if at any time they were neglected or abused.21 The 1820 charter of Washington City made the City Corporation responsible for urban improvement, including streets, but from the outset the national government showed little interest in beautifying its creation. For many years the only aesthetic embellishment was Thomas Jefferson’s planting of four rows of poplar trees on Pennsylvania Avenue, in imitation of the famous Unter den Linden in Berlin.22
Shepherd was not alone in grasping the magnitude of the challenge facing Washington if it was to overcome its status as a stepchild of the national government, but he developed a special ability to convert anger and frustration into concrete results through coalition building. Shepherd realized that Washington’s residents were simply unable to underwrite the physical development expected of the capital of a fast-growing nation without congressional support and funding. He would therefore have to convince Congress that its financial support for the improvement of the nation’s capital was in its own best interest.
Shepherd made use of his election speech as president of the Sixtieth Common Council in 1862 to identify themes to which he would return time and again: (1) supporting Unconditional Union (UU), the bedrock of his views; (2) downplaying what he called “unnecessary agitation” and division; (3) maintaining and developing Washington’s urban infrastructure; and, most important, (4) obtaining a commitment from Congress to participate fully in the city’s development. He exhorted his listeners, “Let us in all things uphold our government and by our acts and discussions secure the aid of our national legislature in the great work of improving and beautifying our beloved city.”23
Building Blocks for Consolidation
The first step in Shepherd’s long campaign to create a new Washington was revision of the city charter to give the City Council authority to generate tax revenues adequate to pay for urban improvements. An 1862 joint council resolution calling for Congress to revise the Washington City charter led with the statement that the current charter limited the powers of the corporation to such an extent that carrying out substantial improvements was impossible. Shepherd explained his resolution in debate, saying that the corporation needed the power to provide for improvements, including sewerage, river dredging, a new city asylum for the poor, and, above all, paving of the streets. In order to determine where matters stood legally, the City Council approved Shepherd’s proposal for a digest and codification of corporation laws, which had become “incorrect and faulty” as a result of numerous amendments.24 As part of his campaign to create greater awareness of Washington history, Shepherd also called for purchasing an original map of the District of Columbia and requested that General Montgomery Meigs donate photos of the Washington Aqueduct, which Meigs had designed and built in the 1850s to bring an adequate water supply to Washington from farther up the Potomac River.25
In 1863, his final year on the Common Council, Shepherd’s principal legislative initiative remained the reform of the Washington City charter. For reasons that are unclear, Shepherd was absent from most of the council meetings in the summer and early fall of that year. He may have become disenchanted with the influence of the Common Council; he could also have been focusing more on building what was becoming a very successful plumbing and gas-fitting business. He had reason to devote more time and energy to his business dealings.
During the first half of 1864 Shepherd undertook a “private war” with Joseph F. Brown, who ran the Washington Gas Light Company and represented Shepherd’s Ward 3 constituency on the Board of Aldermen. The controversy was a combination of personalities, business, and politics. Shepherd took aim at the company’s pricing policies and supported a proposed bill in the Common Council to create a charter for a new gas company.26 Throughout the spring Shepherd and Brown swapped heated exchanges in the press. Shepherd challenged the quality of the gas company’s work, and Brown countered with allegations about J. W. Thompson’s gas lines. It was clear that each man’s personal integrity was on the line. In a letter to the Evening Star, Shepherd accused Brown of slandering the Thompson firm in order to bring in more business for Brown’s newly launched plumbing establishment, adding that his own antagonism toward the gas company was due to his opposition to all monopolies that “oppress” the people.27 Although the spat was officially resolved at a meeting arranged by friends, it resurfaced in a bitter dispute over which man should be the official candidate to represent Ward 3 in the June election for alderman. Shepherd stepped down as president of the Sixty-First Common Council (1863–64) in June 1864 in order to run for Brown’s Ward 3 Board of Aldermen seat. After a series of no-holds-barred public exchanges, Brown defeated Shepherd by a vote of 483 to 395.28 After the legislative defeat, Shepherd may have decided that his bid to move to the higher legislative chamber was too ambitious, and he took the opportunity to shift his focus to building his fortune and laying the groundwork for the grand plans that were to be unveiled a few years later.
In 1864 Shepherd was twenty-nine years old and the de facto head of the J. W. Thompson plumbing establishment, although the original name remained in use until Shepherd purchased the firm the next year. Even during the dark days of the war, Shepherd and his wife quickly established a lively social presence, making their home a focal point for merrymaking and building political relationships. At their Tenth Street residence they hosted events that were to fill the social pages of Washington newspapers for years to come. The Shepherds loved to show off their means through elaborate and expensive entertainments. A typical party in February 1864 was described in the Evening Star as among the most agreeable parties of a season distinguished for the number and brilliancy of such affairs.29
Shepherd was also becoming a leader in church affairs at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church. He was appointed chairman of the church’s Northern Presbyterian Mission, which was successful at raising money, purchasing land, and establishing a chapel just north of Boundary Street (now Florida Avenue).30 Shepherd’s public generosity was expressed in his gift of a white marble pulpit for the Metropolitan Presbyterian Church on Capitol Hill.31 The church had just completed construction of a major edifice, and President Ulysses S. Grant would attend the dedication.32 Shepherd was becoming astute in linking charitable contributions with high-visibility political situations.
Shepherd was also in the process of launching an investment initiative in local street railroads. Among the first was the Metropolitan Railroad, which was planned as a double track from near the Capitol, along D Street to Fifteenth Street NW, and a single or double track back along New York Avenue to Ninth Street, then south to the Washington Canal. Following the railroad’s incorporation by Congress, a July meeting of shareholders elected seven directors: Shepherd and six friends and business associates who would remain in his inner circle for years to come.33
Two weeks after Shepherd lost his bid for the Ward 3 alderman seat in June 1864, his first son, also named Alexander, died at the age of six months, the first of three Shepherd children to die in infancy. Shepherd purchased a plot of ground in Oak Hill Cemetery in Georgetown, a favorite project of banker and philanthropist William Wilson Corcoran. Eventually the plot would hold the graves of several members of Shepherd’s immediate family, although he and his wife are buried in a granite mausoleum in Rock Creek Cemetery across town. Following the death of his son, Shepherd, his wife, and his brother Tom joined his sister-in-law Susan Young and other members of the Young family on a vacation in New Eng land, visiting the White Mountains of New Hampshire and New York’s Niagara Falls and Saratoga, among other stops, before returning through New York City and Philadelphia. The change of scenery appeared to do Alexander and Mary good, although Mary said pointedly in one letter home, “Yankee land is horrid.”34 One of Shepherd’s few surviving personal letters from the vacation is worth quoting because of the unusual glimpse it gives into his spirituality. Writing to his mother from Niagara Falls, he spoke at length of the moving nature of the experience, demonstrating a naïve and unquestioning acceptance of the divine:
One has only to view such grand proofs of old dame nature to feel what a terribly small and despicable thing man is. What a tiny atom in the great work of creation and what a kind and merciful being Our God is in putting in man that spirit from on high which makes him the superior of all other created beings. I assure you that I have never heard a sermon which so inculcated humility and thrilled