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.
Chapter Two
“The Great Work of Improving and Beautifying Our Beloved City”
First Steps in Business and Political Leadership, 1862–1865
BY 1862, TWENTY-SEVEN-YEAR-OLD Shepherd—married, a Union war veteran, and a partner in the plumbing firm of John W. Thompson—had entered the first phase of his political life in Washington. He quickly demonstrated leadership skills and began to build the case for political themes he would eventually see through to completion, although with consequences he had not imagined, for both himself and the city.
Civil War Washington was not much to look at. Almost every street in use was dirt and would remain so for several more years. Washington’s streets, such as they were, took an endless beating during the war from the stream of horses, wagons, carts, and soldiers, becoming a quagmire in winter and a dustbowl in summer. The capital’s public buildings were set amid open spaces or surrounded by unappealing wooden structures. The Washington Monument, not completed until 1884, was an ugly stump. The war overwhelmed Washington in every way. Aside from the constant threat of Confederate attack, the war brought tens of thousands of Union soldiers, healthy and wounded, into the city. The Capitol and the Patent Office became temporary barracks, with soldiers bunking in the Capitol rotunda and between Patent Office glass cases filled with inventions. The Capitol basement briefly became a bakery. Hospitals, a vital element in Union hopes of healing and returning soldiers to the front, sprang up everywhere, including in private homes and wooden structures erected for the purpose. Sixty-eight forts were built around the city’s perimeter to defend against Confederate attack, although only one, Fort Stevens, was needed to resist a July 1864 assault. The Civil War was a horse war, and thousands of horses had to be corralled, fed, and paraded in the city. Trees were a major casualty: the need for firewood for cooking was insatiable, forests were replaced by military camps, and the forts needed clear sight lines for their weapons.
After the departure of the southern Democratic members of Congress at the outbreak
