Conrad was born on August 1, 1837, in Fairfax Court House and was the son of Nelson Conrad and Lavinia M. Thomas Conrad. He attended Fairfax Academy and Dickinson College, which awarded him a bachelor’s degree in 1857 and a master’s degree in 1860. Conrad became a lay Methodist preacher and taught at a private school in Georgetown, District of Columbia, before establishing the Georgetown Institute, a boys’ school there. After the Civil War began, Conrad made no effort to conceal his Confederate sympathies, which had attracted the attention of United States government authorities even before the institute’s commencement exercise in June 1862, when his students made fiery pro-Confederate speeches, and he ordered the band to play “Dixie,” to uproarious applause. On August 2 he was arrested on charges of communicating with the enemy and recruiting students for the Confederate army. Conrad was locked up in Old Capitol Prison and later paroled pending exchange. Many years afterward he wrote that during that time he plotted to assassinate the former commanding general of the United States Army, Winfield Scott, whom he considered a traitor to his native Virginia, but that Confederate officials refused to allow him to proceed.