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
