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Chapter One

“An Apollo in Form”

Coming of Age in the Nation’s Capital, 1835–1861

ALEXANDER ROBEY SHEPHERD was one of the most influential local figures in the nation’s capital in the nineteenth century. He was also a product of his time and place. He came to manhood in a Chesapeake slave society in which his family prospered, and while he later accepted, if not embraced, emancipation as a Union war measure, he never progressed beyond the paternalistic racial views of his upbringing to accept the political or social equality of the races. The wealth and social standing built up by his grand fathers as Mary land tobacco planters and by his father as an enterprising businessman in early Washington, D.C., formed Shepherd’s frame of reference as he strove to make his own place in the capital’s economic, social, and political life. His father’s early death forced Shepherd to become the male head of the family in his early teens. Thrust prematurely into the adult world, he responded with the single-minded drive, energy, and ambition that would characterize the rest of his life. He rarely if ever questioned his motives or methods but rather pressed forward, confident in the correctness of his actions.

Shepherd’s paternal grand father, Thomas, died in 1817 in Charles County, Mary land, leaving the family relatively well off, with an estate worth $4,000 (exclusive of land holdings) that included nine slaves.¹ This was at a time of significant migration from the Tidewater region, when an estimated 250,000 whites abandoned the area between 1790 and 1820 as a result of the depletion of the tobacco fields.² Perhaps this was the reason that Alexander Robey Shepherd’s father, Alexander Shepherd Sr., left in 1822 to seek his fortune in Washington, D.C. Why he chose to migrate to the nation’s capital is conjectural, but he may have been attracted to the business potential of the infant city—only a quarter-century old—that President George Washington had envisioned as both the commercial center and the seat of government of the new nation.

Shepherd Sr. returned to Charles County in 1833 to marry Susan Davidson Robey, daughter of Townley Robey, a wealthy planter. Robey had seen military service in the War of 1812, was an Episcopal Church vestryman, and served as sheriff of Charles County, all roles associated with the county’s financial and social elite.³ Later, Alexander Robey Shepherd would remember his maternal grand father as “a tall old gentleman in a white beaver hat, coming from church on a Sunday and drawing water from the well, in a bucket with a long pole.”⁴ The marriage to Susan Robey gave Alexander Shepherd Sr. enhanced social standing and the wealth she inherited after her father’s death in 1844. This wealth consisted of land and money from an estate totaling almost two thousand acres and physical property valued at $5,000 (including eighteen slaves), a considerable sum at the time.⁵

Shepherd’s father developed coal and lumberyards near his Washington City residence at Twelfth Street and Mary land Avenue SW and in Market Square, the area next to Center Market on Pennsylvania Avenue NW, adjacent to the Washington Canal. He was a director of the Georgetown-based Potomac Insurance Company and active in public life, serving as an assistant commissioner for Ward 5, responsible for overseeing public improvements such as streets and walkways.⁶ He remained a slave owner; the 1840 District of Columbia census recorded five slaves in the house hold, although in 1841 he sold a thirteen-year-old slave, with instructions for manumission at age twenty-five.⁷ At Shepherd’s death in 1845 he still owned seven slaves, although he left instructions for their eventual manumission.⁸

Turning his back on the family’s Episcopalian tradition in Charles County, Shepherd’s father joined and played a leadership role in two of Washington’s Presbyterian churches, the First and the Fourth. While the Episcopal Church was the church of the upper classes, Presbyterianism was a fast-growing Protestant faith in Washington. Alexander Shepherd Sr. significantly increased his participation in church affairs after joining Fourth Presbyterian, being elected to the board of trustees and then elected its president the following year. It is likely that he had developed a group of friends among the young businessmen of Washington who were already Presbyterians and that he became a Presbyterian more as a social than a religious decision. This would be a pattern his eldest son would also follow.

After the birth of the couple’s second child, Alexander Robey Shepherd, on January 30, 1835 (their first child, Anna, was born in 1832), four other children—Bettie (1837), Thomas (1839), Wilmer (1841), and Arthur (1842)—followed in quick succession. The family continued to live in southwest Washington City until Shepherd, in failing health, purchased a farm in neighboring Washington County adjacent to St. Paul’s, the Rock Creek Episcopal parish, where the family lived for a little more than a year before his death from an undisclosed illness in June 1845. In the period that he owned the farm, he turned it into a showcase, no doubt assisted by the wealth inherited following the death the previous year of his father-in-law.⁹ The time Alexander Robey Shepherd passed as a youngster on a working farm must have had an impact on him, since there was always work to be done, and he demonstrated an early willingness, even eagerness, to engage in it. As a man, he was often remarked to outwork his employees.

Alexander Shepherd Sr.’s will directed that his eldest son, Alexander, upon reaching the age of twenty-one, be advanced the sum of $4,000 (approximately $127,000 today) “to enable him to prosecute advantageously such business as he may select for his future support.” The will also directed the executors to provide a suitable education for the children to prepare them for business, adding that if any of the sons demonstrated a talent for the “learned professions,” funds should be made available for university studies.¹⁰ A newspaper column a few days after Shepherd’s death paid tribute to his sterling character and dedication to the church, describing him as industrious, honest, and enterprising and pointing out his kindness not only to his own family but also to anyone in need.¹¹

The Young Capital

The Washington, D.C., area to which Alexander Shepherd Sr. came in 1822 as a young man seeking a better life was a young, straggling place with a total population of some thirty-three thousand, composed of two-thirds whites and one-third slaves and free blacks.¹² James Monroe had been reelected president two years previously, and Washington was in the early stages of defining itself physically and socially. The most striking characteristic of Washington in the first half of the nineteenth century was the discrepancy between its untidy reality and the grandiose scale of the original intent of the founders. Peter Charles L’Enfant, the French-born architect and engineer chosen by President Washington in 1791 to plan the city, had envisioned a magnificent city of grand avenues, sweeping vistas, and magnificent public monuments and buildings.¹³ Published maps of the District of Columbia portrayed L’Enfant’s plan, but the city experienced by visitors and residents fell far short. Scattered but imposing government buildings stood alongside undistinguished hotels and commercial establishments, graceful row houses alongside undistinguished frame houses and squalid shanties. These differences were the more dramatic because of long, undeveloped spaces separating the “arc of settlement.”¹⁴ The streets were muddy when wet and dusty when dry, and the Washington Canal was polluted. Many of the city’s roads were still only lines on the plan drawn by L’Enfant in 1791, and almost all those in use were unpaved. Only a few major public buildings had been erected, among them the White House, Post Office, and Patent Office; repair work on the Capitol, which had been burned during the British invasion in 1814, was ongoing. Congress was the principal institution in the city, but evident only when it was in session. Boarding houses for members of Congress were numerous, as were taverns and restaurants catering to the legislators. Georgetown, across Rock Creek to the west, was the center of organized local society and had been a river port before L’Enfant laid out Washington City in 1791. Georgetown boasted elegant brick homes and a social set; Washington City suffered by comparison.

When one thinks of modern Washington, D.C., with its elegant public buildings, parks, avenues, and Potomac River vistas, it is almost inconceivable that, for the first seventy years of the city’s life sporadic efforts were made to “remove” the capital from Washington or to retrocede pieces of it to Mary land and Virginia. Yet this debate was only a continuation of intense discussions prior to the selection of the site for the capital in 1790.¹⁵ Washington’s residents, who believed that the decision by Congress to site the national capital in a ten-mile square on the Potomac River would put the location debate to rest, were to be proved wrong time and again.

The starting point for Washington’s development was the original plan for the city by L’Enfant. Drawn after consultation with President George Washington, the plan envisioned an elegant, continental design imitating the grandeur and aesthetic coherence of European planning without overlooking the republican values of the new country.¹⁶ Key to L’Enfant’s plan was a vision of a capital city that would serve as both political symbol and commercial hub, reflecting the views of President Washington, who foresaw the city’s potential access to maritime traffic as well as to overland routes to the interior.¹⁷

The uneven, haphazard development of Washington during Alexander Robey Shepherd’s youth was traceable to a flaw in the planning process centered on the role of Congress, which under the Constitution wielded total authority over matters in the District of Columbia. The problem was that Congress, the “mother” of the District of Columbia, barely acknowledged its obligations to its “child” for a number of historical reasons, the most important being that members looked primarily to the interests of their home states and districts and considered Washington more as a place to visit when Congress was in session. Thomas Jefferson’s antipathy toward the creation of a major metropolis as the national capital was based on his concern that a large city would become a center of corruption and would be inimical to the agrarian American ideals he so deeply held. The famous drawing of Jefferson’s vision for Washington showed a small town he intended as the seat of Congress and the presidency rather than a capital from which the central government would dominate national life. This view reinforced the concept of multiple political-cultural-commercial centers around the county, unwittingly providing encouragement to New York City to become the commercial capital of the country at the expense of Philadelphia and other East Coast cities.¹⁸

The Young Shepherd

If “the child is the father of the man,” so it was with Alexander Robey Shepherd. Shepherd’s secretary in later years, who knew him well, described Shepherd’s father as small and his mother as large and strong, noting that Shepherd came naturally by his exceptional physical and mental powers from his two parents.¹⁹ The house of his birth in southwest Washington City was a modest, two-story home with a dormer window attic and ample grounds.²⁰ Before the move to the farm in Washington County, from whence he rode a pony down Rock Creek Road to school in the city, Shepherd was an active boy, with an attachment to the Perseverance Hose Company, a nearby firehouse. He showed up every time there was a fire alarm, encouraging the company and sometimes participating in its conflicts with rival firehouses, bringing away occasional scars as testament to his zeal.²¹ He was watched over and protected by one of the family’s older slaves, Henry Magruder, whom Shepherd’s father assigned to keep his rambunctious son from getting into too much trouble.²² While his early education took place under a private tutor, Shepherd’s brief encounter with formal education ended after three years at Rittenhouse Academy School (located at what is now Indiana Avenue near John Marshall Place NW), run by the Nourse brothers, and a short term at the Preparatory Section of Columbian College (Fourteenth Street NW, above Florida Avenue).²³

After Shepherd Sr.’s death, widow Susan Shepherd, Alexander, and his five siblings should have been able to continue life in the comfortable fashion to which the family had become accustomed. Nevertheless, within a year, Susan Shepherd and her six young children were confronted with the as-yet-unexplained loss of most of the estate, prob ably due to mismanagement. Susan Shepherd and local grocer Sylvanus Holmes were coexecutors of the estate, but within a year Holmes had closed his business and left Washington. There is no demonstrated link between Holmes’s abrupt departure from Washington and the failure of the Shepherd estate, but a negative implication remains. There is also no record of commentary by any member of the Shepherd family about the circumstances surrounding these events. While seriously affected financially, the Shepherd family was not destitute; Susan Shepherd is recorded as having bought and sold several properties in the years following her husband’s death.

His father’s death and the change in the family’s finances had a marked impact on ten-year-old Alexander Robey Shepherd. Within three years he had dropped out of school and gone to work to help support the family, perhaps a consequence of being the eldest child. But his course of action was also indicative of an early willingness to act decisively when the situation required. As an adult who would surround himself with the trappings of wealth, he would have remembered his mother’s swift descent from a comfortable lifestyle to becoming a boarding house keeper at her new residence at 440 Ninth Street W. (between G and H Streets N.) within a year after his father’s death.²⁴ The collapse of family fortunes no doubt steeled Shepherd’s resolve to create a level of wealth that would protect his family from such an occurrence ever again. The questionable role of Sylvanus Holmes, who may have contributed to the family’s financial problems, could also have been a factor in Shepherd’s lifelong commitment to giving loyalty to friends and colleagues and expecting similar loyalty in return.

Young Shepherd, thrust rudely into the adult world, began work as a store clerk. Seeking a new trade after two years, he became a carpenter’s apprentice, but the restless boy became discontented with his employer and left after two years.²⁵ In April 1852 Shepherd made one of his most important life decisions: on the recommendation of his pastor at Fourth Presbyterian Church, the seventeen-year-old became an employee of J. W. Thompson’s plumbing and gas fitting establishment.²⁶ The role of Shepherd’s pastor in brokering a clerkship at the Thompson firm suggests that the young Shepherd was an active member of the church where he, his sister Anna, and a future brother-in-law, William P. Young Jr., had been accepted in December 1848. It also implies that Shepherd was considered worthy of special attention.²⁷ By turning his back on carpentry and accepting a position as a clerk—soon to become head bookkeeper—Shepherd demonstrated that, where opportunity presented itself, he preferred to use brain over brawn.²⁸

In many respects John Thompson would serve over the years as the father Shepherd had lost. He was not only an employer but a social mentor and a fellow sports enthusiast and investor in local businesses. Thompson was a respected, successful businessman who opened doors for the young and ambitious Shepherd and no doubt smoothed out incidents when the hot-tempered young man offended members of Washington’s business establishment. Plumbing and gas fitting were important trades in the growing city of Washington, since piped water and rudimentary sewerage links were becoming available and sought by homeowners. Shepherd did not disappoint John Thompson, and by 1859 he had become a partner in the firm that he would eventually own.²⁹

As Shepherd rapidly demonstrated his ambition at John Thompson’s plumbing firm, he also grew into the athletic body that would be a subject of mention by virtually every commentator. A close observer referred to Shepherd’s broad forehead as “the most impressive feature of his countenance” and described him as “an Apollo in form, a giant in strength.”³⁰ Shepherd’s friend, personal attorney, and lifelong defender William Mattingly described him as “a magnificent specimen of manhood . . . tall, large of frame, with remarkable strength, broad forehead, rugged features, firmness expressed in mouth and chin.”³¹ Besides physical dominance, Shepherd had a dramatic voice, described by one writer as having “a richness and fullness of tone as an implement of conversation [and] a laugh that was . . . musical and unconstrained. If he had studiously applied his talents to public speaking he readily could have attained distinction as an orator.”³²

As a young man, Shepherd combined impressive physical attributes with extracurricular interests that he carried into maturity: social-religious on the one hand and sporting on the other. By 1857 the twenty-two-year-old school dropout was a director of two literary groups, the Metropolitan Literary Association and the Washington Library Company, in both of which his mentor, John Thompson, played a leading role.³³ No doubt self-conscious about his shortage of formal education, Shepherd would have valued these links with books and literary discussion. In later life he was an avid reader and consumer of information. In the sporting world, Shepherd was a founder of the Undine Boat Club and a regular in its racing shell. Undine—named after a famous Philadelphia club—was one of several local boat clubs that rowed on the Potomac River and engaged in friendly rivalry with other clubs. Shepherd was one of the most active Undine promoters, telling prospective members, “We want to get up a good crew, with plenty of beef in the boat.” The members were athletic and as a general rule heavyweights. The club boat was in demand for holiday picnics, and the members would take it to event sites, bringing along other sporting gear.³⁴

Shepherd used the boat club to begin assembling the nucleus of a group of friends and colleagues who would, almost without exception, play significant roles in Washington political and social affairs and provide support as Shepherd weathered storms and political controversies. John Thompson was the boat club president, and other members close to Shepherd included William G. Moore (business partner), A. C. Richards (longtime Washington City chief of police), and Lewis Clephane (editor, real estate broker, and founder of the local Republican Party). Most of the boat club members were also involved with Shepherd in the Metropolitan Literary Association and Washington Library Company. William Moore was to enlist with Shepherd in the National Rifles in 1861. As he matured, Shepherd practiced and honed the social and organizational skills he would bring to bear on his adult activities. His profession as a plumber and gas fitter, however, was no boost to his social standing, despite becoming a lucrative source of income.

Washington’s Adolescence

The city that Shepherd would eventually transform had slow and bumpy early years, some of which his father before him had also experienced. Washington, D.C., made an early and unsuccessful attempt to achieve the dream of Washington and L’Enfant for becoming a commercial as well as political national capital. The first goal was to serve as a gateway to the interior of the new country via the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, for which President John Quincy Adams famously turned the inaugural shovel of dirt the same day (July 4, 1828) that the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad received congressional approval to open a line to Washington. The canal would be a failure, while canals and railroads in other cities, supported by state legislatures and private capital, took advantage of Washington’s inertia. Washington was to remain on the margins of America’s northern industrial core throughout the nineteenth century.³⁵

Ridiculed by American and European visitors and residents alike for its run-down appearance and lack of development, Washington, D.C., reflected Congress’s ambivalence toward the nation’s capital. To some observers, who would come to include Shepherd, the lack of congressional investment in the city implied a lack of commitment to a strong federal government, more recently embodied in the two terms of President Andrew Jackson, who shared Jefferson’s profound distrust of concentrated power.³⁶

Underdeveloped as it was, Washington was not radically dissimilar to other American cities of similar size, with the exception of the congressional stranglehold on the city.³⁷ Philadelphia was often compared with Washington because Philadelphia had been a power base for American revolutionaries who favored strong central government. Philadelphia was cosmopolitan, urbane, and religiously diverse, with a vibrant social and intellectual life.³⁸ It also was a city of personal interest to Shepherd because it was the home of his bride-to-be, Mary Grice Young.³⁹ Shepherd would turn to Philadelphia numerous times throughout his business and political life, purchasing gas lighting and plumbing fixtures for the firm as well as studying the city’s paving system and borrowing the plan for the future Washington Board of Trade from the example of its Philadelphia counterpart.

As Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and other cities outpaced Washington’s development in the first half of the nineteenth century, it became evident that a powerful constraint on Washington was Congress’s refusal to acknowledge the reality that the modest population had no way to underwrite the cost of creating, let alone maintaining, the city’s wide streets and boulevards, which thanks to L’Enfant’s plan occupied more than 50 percent of the total land space in the city.⁴⁰

The unwillingness of Congress to provide adequate appropriations to develop and maintain the nation’s capital was evident from the beginning. The city charter of 1820, authorized by Congress, called on Congress to pay its share of improvements around federal property but failed to provide the necessary funds.⁴¹ Only a few legislators attempted to address the issue. In 1835 Senator Samuel L. Southard of New Jersey acknowledged Washington’s per sis tent “pecuniary embarrassments” and stated in a report to Congress his conviction that it would be “utterly impossible” for the city to meet its obligations without congressional assistance. Southard exonerated the city fathers of responsibility for the problem while conceding individual indiscretions because of their governing views “of a liberal and public-spirited character.”⁴² Southard reviewed the history of the city and made special note of the “unusual magnitude and extent” of its streets and avenues, which the city’s population (just over twenty thousand in 1835, of whom almost seven thousand were free and enslaved blacks) was much too small to maintain: “The plan of the city was formed by the public authorities; the dimensions of the streets determined by them, without interference by the inhabitants, or regard to their particular interest or convenience.”⁴³

The results of congressional negligence were apparent to all, and out-of-town visitors excoriated the nation’s capital for its shabbiness and uncompleted character. Lionized during his 1842 American tour, English author Charles Dickens later painted a withering, oft-cited portrait of the city: “[Washington] is sometimes called the City of Magnificent Distances, but it might with greater propriety be termed the City of Magnificent Intentions. . . . Spacious avenues that begin in nothing, and lead nowhere; streets, miles-long, that only want houses, roads, and inhabitants; public buildings that need but a public to be complete; and ornaments of great thoroughfare—which only lack great thoroughfares to ornament—are its leading features.”⁴⁴ Another European visitor noted sagely that it would be impossible to build a real city without “revenues to squander.”⁴⁵

The District of Columbia was subjected to further indignity in 1846, when Congress accepted a request from the Virginia delegation for the Alexandria, Virginia, portion of the original ten-mile square to be “retroceded” to the state of Virginia. This remarkable development removed one-third of the capital’s land mass and created today’s oddly shaped Washington. Reasons given by the residents of Alexandria included the demand to be free of congressional scrutiny of its booming slave trade, along with a desire to regain the right to vote. At least retrocession made an impression on the Washington City Council, which soon thereafter passed a resolution calling for the development of guidelines for public improvements, along with priorities and estimated costs.⁴⁶

Some progress, at least at the planning level, was generated in other quarters. In 1830 architect Robert Mills sent Congress a report on Washington’s need for a reliable water supply for drinking, cleaning, and fire fighting—a need brought home by an 1851 fire in the Library of Congress in the Capitol. Engineer Montgomery Meigs, a captain in the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, oversaw construction of an aqueduct to supply water from Great Falls in 1853, which required planning for expanded distribution and sewerage systems. Following the establishment of a committee of distinguished residents that included Mayor Walter Lenox, banker William Wilson (W. W.) Corcoran, and Smithsonian Secretary Joseph Henry, architect Andrew Jackson Downing produced a plan for the redesign of the Mall. By the time the Civil War had worn down the city with the demands of war, Washington had created—at least on paper—a framework for modernization.⁴⁷

War Comes to Washington

The country watched with growing concern as North-South tensions escalated in 1860, and Washington, D.C., became a focal point of conflict. The election of Abraham Lincoln as president in November was widely considered a portent that war would surely come, despite Lincoln’s protestations in support of an undivided Union. During his unsuccessful bid for a U.S. Senate seat from Illinois in 1858, Lincoln had given his famous “House Divided” speech, in which he said, “I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.”⁴⁸ Lincoln steadily strengthened his central theme of preserving the Union, the core idea around which Shepherd, as a fledgling politician, would build his political platform when he entered politics. Even though Shepherd came from a slaveholding family and held conservative social views, he was enough of a practical politician to realize that Lincoln and the Republican Party were the wave of the future, and he was determined to conform sufficiently to benefit from the momentum.

On the eve of the Civil War, Washington was a slaveholding city wedged between two slaveholding states, Mary land and Virginia. A vivid portrait of the city described it as “a southern town, without the picturesqueness, but with the indolence, the disorder and the want of sanitation.”⁴⁹ The city’s water supply was augmented by wells and by springs in the hills. With only scattered sewer lines, privies were plentiful. In 1860 Washington had a population of 75,080, with 60,793 (81 percent) whites and 14,316 (19 percent) blacks, of whom 3,185 were slaves and 11,131 free.⁵⁰ The whites were mostly southern born: 57 percent had been born in the city, 13 percent in Virginia, and 18 percent in Mary land.⁵¹ An easy social alliance existed between Tidewater families and southern politicians in Washington; moreover, southern members of Congress were more likely than those from the North to bring their families to Washington, reinforcing the southern ambiance of the city.⁵² Congress had imposed a partial ban on the slave trade as part of the package of legislation making up the Compromise of 1850, but residents could still buy and sell slaves for personal use. Newspapers advertised slave traffic, and the occasional slave coffle still passed through the city.⁵³

The gloom in Washington over the worsening national political situation also affected the economy: the real estate market had virtually collapsed in the wake of Lincoln’s election as president. Many would-be sellers retained their property, fearing that they would be unable to obtain the desired price, while others traded D.C. properties for western lands. As 1861 dawned, the Evening Star reprinted an article from a Philadelphia newspaper sure to cast a pall over the expectations of the Washington business community by linking political chaos and economic failure with the threat of the physical removal of the capital: “If there is the slightest danger or disturbance at Washington, the ultimate result will be, and before any far distant day, the removal of the seat of government.” The article predicted that any disturbance of public tranquility would deal a body blow to real estate values. It further predicted that any reverse for the Union in a conflict with the South would make transfer of the capital to the safe and growing West a certainty, leaving Washington “a waste, howling wilderness.”⁵⁴ As a young businessman who would make his fortune building and outfitting houses in Washington, Shepherd would have been sensitive to anything that would have a negative impact on the local economy.

The tone of Washington society on the eve of the war was set by the larger property owners, many of whom were linked by marriage to aristocratic, slave-owning families of Mary land and Virginia. It was common for Georgetown residents to refer to themselves as Mary landers, but they were known locally as “old citizens” or “antiques,” and money alone was not sufficient to gain admission to their circle. At the national level, the male residents were primarily government officials, military officers, and businessmen. Democrats had controlled Congress for several years prior to 1860, and southern-leaning Democrats held many of the top appointive positions, along with a large percentage of the clerkships in the federal bureaus.⁵⁵ To the small, Georgetown-based clique that dominated Washington life, Shepherd would always be a parvenu seeking acceptance and respectability that they were determined not to give to a self-made, school-dropout plumber.

By the eve of the Civil War, the twenty-six-year-old Shepherd, by then a partner in the J. W. Thompson firm, was making his mark as an ambitious young member of Washington’s business community. Still a bachelor, he supported his widowed mother and siblings while living in the family home on Ninth Street. For young, patriotic men like Shepherd yet to make their mark, the political tension resulting from southern secessionism became nerve-wracking as 1861 began. Rumors of sedition in Washington became standard fare. Government clerks, often emboldened by whiskey at the Willard Hotel and elsewhere, proclaimed that Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4 would never take place.⁵⁶

Concern was widespread that the secession of two slave states—Virginia and Maryland—from the Union would make it impossible for Washington to continue as the capital of the United States. Governor Thomas Hicks of Maryland—who ultimately stood with the Union and blocked a special session of the legislature expected to vote for secession—received anonymous letters describing plans to capture Washington and convert it into the capital of the Southern Confederacy by seizing the federal buildings and archives before exacting de jure and de facto recognition from foreign governments.⁵⁷ On Christmas Day 1860 the Richmond Examiner published an editorial calling for Mary land men to join with Virginians in seizing the federal capital.⁵⁸ In response to rumors of sedition swirling around Washington, a nervous Congress convened a select committee at the end of January to investigate but found no evidence of a serious conspiracy.⁵⁹

As winter turned into spring in 1861, the lines between North and South were drawn, and the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor on April 12 marked the onset of hostilities. On April 15 President Lincoln called for seventy-five thousand volunteers to defend the Union, and Shepherd and his younger brother Thomas enlisted with the National Rifles. This volunteer Washington militia unit reflected political tensions in Washington over the future of the Union. Events earlier in the spring had revealed seditious scheming in the National Rifles, whose pro-Southern captain had molded a sympathetic unit and amassed weaponry far in excess of need. The unit was purged, and disloyal members, including the leader, dismissed, which meant that the National Rifles were under strength at the first call for volunteers on April 10.⁶⁰ By April 15, however, the unit listed seventy-five privates enrolled, plus sergeants and officers—exceeding the minimum forty per unit established by the War Department. The National Rifles claimed to be the first Washington militia to muster that day, thanks to marching double-quick to the War Department.⁶¹

The Alexander Shepherd who heeded his president’s April 15 call for volunteers was ready for personal testing. He had been shaped through years of hard, physical work and sports, as well as his own combative personality. He was still unmarried and had progressed from clerk to partner at John Thompson’s plumbing establishment. He had become active in Washington Republican Party politics on a pro-Union ticket. Shepherd’s National Rifles mustering-in card for Company A, Third Battalion, gives a snapshot of inductee number 49, who signed on as a private for a standard ninety-day enlistment: Washington-born plumber, twenty-six years of age and six feet tall, with light blue eyes, dark brown hair, and sallow complexion.⁶² Shepherd’s fellow enlistees that day were a varied lot, with a wide range of employment: clerk, draughtsman, lawyer, bank teller, law student, upholsterer, patent lawyer, pharmacist, mechanical dentist, printer, soldier, architect, tobacconist, reporter, sawyer, jeweler’s clerk, civil engineer, carpenter, editor, stenographer, student, physician, and messenger.⁶³ Among the volunteers was William G. Moore, a reporter who became Shepherd’s decades-long friend and business partner.

After initial tasks that included guard duty and seizure of a steamer suspected of sending military supplies south, the National Rifles were tested following riots in Baltimore when prosecessionist mobs attacked a Massachusetts regiment transiting the city by train to Washington on April 19.⁶⁴ Baltimore officials—ostensibly to avoid further hostile demonstrations—did not stop the mob from burning the railroad bridges linking Washington with New York and Boston. Not only was it now impossible for people to travel between Washington and the north by train; newspapers stopped, and then the telegraph. For the next five days the nation’s capital was isolated from the rest of the Union, until Mary land’s governor agreed to allow federal troops to land at Annapolis by water.⁶⁵

South of Baltimore, however, the tracks to Washington were intact, and a spur ran from Annapolis Junction to Annapolis, where the Seventh New York and Eighth Massachusetts regiments had just arrived by ship. Shepherd was part of a detachment of National Rifles volunteers who on April 23 reconnoitered the track with an engine and two cars and confirmed that sections of the spur had been torn up. At Annapolis Junction the detachment pushed through a belligerent crowd and forced the telegraph operator to communicate with Annapolis, confirming that the Seventh New York was still there. The engine and two cars backed all the way to Washington, and arrangements were made to assemble a train to bring the troops in Annapolis to Washington.

On April 25 the Shepherd brothers and forty other National Rifles soldiers volunteered to accompany the special train to get as close as possible to Annapolis and retrieve the soldiers of the Seventh New York. Approximately one thousand New York troops met the train at Annapolis Junction that morning, having marched from Annapolis but slowed in order to repair tracks torn up by hostile local elements that shadowed the soldiers along the route. After safely delivering the troops to Washington, the train, with its National Rifles guards, returned to Annapolis Junction and retrieved approximately eight hundred members of the Eighth Massachusetts Regiment. Both Shepherd brothers mounted guard overnight at Annapolis Junction, in addition to escorting the troops to Washington.⁶⁶ The city heaved a collective sigh of relief now that a large number of regular army troops had taken up residence in the city, where the Seventh New York Regiment was assigned to the House wing of the U.S. Capitol. Desks and gallery branches were allotted to the men, while the less lucky occupied corners and lobbies. Staff used the committee rooms, and the colonel occupied the Speaker’s suite.⁶⁷

As April gave way to May, life in the nation’s capital adjusted to a new reality of massive dislocation from the thousands of Union troops billeted in the city’s structures. Besides taking part in drills and parades, the young soldiers amused themselves by insulting residents and taking over many of the eating and drinking establishments for their own use. Critical to Washington’s sense of security was the political stance of Virginia, and on May 23 Virginia’s residents ratified the Virginia Convention’s April 17 vote to secede, except for the loyal counties west of the Alleghenies that would later become the free state of West Virginia.⁶⁸ Although Alexandria remained quiet, it was committed to the Confederacy: it was easy to spot a Confederate flag atop Marshall House, a local hotel, and Confederate campfires could be seen at night. Arlington Heights, on the Virginia side of the river, was within artillery range of the White House and other government buildings in Washington, while militants in Alexandria represented a potential challenge to free navigation of the Potomac River.

After the Union decision to neutralize the Virginia side of the Potomac, Washington’s militias responded to the call for volunteers, since they were obliged to serve only within the District of Columbia. The National Rifles signed on, and the Shepherd brothers were part of the group that assembled at the National Rifles armory on the second floor of Temperance Hall at Tenth and G Streets NW the evening of May 23. At about 10:00 p.m., the unit marched down Twelfth Street SW and passed Mary land Avenue SW, yards away from Shepherd’s birthplace two doors west. The troops—regulars and militia—closed the draw span of the Long Bridge (now the Fourteenth Street bridge), and soon after midnight the National Rifles, led by Captain John Smead, advanced across the bridge into Virginia. According to the National Rifles official history, the unit was the first company to march onto the “sacred soil” of Virginia.⁶⁹

Shepherd and his fellow militiamen met no armed resistance; the Confederate pickets abandoned their positions as the Union forces arrived. The National Rifles participated in patrolling, mounting guard, and guiding out-of-state regular army units before leaving a contingent of five soldiers at the Aqueduct Bridge (now the site of Key Bridge) and returning to Washington on the morning of May 24. That day, however, saw the dramatic incident at Alexandria’s Marshall House in which Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, leader of the dashing Fire Zouaves of New York, was killed by the hotel proprietor after Ellsworth had torn down the offending Confederate flag on the roof. The death of Colonel Ellsworth, an associate of President Lincoln and a colorful figure in his own right, was a shock to Washington, since the Zouaves were bivouacked in the city and Ellsworth cut a glamorous figure in local society. Funeral services in the Executive Mansion were attended by the president.⁷⁰

Civil War Politics

Against the backdrop of war, Washington politicians struggled to adjust their positions to changing realities. Party politics were in a state of flux, with all distinctions complicated by the departure of Democratic representatives and senators from the South, which created opportunities for new groups. The Republican Association of Washington had been formed under the leadership of Shepherd associate Lewis Clephane and four others.⁷¹ The organizing principle was opposition to permitting slavery in the new territories. The association was active in promoting the candidacy of the first Republican presidential candidate, John C. Frémont, in 1856, before choosing Abraham Lincoln in 1860.⁷² The Unconditional Union Party (UUP) emerged as a supporter of the war effort, but its chief, former mayor Richard Wallach, opposed general emancipation efforts.⁷³ Elsewhere, the UUP stood strongly for emancipation.⁷⁴ Among Democrats, the War Democrats came to the support of the Union, and the Peace Democrats/Union Democratic Party criticized the administration and opposed the war. The opposition was composed of those who, according to the Evening Star, “are . . . radiant with joy when news of a secesh victory reaches the city.” Its supporters denounced the Unconditional Union Party as allied with the Radical Republicans, a powerful group in the House and Senate who coalesced around opposition to slavery.⁷⁵ Radical Republicans were consistently in the forefront of legislation to advance the rights of black Americans.

Although Shepherd was faithful to his military obligations, he was also in the process of launching a political career in Washington by seeking and winning a seat on the Fifty-Ninth Washington City Common Council on June 4 on the Unconditional Union ticket.⁷⁶ Shepherd was a latecomer in deciding to run for the council, and the UUP organizers were late in adding him to their ticket, since it was not until May 31—only four days before the election—that a newspaper announcement for the Unconditional Union ticket included Shepherd as a candidate for a Ward 3 Common Council seat.⁷⁷ No doubt Shepherd had commended himself to local political power brokers through his gregariousness and military service. Shepherd’s commitment to the Unconditional Union ticket was to launch him as a lifelong Republican, a party to which he gave great energy and from which he was to benefit personally and politically. Shepherd was new to politics, but from his vantage point at the J. W. Thompson plumbing firm, he was in contact with a wide swath of Washingtonians, since almost everyone needed home improvements and plumbing. All the Unconditional Union candidates for City Council were elected, including A. C. Richards, a Shepherd ally and later the city’s chief of police, to the Board of Aldermen (the upper house) and Shepherd to the Common Council (the lower house). Newspaper accounts of the election noted that it was a quiet one and that all voters had free access to the polls, a polite way of confirming that less than 50 percent of eligible voters went to the polls.⁷⁸

Still on active military duty, Shepherd attended the organizing session of the Fifty-Ninth City Council on June 10 and was appointed to a committee to certify election results for citywide officials.⁷⁹ At the next weekly meeting of the Common Council, Shepherd offered a resolution to instruct the Council’s Ways and Means Committee to reduce expenses of the City Corporation and fix the local tax rate not to exceed fifty cents.⁸⁰ During the month of June Shepherd continued to carry out National Rifles duties in the Washington area, having made arrangements to remain in Washington when the majority of the unit was sent to Rockville, Mary land. Upon completion of the ninety-day term of enlistment, Shepherd mustered out on July 15.⁸¹

Shepherd’s military service in the Civil War was over. When a drawing was held in August 1863 to determine which Washingtonians would be drafted, 607 names were drawn for the draft out of 2,035 eligible men in Shepherd’s Ward 3. Both Alexander and Thomas Shepherd were selected despite prior service. Thomas later reported that he paid $800 for a substitute for himself and his brother.⁸² Neither man was required to serve again.

Church Issues

The Shepherd and Robey families had been faithful churchgoers in Charles County and in Washington. By nature drawn to established social practice, Shepherd developed a close relationship with his father’s old church, Fourth Presbyterian, whose pastor, Rev. John Smith, had recommended him for a job in John Thompson’s plumbing firm. However, Shepherd left the church due to a dispute over whether Pastor Smith had broken church rules by authorizing church renovations without consulting the building committee. The trustees supplied a report documenting affairs during their tenure and submitted their resignations at a November 1860 church meeting, charging that they had not been supported and that their orders had been disputed and ignored. During a heated discussion, Shepherd weighed in, defending Pastor Smith’s right to be heard and objecting to interruptions by other members. The meeting chairman supported Shepherd, who sarcastically dismissed a reference by one speaker to the church’s book of government, saying there might be difficulty in finding it.⁸³ The incident in all likelihood left Shepherd feeling that while he had done the right thing in defending Pastor Smith, he had generated enough hard feelings that he would no longer feel at home at Fourth Presbyterian (which was directly across the street from his mother’s home). Shepherd’s defense of the pastor for having taken decisions without consulting the church fathers was a harbinger of charges that would be leveled against Shepherd as chairman of the Board of Trade.

The row caused Shepherd to decamp to the newly formed New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, which he attended for a time before asking its rector, Dr. Phineas D. Gurley, to officiate at his wedding and formally joining the church in the spring of 1862. In January 1862 Shepherd married Mary Grice Young, whom he knew from Fourth Presbyterian Church, where her father, William Probey Young, was an elder. Dr. Gurley performed the wedding ceremony at the Young family home on Ninth Street NW.⁸⁴ Like his father before him, Shepherd gained social standing from his marriage, since the Youngs were well known in the community, and William Young was a decorated veteran of the War of 1812. As noted earlier, the Grice side of the family came from Philadelphia, where they had settled in the eighteenth century and fought in the War of the American Revolution.

Shepherd’s relationship with Dr. Gurley and New York Avenue Presbyterian Church provides possible insights into Shepherd’s religious as well as social views. New York Avenue was an “Old School” congregation, from the 1837 split in the national Presbyterian Church over theological and organizational issues. Both traditions were grounded in the Bible, but the Old School favored a rational doctrinal approach, whereas the “New School” was more open to religious experience expressed in the revivalism of the Second Great Awakening then sweeping the country. The New School was also committed to political reform, especially antislavery, while the Old School held that the church should not involve itself in political questions. Gurley stood squarely in the Old School Presbyterian understanding of Reformed theology.⁸⁵ A theologian and student of Washington Presbyterianism has observed that slavery was the hidden agenda for the split in the Washington Presbyterian churches, although it was not usually discussed in those terms.⁸⁶

Abolitionist sentiment was widespread among New School Presbyterians, while Old School Presbyterians ranged from southern defenders of slavery to northerners who deplored slavery but cautioned against the social and political disruption that abolition would bring. Many Old School churchgoers were not proslavery or politically reactionary, although they were in general more socially conservative than New Schoolers. Some Old School Presbyterians were supporters of the American Colonization Society, whose platform was transportation of freed slaves to Liberia and their colonization there. Dr. Gurley was a leading figure in the society and hosted its national meetings in 1861 and 1864. Gurley was also a strong Unionist who was considered a reconciling voice toward the South, paralleling the views of President Lincoln, who attended but was not a member of the church.⁸⁷

Besides the row over the pastor’s actions at Fourth Presbyterian, Shepherd’s move from a New School to an Old School Presbyterian church may have been motivated by a desire to find a more socially conservative institution. Making the change had required leaving the long-standing church of his father, his own youth, his future wife and in-laws, and his siblings; only his future wife transferred with him. Gurley’s New York Avenue Church not only appealed to Shepherd’s conservative nature; Dr. Gurley also had the kind of active, virile personality to which Shepherd was drawn.

In the midst of the Civil War, young Alexander Shepherd was ready to take his place in the uncertain worlds of Washington business, politics, and society. An ambitious and rising businessman, he had developed a network of friends and associates not only in business, but in a variety of social, civic, and political organizations. His service in the National Rifles and his election to the Common Council demonstrated his commitment to the local and the national government. In spite of a limited education, he had demonstrated an early promise of high achievement, and the roads he had chosen lay open ahead of him.

Notes

¹ Will of Thomas L. Shepherd, Charles County, Md., HBBH 313, August Term 1816, pp. 475–78; Estate of Thomas Shepherd, April Term 1817, Mary land Hall of Records, pp. 312–14; Estate of Thomas Shepherd, Accounts and Inventories, Thomas Shepherd, 1817, Charles County (Md.) Court house, pp. 312–14.

²Allan Kulikoff, Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680–1800 (Chapel Hill, 1986), p. 77.

³F. Edward Wright, Mary land Militia: War of 1812, 7 vols. (Silver Spring, Md., 1979–86), 5:37.

⁴Photocopy of typescript and unsigned note to Grant Shepherd (son of Alexander Shepherd), both apparently written by his mother, Mary Grice Shepherd, n.d., courtesy of Shepherd grand daughter Mary Wagner Woods.

⁵Townley Robey Inventory, Inventories 1844–1846, Townley Robey Will, December Term 1844, Charles County (Md.) Court house.

⁶National Intelligencer (Washington, D.C.), Sept. 25, 1837.

⁷U.S. Census, 1840 Population Schedules, District of Columbia, microfilm roll 11, microcopy T-5, p. 33, Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, Washington, D.C.; Washington, D.C., Recorder of Deeds, Liber WB, folio no. 88/1841. William Tindall, long-time aide to Alexander Robey Shepherd, wrote that Shepherd’s father manumitted “a number of slaves” before the Civil War for whom he provided “in a large measure, as they resorted to him in every exigency of privation or disaster and were never refused” (William Tindall, “A Sketch of Alexander Robey Shepherd,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society 14 [1911]:50).

⁸Last Will and Testament, Alexander Shepherd, Office of Register of Wills, 1845, Probate Clerk’s Office, Washington, D.C.

⁹National Intelligencer, July 15, 1845; for information on Shepherd’s purchase of the farm in Washington County and subsequent residence there, see Robert Isherwood to Alexander Shepherd, Dec. 20, 1842, Washington, D.C. Recorder of Deeds, Liber WB, Folio #99/1843); Robert Tweedy to Alexander Shepherd, Jan. 16, 1844, D.C. Recorder of Deeds, Liber WB, Folio #107/1844.

¹⁰ Will of Alexander Shepherd, dated Apr. 28, 1845, D.C. Recorder of Wills, Washington, D.C., Office of the Probate Clerk; the estimated current value of the advance to Alexander is from measuringworth.com, a nonprofit website providing U.S. currency equivalents from 1776 to the present.

¹¹National Intelligencer, June 6, 1845.

¹²U.S. Census, 1820, District of Columbia, microcopy no. 33, reel 5, Washingtoniana Room, Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, Washington, D.C.

¹³Robert Harrison, Washington during Civil War and Reconstruction: Race and Radicalism (Cambridge, 2011), p. 2.

¹⁴Ibid.

¹⁵Kenneth Bowling, The Creation of Washington, D.C.: The Idea and Location of the American Capital (Fairfax, Va., 1991), pp. 127–60.

¹⁶Harrison, Washington during Civil War and Reconstruction, p. 3; Scott W. Berg, Grand Avenues: The Story of the French Visionary Who Designed Washington, D. C. (New York, 2007), pp. 78–80.

¹⁷Berg, Grand Avenues, pp. 97–100.

¹⁸Bowling, Creation of Washington, D.C., p. 12.

¹⁹Tindall, “A Sketch of Alexander Robey Shepherd, pp. 49–50.

²⁰This information is from a biographical fragment from Mary Grice Shepherd, narrated in Mexico in the 1880s and dictated to Fred Martin, based on information provided by Shepherd. Mrs. Shepherd noted, “In earlier years I had driven past the home which Mr. Shepherd pointed out as his birthplace, a statement his mother confirmed” (copy courtesy of Shepherd grand daughter Mary Wagner Woods). Identifying the location of Shepherd’s birthplace has generated controversy, which is all the more surprising since it was misidentified by no less an authority than Dr. William Tindall, author of A Standard History of the City of Washington (Knoxville, Tenn., 1914) and “A Sketch of Alexander Robey Shepherd,” as well as personal secretary to Governor Shepherd and his successors. Tindall named another birth location in southwest Washington, for which there is no land deed showing it was owned by Shepherd’s father. Much later, Tindall identified his source for the incorrect birthplace address as Thomas Shepherd, Alexander Shepherd’s somewhat unreliable younger brother (Evening Star [Washington, D.C.], May 8, 1919).

²¹Tindall, “Sketch of Alexander Robey Shepherd,” p. 50.

²²Ibid.

²³Typescript account written in Mexico in the 1880s by a family member, possibly Mary Grice Shepherd, pp. 1 and 50, copy given to the author by Shepherd great-grandson W. Sinkler Manning Jr. (hereafter Mexico Typescript).

²⁴Although the Mexico Typescript says only that the widow Shepherd supported the family by her own exertions, the 1850 city directory (Edward Waite, The Washington Directory and Congressional and Executive Register for 1850 [Washington, D.C., 1850]) cites a boarding house operated by a Mrs. Shepherd at a slightly different address on Ninth Street, but no doubt refers to the same person. A new Washington quadrant and house-numbering policy in 1869 dramatically altered house numbers.

²⁵Mexico Typescript, p. 1.

²⁶Tindall, Standard History of the City of Washington, p. 262.

²⁷“Sessions Book, Fourth Presbyterian Church, Washington, D.C., First Book, Session 1828–1878,” National Presbyterian Church, Washington, D.C.

²⁸George W. Evans, The Master Mind and Rebuilder of the Nation’s Capital: A Paper Read before the Society of Natives of the District of Columbia, October 20th, 1922 (Washington, D.C., 1922), p. 6.

²⁹Mexico Typescript, p. 1.

³⁰Tindall, “Sketch of Alexander Robey Shepherd,” p. 66.

³¹William F. Mattingly, “The Unveiling of a Statue to the Memory of Alexander R. Shepherd in front of the District Building, Washington, D.C., May 3, 1909,” pp. 24–25, Kiplinger Research Library, Historical Society of Washington, Washington, D.C.

³²Tindall, “Sketch of Alexander Robey Shepherd,” p. 62.

³³Evening Star, May 16, 1857; and Walter Clephane, “Lewis Clephane: A Pioneer Washington Republican,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society 21 (1918):276.

³⁴Evening Star, July 3, 1885. The article went on to say that silting up of the Potomac River flats created a major problem for reaching deep water. The onset of the Civil War saw the boat club forgotten, and members fought for one side or the other.

³⁵Carl Abbott, “National Capitals in a Networked World,” in Berlin-Washington, 1800–2000: Capital Cities, Cultural Representation, and National Identities, ed. Andreas Daum and Christof Mauch (Cambridge, 2005), p. 112.

³⁶Bowling, Creation of Washington, D.C., p. 12.

³⁷Harrison, Washington during Civil War and Reconstruction, pp. 4–6.

³⁸Kenneth Bowling, “Siting Federal Capitals,” in Daum and Mauch, Berlin-Washington, 1800–2000, pp. 37–38.

³⁹The Grices were from Philadelphia and the Youngs were from Portsmouth, Virginia; ancestors from both families had served with distinction in America’s early wars.

⁴⁰Alan Lessoff, The Nation and Its City: Politics, “Corruption,” and Progress in Washington, D.C., 1861–1902 (Baltimore, 1994), p. 5.

⁴¹Howard Gillette, Between Justice and Beauty: Race, Planning, and the Failure of Urban Policy in Washington, D.C. (Baltimore, 1995), p. 18.

⁴²Report [with Senate Bill no. 136], 23rd Cong., 2nd sess., 1835, S. Rep. 97, Feb. 2, 1835, reprinted in full in Board of Public Works 1872 Annual Report (Washington, D.C., 1872), pp. 25–32.

⁴³Ibid., p. 26.

⁴⁴Charles Dickens, American Notes for General Circulation, 2 vols. (London, 1842), 1:281–82.

⁴⁵Walter Erhart, “Written Capitals and Capital Topography,” Daum and Mauch, Berlin-Washington, 1800–2000, pp. 57–58.

⁴⁶Gillette, Between Justice and Beauty, pp. 22–23.

⁴⁷Ibid., pp. 25–26.

⁴⁸In Ronald C. White Jr., A. Lincoln: A Biography (New York, 2009), p. 251.

⁴⁹Margaret Leech, Reveille in Washington, 1860–1865 (New York, 1941), pp. 9–10.

⁵⁰Lessoff, The Nation and Its City, p. 18.

⁵¹U.S. Census, 1860: Recapitulation of the Tables of Population, Nativity, and Occupation (Washington, D.C., 1864), pp. 616–19.

⁵²Carl Abbott, Political Terrain: Washington, D. C., from Tidewater Town to Global Metropolis (Chapel Hill, 1999), pp. 64–65.

⁵³Ibid., p. 11.

⁵⁴Philadelphia Ledger, Dec. 29, 1860, quoted in Evening Star, Jan. 2, 1861.

⁵⁵James Whyte, The Uncivil War: Washington during the Reconstruction, 1865–1878 (New York, 1958), p. 104.

⁵⁶Leech, Reveille in Washington, p. 4.

⁵⁷Evening Star, Jan. 1, 1861.

⁵⁸Leech, Reveille in Washington, p. 23.

⁵⁹House Select Committee of Five, Alleged Hostile Organization against the Government within the District of Columbia, 36th Cong., 2nd sess., Feb. 14, 1861, H. Rep. 79.

⁶⁰War History of the National Rifles, Company A, Third Battalion, District of Columbia Volunteers, of 1861 (Wilmington, Del., 1887), p. 11.

⁶¹Ibid., p. 17.

⁶²Third Battalion, D.C. Militia, “Description and Morning Report,” vol. 1, Record Group 94, National Archives and Records Group, Washington, D.C. (hereafter NARA).

⁶³Ibid.

⁶⁴War History of the National Rifles, pp. 17–18, 24.

⁶⁵Constance McLaughlin Green, Washington, vol. 1, Village and Capital 1800–1878 (Prince ton, N.J., 1962), p. 241.

⁶⁶Evening Star, Apr. 25, 1861; War History of the National Rifles, pp. 20–22; an interesting sidelight to the troop retrieval story is that one of the Pennsylvania Railroad employees detailed by the railroad’s vice president, Thomas Scott, to assist was Andrew Carnegie, “a dapper little flaxen-haired Scotchman” who was Scott’s private secretary and personal telegrapher (Leech, Reveille in Washington, p. 67).

⁶⁷Leech, Reveille in Washington, p. 67.

⁶⁸Ibid., pp. 79–80.

⁶⁹War History of the National Rifles, pp. 26–27; Evening Star, May 24, 1861. Shepherd’s Civil War service on the Virginia side of the Potomac River was attested by a military pass dated June 8 from Head Quarters, Military Dept. of Washington, authorizing him to pass over the bridges within the lines. Shepherd signed his name beneath the text on the back of the pass (copy courtesy of Shepherd grand daughter Mary Wagner Woods).

⁷⁰Leech, Reveille in Washington, pp. 80–81; Evening Star, May 24, 1861; War History of the National Rifles, p. 31.

⁷¹Clephane, “Lewis Clephane,” pp. 263–77.

⁷²Bryan, History of the National Capital, 2:392–93.

⁷³Kenneth J. Winkle, Lincoln’s Citadel: The Civil War in Washington, D. C. (New York, 2013), p. 204.

⁷⁴Salmon P. Chase, Going Home to Vote: Au then tic Speeches of S. P. Chase (Washington, D.C., 1863), pp. 27–28.

⁷⁵Leech, Reveille in Washington, pp. 242–43; Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution 1863–1877 (New York, 1988), pp. 228–29.

⁷⁶Evening Star, June 4, 1861.

⁷⁷Ibid., May 31, 1861.

⁷⁸Ibid., June 4, 1861.

⁷⁹Ibid., June 10, 1861.

⁸⁰Ibid., June 17, 1861. Considering Shepherd’s later massive expenditures, including taxing Washington residents for public improvements, his attention to tax reduction in his initial term on the Common Council is noteworthy.

⁸¹War History of the National Rifles, pp. 36–37; Third Battalion, D.C. Militia, “Description and Morning Report,” vol. 1, RG 94, NARA.

⁸²Certificate no. 893.510, Civil War and Later Survivors’ Records, RG 15, NARA. Since commutation via cash payment cost $300, not the $400 recollected by Thomas Shepherd fifty years later, his statement about paying for “both” could be taken to mean that he paid for substitutes for himself and for his brother, Alexander. Why the less well-off brother would have paid for the wealthier one is unknown, but it is possible that Alexander wished not to be on the record as having paid for a substitute to avoid further military service.

⁸³Evening Star, Nov. 11, 1860.

⁸⁴“Sessions Book, Fourth Presbyterian Church, Washington, D.C., First Book, Session 1828–1878.” Shepherd Family Bible, courtesy of Shepherd great-grand daughter Alexandra Wyatt-Brown Malick; photocopy of marriage certificate courtesy of Shepherd granddaughter Mary Wagner Woods.

⁸⁵White, A. Lincoln, pp. 403–4; Mitchell Snay, Gospel of Disunion: Religion and Separatism in the Antebellum South (Chapel Hill, 1997), is an excellent source for understanding the break between the two wings of the Presbyterian Church.

⁸⁶Dewey D. Wallace, George Washington University, conversation with the author, Mar. 3, 2006.

⁸⁷Dewey D. Wallace, “The New York Avenue Presbyterian Church: Context and Overview,” unpublished draft, 2006, pp. 22–23.