If you are familiar with Francis Trevelyan Miller’s Photographic History of
the Civil War, you’re aware that wartime photographs were not published until
shortly before 1911, when that monumental 10-volume work came out.
That explains why, when in the mid-1880s Richard Watson Gilder and Clarence
Clough Buel conceived a multipart series on the war for Century Magazine,
they turned to renowned illustrators such as Edwin Forbes, Theodore Davis, the
Waud brothers…
…and William L. Sheppard.
Born in Richmond in 1833, Sheppard joined the Richmond Howitzers and rose to
lieutenant. After the war he resumed his art career, drawing for Harper’s
Weekly, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated, and other magazines.
Among other works, his drawings are found in James Longstreet’s From Manassas
to Appomattox (1896), Joseph Derry’s Story of the Confederate States
(1895), and Carlton McCarthy’s Detailed Minutiae of Soldier Life in the Army
of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 (1882).
Most of us, however, know Sheppard’s work from Battles and Leaders— more
than a dozen drawings.
“It is probably safe to say, there is no one who studies the American Civil
War who has not seen the initials ‘W.L.S.,’” wrote Ulrich Troubetzoy in an
appreciation that appeared in the December 1962 issue of Civil War Times
Illustrated.
Sheppard was also a watercolorist. Iconic images depict a Confederate
infantryman, cavalryman, and artilleryman, as Sheppard remembered them through
the years. (Note that many of Sheppard’s Rebels sport goatees, which was the
hirsute adornment the artist himself adopted postwar.)
Other watercolors are today to be seen in Richmond’s American Civil War
Museum, among them: “Opening Spring Campaign in Valley of Virginia”;
“Newspapers in the Trenches ’64”; and “Company Q. Stragglers.” The Virginia
Museum of History and Culture, also in Richmond, holds a unique collection of
Sheppard illustrated cartes-de-visite.
Sheppard made Richmond his home after the war. He died in 1912 and is buried
in Hollywood Cemetery.
Among his most noted achievements was his design for the oft-pictured statue
to the Richmond Howitzers that was cast by Caspar Buberl. It stood at Park
Avenue and Harrison Street in the Virginia capital until torn down during
citywide protests in 2020.
It may be gone, but as Ms. Troubetzoy wrote decades ago, “W.L.S.” will be
initials on illustrations that Civil War enthusiasts will be recognizing for
years more to come.
After General Robert E. Lee met Union Lt. Gen.
Ulysses S. Grant in Wilmer McLean’s parlor to surrender the Army of Northern
Virginia at Appomattox, word quickly spread through the Confederate ranks. Lee
was met with an emotional reunion with his men when he returned to the lines
afterward. “General,” some men cried, “are we surrendered?” Sheppard recorded
Lee’s return in an on-the-spot sketch from which this Century Magazine
engraving was made. It was later included in the Battles and Leaders of the
Civil War series. 
Sheppard’s “Counting the Scars in
the Colors” ran in Battles and Leaders alongside a personal account of the
first day of the Battle of Gettysburg by E.P. Halsted, Brevet Major and
Assistant Adjutant General of the U.S. Army of Volunteers. “The advantages of
position were, perhaps, favorable to us, but in numbers the enemy was vastly
superior,” Halsted recalled. 
When cheering erupted
in one of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia camps, soldiers quipped that it must
be “Old Jack” (i.e., Stonewall Jackson) or a rabbit. Here, in Sheppard’s “A
Rabbit in a Confederate Camp,” starving Confederates chase down a hare for
food. Sheppard’s drawings helped illustrate not just battle lines and action,
but the everyday realities of soldiers in camp. 
Sheppard’s illustrations were
also printed on cartes-de-visite and sold in sets of 10, each card with a
different scene from the war. This one depicts Confederates in camp in 1861
enjoying the company of guests and a fine meal served by an African American.
The title was “Good Times 1861,” noting that the spoils didn’t last.
“Distributing Tracts in the Trenches” appeared in
Joseph T. Derry’s Story of the Confederate States. Its distinctly pro-Southern
perspective is shown by such statements as Derry’s claim that “the Confederate
soldiers….fought only for home and loved ones and the liberty of the South.”
“The 29th Pennsylvania Forming Line of Battle on
Culp’s Hill at 10 a.m., July 3” ran in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War,
accompanying Union Brig. Gen. Henry Hunt’s article, “The Third Day at
Gettysburg.” During the Battle of Gettysburg, the 29th lost 14 killed and 3
mortally wounded, including Sgt. Maj. Charles H. Letford. Wounded by a shell
in the abdomen, he died July 3. 
Stonewall Jackson’s
renowned flank march during the May 1863 Battle of Chancellorsville allowed
Southern troops to storm and overwhelm Maj. Gen. O.O. Howard’s 11th Corps.
Sheppard catches the moment of surprise in “The Confederates Charging Howard’s
Breastworks” which ran in the Battles and Leaders of the Civil War series.
In June 1864, during the Atlanta Campaign, the
armies of Generals Sherman and Johnston hunkered in trenches near Kennesaw
Mountain amid skirmishing and cannonading. When a Northern shell landed in a
Confederate trench, Sergeant Isaac Collier of the 5th Georgia picked up the
smoking shell and threw it out of the ditch. The tale of Collier’s bravery
made it into Southern newspapers and the postwar literature, inspiring this
Sheppard drawing. “Last Shot. Sailor’s Creek” appeared in Carlton
McCarthy’s Detailed Minutiae of Soldier Life in the Army of Northern Virginia.
During the war, McCarthy (1847-1936) served in the Richmond Howitzers. In the
1870s, he wrote sketches of soldier life for the Southern Historical Society
Papers, a monthly magazine published in Richmond. From them he assembled
Detailed Minutiae, which appeared in 1882. It carries 29 images, all by
Sheppard. 
Confederates
abandoned Richmond on April 2, 1865. Two days later, Lincoln traveled up the
James River by steamer and landed ashore. Riding into the city, the president
was cheered by citizens—mostly newly freed slaves, as shown here in Sheppard’s
“President Lincoln Leaving the Davis Mansion.” This illustration also ran in
the Battles and Leaders series.
This article first appeared in America’s Civil War magazine
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Stephen Davis, an ACW Advisory Board member, writes from Cumming, Ga. He is
co-author, with Bill Hendrick, of The Atlanta Daily Intelligencer Covers the
Civil War (University of Tennessee Press, 2022).
