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IT is within the bounds of entire accuracy to say that the death of no
man ever created a deeper and more universal sorrow than that which
responded to the announcement that HENRY WOODFIN GRADY had paid his
final debt of nature, and was gone to his last account. The sense of
grief and regret attained the dignity of a national bereavement, and was
at one and the same time both public and personal. The young and gifted
Georgian had made a great impression upon his country and his time;
blending an individuality, picturesque, strong and attractive, and an
eloquence as rarely solid as it was rhetorically fine, into a character
of the first order of eminence and brilliancy. In every section of the
Union, the people felt that a noble nature and a splendid intellect had
been subtracted from the nation’s stock of wisdom and virtue. This
feeling was intensified the nearer it approached the region where he was
best known and honored: but it reached the farthest limits of the land,
and was expressed by all classes and parties with an homage equally
ungrudging and sincere.
In Georgia, and throughout the Southern States, it rose to a
lamentation. He was, indeed, the hope and expectancy of the young South,
the one publicist of the New South, who, inheriting the spirit of the
old, yet had realized the present, and looked into the future, with the
eyes of a statesman and the heart of a patriot. His own future was fully
assured. He had made his place; had won his spurs; and he possessed the
qualities, not merely to hold them, but greatly to magnify their
importance. That he should be cut down upon the threshold of a career,
for whose magnificent development and broad usefulness all was prepared,
seemed a cruel dispensation of Providence and aroused a heart-breaking
sentiment far beyond the bounds compassed by Mr. Grady’s personality.
Of the details of his life, and of his life-work, others have spoken in
the amplest terms. I shall, in this place, content myself with placing
on the record my own remembrance and estimate of the man as he was known
to me. Mr. Grady became a writer for the press when but little more than
a boy, and during the darkest days of the Reconstruction period. There
was in those days but a single political issue for the South. Our hand
was in the lion’s mouth, and we could do nothing, hope for nothing,
until we got it out. The young Georgian was ardent, impetuous, the son
of a father slain in battle, the offspring of a section, the child of a
province; yet he rose to the situation with uncommon faculties of
courage and perception; caught the spirit of the struggle against
reaction with perfect reach; and threw himself into the liberal and
progressive movements of the time with the genius of a man born for both
oratory and affairs. At first, his sphere of work was confined to the
newspapers of the South. But, not unreasonably or unnaturally, he wished
a wider field of duty, and went East, carrying letters in which he was
commended in terms which might have seemed extravagant then, but which
he more than vindicated. His final settlement in the capital of his
native State, and in a position where he could speak directly and
responsibly, gave him the opportunity he had sought to make a name and
fame for himself, and an audience of his own. Here he carried the policy
with which he had early identified himself to its finest conclusions;
coming at once to the front as a champion of a free South and a united
country, second to none in efficiency, equaled by none in eloquence.
He was eager and aspiring, and, in the heedlessness of youth, with its
aggressive ambitions, may not have been at all times discriminating and
considerate in the objects of his attacks; but he was generous to a
fault, and, as he advanced upon the highway, he broadened with it and to
it, and, if he had lived, would have realized the fullest measure of his
own promise and the hopes of his friends. The scales of error, when
error he felt he had committed, were fast falling from his eyes, and he
was frank to own his changed, or changing, view. The vista of the way
ahead was opening before him with its far perspective clear to his
mental sight. He had just delivered an utterance of exceeding weight and
value, winning universal applause, and was coming home to be welcomed by
his people with open arms, when the Messenger of Death summoned him to
his God. The tidings of the fatal termination of his disorder, so
startling in their suddenness and unexpectedness, added to the last
scene of all a feature of dramatic interest.
For my own part, I can truly say that I was from the first and always
proud of him, hailed him as a young disciple who had surpassed his
elders in learning and power, recognized in him a master voice and soul,
followed his career with admiring interest, and recorded his triumphs
with ever-increasing sympathy and appreciation. We had broken a lance or
two between us; but there had been no lick below the belt, and no hurt
which was other than skin-deep, and during considerably more than a year
before his death a most cordial and unreserved correspondence had passed
between us. The telegram which brought the fatal news was a grievous
shock to me, for it told me that I had lost a good friend, and the cause
of truth a great advocate. It is with a melancholy satisfaction that I
indite these lines, thankful for the opportunity afforded me to do so by
the kindness of his associates and family. Such spirits are not of a
generation, but of an epoch; and it will be long before the South will
find one to take the place made conspicuously vacant by his absence.