Alexander Robey Shepherd. John P. Richardson

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