd was in a group of up-and-coming businessmen that included gas company president Joseph F. Brown, contractor John O. Evans, builder Moses Kelly, Evening Star part owner Samuel H. Kauffmann, and John H. Semmes, a prominent local political figure.⁷ Among influential local Washington residents, attitudes toward Shepherd were tolerant, if not congenial, as long as he focused on business and advocated reforming local government from the sidelines.

The group of leading Washington income earners was diverse: Riggs, a banking partner of William Wilson (W. W.) Corcoran, had become wealthy from marketing bonds to fund the Mexican-American War. Moses Kelly, a contractor-builder, partnered frequently with Shepherd in building homes in the District of Columbia and was politically supportive. Samuel H. Kauffmann, originally from Ohio, where he published a small newspaper, became a part owner with Shepherd of the Evening Star in 1867 and also supported Shepherd’s political endeavors. John Evans, a builder who was to receive many contracts from the Board of Public Works, was a trustee of Shepherd’s Washington Club.⁸ John Semmes, sharing a Charles County family background with Shepherd, had served as alderman on the Washington City Council during the Civil War while Shepherd was on the Common Council.⁹ Only Joseph Brown, head of the gas company, was a thorn in Shepherd’s side, and the two had clashed repeatedly on the City Council.

By 1866 Shepherd’s taxable income had jumped dramatically, to $29,244, placing him between Riggs, the banker ($12,296), and financier Henry D. Cooke ($69,659).¹⁰ Shepherd’s taxable income in 1867 ranked seventh among thirty-six individuals making more than $10,000 a year.¹¹ By 1870 Shepherd was listed as the fourth wealthiest Washingtonian, with personal property of $117,000. Only Corcoran ($228,000), A. H. Herr ($177,000), and Cooke ($152,000) exceeded him.¹² In keeping with his increasing wealth and business stature, Shepherd made sure to present an image of wealth and success. Daughter Grace captured the private man in a charming reminiscence written after her father’s death:

Father was bodily, next to Mother, the cleanest mortal I ever knew. Water, soap, toilet vinegar and bay rum! He was as finicky as a fastidious girl about linen and clothes, a dandy in fine shirts made to order, thin ribbed silk underclothes, finest linen handkerchiefs, usually embroidered with his A.R.S. . . . always, perhaps since his children vied for gifts suitable for him.

No one darned skillfully enough to mend his fine lisle hose except Mother. His shirts were made to order . . . in New York and his outer clothes by Brooks, N.Y. The exception, the morning suit made in London by Poole when he took us to Eu rope on that most memorable trip of our lives [1895–96], and in which posterity views him today in bronze on the corner of Penn Ave. and 14th St., never fit him, as did Brooks’s garments.¹³

By 1870 Shepherd was or had been intimately associated with some twenty-five different business ventures in addition to owner ship of Alex. R. Shepherd and Bros., the plumbing firm that now included his younger brothers Thomas and Wilmer. Most of the business activities with which Shepherd became associated during this period were new initiatives. Not all came to fruition, let alone made money, but they show the range of his business interests, most of which contributed to the growth of Washington’s economic and financial base. Combining personal capital and a progressive business outlook, Shepherd was invariably an investor and director once he became involved. His business involvement included banking, railroads, shipping, insurance, and building, as well as part owner ship of the Evening Star, which became one of Washington’s leading newspapers. The Star adopted a probusiness policy while maintaining a conservative approach toward black aspirations and support for political changes in Washington that would reduce the franchise for blacks as well as whites.¹⁴ The newspaper, which mirrored Shepherd’s own conservatism and probusiness outlook, was a major supporter of his political and development goals. Its editor, Crosby Noyes, who had come to Washington as a young man from Maine, was friends with Shepherd and would use his influence to support Shepherd’s public activities.

Shepherd’s business initiatives included insurance companies such as the National Capital Life Insurance Company¹⁵ and the Washington Insurance Company.¹⁶ Banks included the National Safe Deposit Company of Washington,¹⁷ National Metropolitan Bank,¹⁸ and National Savings Bank.¹⁹ Shepherd was also committed to improving rail access to Washington. His opposition to the monopolistic Baltimore & Ohio Railroad led him to participate in organizing several local railroads: the Metropolitan Railroad Company,²⁰ National Junction Railroad,²¹ as well as the stillborn New York and Washington Railway Company, which proposed to construct a rail line from Washington to New York and on to Cincinnati.²² A supporter of expanded and improved regional shipping, Shepherd was an organizer of the New York and Washington Steamship Company, intended to strengthen shipping between the two cities.²³ Through it all, his flagship plumbing and gas fitting firm, Alex. R. Shepherd and Bros., remained the basis for his fortune, and Shepherd used his wealth to take advantage of Washington’s dramatic growth in the post–Civil War period by building one thousand homes for wealthy as well as middle-class residents.²⁴ In 1868 Shepherd owned 182 residential lots in Washington.²⁵

L’Enfant’s Washington City Canal, which virtually split the capital down the middle, was to play a major role in Shepherd’s later public improvements program, but at this point it became a target for privatization. Shepherd and his colleagues organized the Washington City Canal Company, and Noyes introduced a bill in the Board of Aldermen to sell the canal to a consortium of local businessmen.²⁶ The sale, which required congressional approval, would have required the new owners to develop a sixty-foot-wide canal in which four feet of water would be maintained at all times; the City Council declined to endorse it.²⁷ The project failed to gain congressional support, perhaps because the existing canal was seen as an integral part of the capital’s infrastructure.

Corruption?

In light of later allegations of corruption, several of Shepherd’s involvements in the postwar years were to raise questions about his colleagues’, if not his own, conduct. The most notorious connection was the Mary land Freestone Mining and Manufacturing Company, better known as the Seneca Sandstone Company, organized in 1867 by Shepherd supporters, including Senator William Stewart of Nevada and General Ulysses S. Grant. Shepherd joined the board of the company in 1868, along with local investors Henry D. Cooke, Lewis Clephane, and William Huntington.²⁸ Seneca Sandstone was accused on numerous occasions of using political influence to gain government contracts, and as a senior officer of the Freedman’s Bank, Huntington was shown to have approved loans to the company in exchange for stock that became worthless.²⁹ Shepherd was also a player in the Portland Stone Company (Lewis Clephane, Hallet Kilbourn, publisher William Murtagh) and the Metropolis Paving Company, which later became a center of attention over charges of a “paving ring” intended to monopolize street paving during the territorial government. Shepherd sold his stock in Metropolis Paving when he became a public official, although allegations of conflict of interest were to surface later. Shepherd sent contracts in the direction of the firm, and it was revealed that representatives of two Washington newspapers were among the stockholders, despite having paid nothing for their shares.³⁰

Another of Shepherd’s business ventures that raised questions of conflict of interest was the Vaux Anti-Freezing Pipe and Roofing Company, headed by Ethan P. Vaux, a talented but alcoholic craftsman. Vaux obtained contracts for roofing federal buildings in a number of cities thanks to his friendship with Alfred B. Mullett, supervising architect of the Treasury Department and a close associate of Shepherd. Mullett was for several years secretary and treasurer of the Vaux firm.³¹ Shepherd directed the teams of workmen, including Vaux, who were dispatched across the country to replace iron roofs with Vaux’s patented copper roof. Mullett’s control over lucrative government contracts for local construction projects proved irresistible to President Grant’s inner circle, which pressured Mullett to favor particular localities with projects.³²

Developing Social and Cultural Connections

Shepherd’s involvement in organizing social and cultural activities in Washington was as wide and eclectic as his business ventures. Such connections—not counting special events such as the 1871 Pennsylvania Avenue gala, presidential inaugurations, and charity balls—numbered more than twenty, albeit not all at the same time and not all continuous. From his youthful association with the Undine Boat Club, the Metropolitan Literary Association, and the Washington Library Company, Shepherd significantly broadened the range of his involvements as he matured. He remained a longtime lay leader in the Presbyterian Church, initially at Fourth Presbyterian and later at New York Avenue Presbyterian. He was also a force in New York Avenue’s outreach program, having provided a chapel for the Gurley Mission School, named after his religious mentor, Dr. Phineas Gurley, and served as chairman of the Northern Presbyterian Mission.³³

Being an intensely social—and sociable—person, Shepherd was drawn to men’s club life. Always desirous of acceptance by the Georgetown social set, Shepherd, sponsored by Lewis Clephane, joined the recently established Metropolitan Club a few months after stepping down as president of the Common Council in 1864.³⁴ The Metropolitan Club, then, as now, drew on Washington’s governmental, military, commercial, and social elites. Riggs was the club’s first treasurer, and Corcoran became president when the club resumed operations in 1872 after a five-year hiatus.³⁵ Uncharacteristically, there is no mention of participation by Shepherd in Metropolitan Club records from 1864 to 1867, whereas in every other activity with which he was associated, he was among the most active members. It is possible that having just lost his bid for a seat on the Washington City Board of Aldermen, Shepherd chose to take a lower profile in the Metropolitan Club.

Shepherd’s charitable activities in this period included leading roles in the Provident Aid Society, formed to meet the needs of Washington’s poorest residents through soup kitchens and donations of firewood; he moved on to become president of the newly formed Association for the Poor, whose officers were higher up the social ladder and included Supreme Court justice Salmon P. Chase, Riggs, Corcoran, and Cooke.³⁶ Shepherd’s social and humanitarian work included directorships of the YMCA, the Humane Society, Columbia Hospital, the American Printing House/National University for the Blind, the Washington National Monument Society, plus a brief stint as a director of Corcoran’s Oak Hill Cemetery.³⁷

In 1870, the Jefferson Baseball Club, an amateur Washington team, elected Shepherd as its nonplaying president; other wise, the youthful sportsman of the Undine Boat Club participated little in organized sports in these years. It is likely that the election had followed a generous financial contribution, based on a letter from the team secretary noting, “I am instructed also, to say the club fully appreciates your kindness.”³⁸

Spring 1867 brought significant personal and professional change for Shepherd when he was approved by Congress for the Levy Court, the governing body for Washington County. The county was not a corporation like Washington City and Georgetown, and the Levy Court was based on a law inherited from the original Mary land land grant to the national government. The court, composed of nine judges appointed by the president for three-year terms, governed a large, thinly populated area consisting of farms and occasional grand houses. Shepherd was one of the three judges appointed from Washington City.³⁹ His duties no doubt brought back memories of living on the farm next to Rock Creek Church before his father died. If, perhaps, the affairs of Washington County seemed far removed from the concerns of Washington City and Georgetown, development was pushing out into the county. The Levy Court experience was useful for Shepherd in working closely with men whom he would encounter professionally in the future, as well as providing a complement to his earlier work with the Washington City Common Council.

In 1867, when Alexander and Mary Shepherd decided to build an out-of-town home for their growing family, they returned to the vicinity of the old family farm in the county north of Rock Creek Cemetery. Consistent with his new wealth and embrace of conspicuous consumption, Shepherd built an elegant house that the family named “Bleak House” from the title of the Charles Dickens novel the children were reading at the time. A family account described the approximately 260 acres as the highest spot in the District, with old apple trees, meadows, and woodland running back to Rock Creek.⁴⁰ The Second Empire–style wooden main house was one of the showplaces of this remote suburban district and considered large in its time. The estate contained a bowling alley and gymnasium, a barn and overseer’s house, as well as trout ponds and a cherry orchard.⁴¹ The formal entrance to Bleak House was a stone porter’s lodge on Seventh Street Road (today Georgia Avenue) at some distance from the residence.⁴² Bleak House was to hold many memories—both happy and sad—for the Shepherd family. Daughter Grace Shepherd Merchant later described Bleak House as meaning much more to the family than the mansion Shepherd later built on Farragut Square.⁴³

Mount Pleasant, Shepherd family home in Charles County, Maryland. (Courtesy of Samuel Ward Collection, College of Southern Maryland)

Union troops parading on an unpaved Washington street, ca. 1865. (Courtesy of Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress)

Long Bridge, 1865 (from Washington side of Potomac River). (Courtesy of Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress)

Harper’s Weekly (June 8, 1861) print depicts Union troops crossing Long Bridge into Virginia in May 1861. (Courtesy of Kiplinger Library, Historical Society of Washington)

Union soldiers on the Mall (unfinished Washington Monument in background). (Courtesy of Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress)

Downtown Washington road scene (F Street NW) before Shepherd’s paving operations. (Courtesy of Kiplinger Library, Historical Society of Washington)

Shepherd Building, Pennsylvania Avenue NW, during an 1871 parade celebrating paving of the avenue. (From the collection of Robert A. Truax)

Bleak House, Shepherd’s suburban Washington residence north of Walter Reed Hospital, was built in 1868. (Courtesy of Kiplinger Library, Historical Society of Washington)

Shepherd seated portrait, 1880. (Courtesy of Kiplinger Library, Historical Society of Washington)

Shepherd residence at 1125 Tenth Street NW, where the family lived before completion of the K Street mansion. (Courtesy of Kiplinger Library, Historical Society of Washington)

This certificate signed by President Grant appointed Shepherd governor of the District of Columbia in 1873. (Courtesy of Kiplinger Library, Historical Society of Washington)

Sayles J. Bowen, former Washington City mayor and Shepherd critic. (Courtesy of Kiplinger Library, Historical Society of Washington)

William Wilson Corcoran, influential Washington banker and Shepherd opponent. (Courtesy of Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress)

Mary Grice Shepherd, 1880. (Courtesy of Kiplinger Library, Historical Society of Washington)

Drive for Change in Governance

The five years before 1870 saw the unfolding of a complex political process to determine the future governance of the District, and Shepherd was well positioned to be a major player, even though he held no elected legislative position. As an ambitious, self-made businessman from a conservative social tradition, Shepherd understood the importance of remedying the dysfunctional nature of the District’s governance if the city was ever to move beyond haphazard, piecemeal development. An advocate of giving the decision-making responsibility to those who paid the taxes, Shepherd was able to justify his campaign for a commissioner government, which had a platform of removing authority from newly enfranchised blacks and other non-landowning residents and giving it to presidentially appointed commissioners, who, under a conservative Republican president would be expected to favor a conservative course of action.

During 1865 and 1866, blacks in Washington had in effect transformed the public spaces of the District of Columbia, strengthening new prerogatives such as access to streetcars.⁴⁴ Encouraged by Shepherd and the Board of Trade, Senator Lot Morrill (R-Maine), chairman of the Senate District Committee, introduced a bill in January 1866 calling for cancellation of the District of Columbia’s corporations and replacement by three presidentially appointed commissioners.⁴⁵ Morrill argued, “The District of Columbia never was designed to be a government. It is a seat for the Government of the United States; and that is all it ever was designed to be.”⁴⁶ The same day Morrill’s bill was presented, Representative William Kelley, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, introduced a bill in the House of Representatives that called for giving blacks in Washington the vote. Kelley quoted from a petition submitted to Congress by a delegation of Washington blacks that said, “Without the right of suffrage we are without protection and liable to combinations of outrage.”⁴⁷ Enfranchising blacks in Washington would have little meaning if elected local government was replaced by an appointed—not elected—form of government.

The Board of Trade resolution that supported the Morrill bill had the backing of important Washington civic leaders, including Riggs, Corcoran, and Cooke, and provided a focus for the charge that supporters of presidentially appointed commissioner government sought a means of denying black voting rights by taking them away from all voters. The timing of these bills provided a striking and tense contrast between the two political perspectives. However, Morrill’s bill went nowhere at this session, in part because members of Congress objected to depriving Washington’s voters of their suffrage and, more crucially, because Radical Republicans in Congress wanted to try out the politically important experiment of black suffrage, which would be nullified if commissioner government went into effect.⁴⁸ Legislation providing for universal adult male suffrage in Washington, D.C., was passed by Congress over President Johnson’s veto in January 1867, and Washington blacks, supported by Radical Republican allies, opposed having it snatched away by the imposition of government by appointed commissioners.