Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,420

This is the grave of George Shepley.

Born in Saco, Maine in 1819, Shepley grew up well off and went to Harvard, then transferring to Dartmouth, where he graduated in 1837. For the next couple of decades, he lived a fairly unremarkable, albeit successful, life. He passed the bar in 1839 and entered into private practice in Bangor. He maintained this until the start of the Civil War. He did take some time to be U.S. Attorney for the District of Maine on two different occasions, from 1848-49 and then from 1853-61.

When the South committed treason in defense of slavery, Shepley was in his early 40s. He could have avoided the war pretty easily. But a committed unionist and long time supporter of Stephen Douglas he was disgusted by the South (even if he didn’t like Lincoln one bit) and wanted to help defeat it and save the nation, if not free the slaves per se. He received a commission as colonel of the 12th Maine Infantry in November 1861 and was sent to New Orleans as part of the force conquering and then occupying the gateway to the Mississippi River, an early Union victory that already made southern success a shaky proposition since it couldn’t get most of its goods in the western part of the region to market. He was a buddy of Benjamin Butler, which is basically why the 12th Maine was there. Butler wanted to fight with his friend. Due to his connections, he quickly received a promotion to acting brigadier general and then to full brigadier general. He was in Louisiana for most of the rest of the war. At first, much of his work was as a buffer between Butler and everyone else. Butler was not a good general in terms of fighting, but he was very good at understanding the stakes at play here, which even Lincoln struggled with early on. Maybe it was because Butler, as a John C. Breckinridge supporter in 1860, knew of what he spoke. In any case, everyone hated Butler for aggressively prosecuting the war in New Orleans, including foreign diplomats, and a lot of Shepley’s duties was running interference with the diplomats and calming their concerns.

Butler didn’t stay in New Orleans for too long, but Shepley was there to oversee the American occupation. He was by no means an exceptional general or even a particularly good administrator. By most accounts, he was just sort of there, competent enough in a world of complete incompetents (really, it’s incredible the North could win the war given the level of utter incompetence everywhere in the government and military; luckily the South was also filled with massive incompetence in governance) that he could stick around and be useful enough, Shepley was named military governor of New Orleans in May 1862 and then in July was named military governor of Louisiana. He was much less controversial in this role than Butler, largely because he just didn’t do all that much. Really, Louisiana was Nathaniel Banks’ show after Butler and Shepley was decidedly subordinate. In March 1864, after the Union occupied parishes of southeastern Louisiana held elections to select a governor acceptable to the Union, he was transferred to Virginia, where mostly he was chief of staff for the XXV Corps, part of the Army of the James. After Richmond fell, Shepley was named military governor immediately, since he knew how to do it. He only stuck it out two more months though. He wanted to go back to his law practice, so he resigned his commission.

Shepley got paid off by the Grant administration for his service with a nomination to serve on the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in 1869. He was easily confirmed and held that until his death in 1878. I don’t see that he particularly did much of interest in that role, but then the appeals courts were both more daily important and less nationally important back then than they are today. I assume that Shepley was a Republican by this time, but given how disinterested presidents have been in politicizing the courts until very recently, who knows.

George Shepley is buried in Evergreen Cemetery, Portland, Maine.

If you would like this series to visit other people involved in the Civil War governance of Louisiana, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Nathaniel Banks is in Waltham, Massachusetts and Benjamin Flanders, a native New Hampshire person who would represent a unionist New Orleans in Congress in 1862 and 1863, is in New Orleans. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.