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ON THE 21ST OF DECEMBER, 1886, MR. GRADY, IN RESPONSE TO AN URGENT
INVITATION, DELIVERED THE FOLLOWING ADDRESS AT THE BANQUET OF THE
NEW ENGLAND CLUB, NEW YORK:
“There was a South of slavery and secession—that South is dead. There is
a South of union and freedom—that South, thank God, is living,
breathing, growing every hour.” These words, delivered from the immortal
lips of Benjamin H. Hill, at Tammany Hall, in 1866, true then and truer
now, I shall make my text to-night.
Mr. President and Gentlemen: Let me express to you my appreciation of
the kindness by which I am permitted to address you. I make this abrupt
acknowledgment advisedly, for I feel that if, when I raise my provincial
voice in this ancient and august presence, I could find courage for no
more than the opening sentence, it would be well if in that sentence I
had met in a rough sense my obligation as a guest, and had perished, so
to speak, with courtesy on my lips and grace in my heart. Permitted,
through your kindness, to catch my second wind, let me say that I
appreciate the significance of being the first Southerner to speak at
this board, which bears the substance, if it surpasses the semblance, of
original New England hospitality—and honors the sentiment that in turn
honors you, but in which my personality is lost, and the compliment to
my people made plain.
I bespeak the utmost stretch of your courtesy to-night. I am not
troubled about those from whom I come. You remember the man whose wife
sent him to a neighbor with a pitcher of milk, and who, tripping on the
top step, fell with such casual interruptions as the landings afforded
into the basement, and, while picking himself up, had the pleasure of
hearing his wife call out: “John, did you break the pitcher?”
“No, I didn’t,” said John, “but I’ll be dinged if I don’t.”
So, while those who call me from behind may inspire me with energy, if
not with courage, I ask an indulgent hearing from you. I beg that you
will bring your full faith in American fairness and frankness to
judgment upon what I shall say. There was an old preacher once who told
some boys of the Bible lesson he was going to read in the morning. The
boys, finding the place, glued together the connecting pages. The next
morning he read on the bottom of one page, “When Noah was one hundred
and twenty years old he took unto himself a wife, who was”—then turning
the page—“140 cubits long—40 cubits wide, built of gopher wood—and
covered with pitch inside and out.” He was naturally puzzled at this. He
read it again, verified it, and then said: “My friends, this is the
first time I ever met this in the Bible, but I accept this as an
evidence of the assertion that we are fearfully and wonderfully made.”
If I could get you to hold such faith to-night I could proceed
cheerfully to the task I otherwise approach with a sense of
consecration.
Pardon me one word, Mr. President, spoken for the sole purpose of
getting into the volumes that go out annually freighted with the rich
eloquence of your speakers—the fact that the Cavalier as well as the
Puritan was on the continent in its early days, and that he was “up and
able to be about.” I have read your books carefully and I find no
mention of that fact, which seems to me an important one for preserving
a sort of historical equilibrium if for nothing else.
Let me remind you that the Virginia Cavalier first challenged France on
the continent—that Cavalier, John Smith, gave New England its very name,
and was so pleased with the job that he has been handing his own name
around ever since—and that while Myles Standish was cutting off men’s
ears for courting a girl without her parents’ consent, and forbade men
to kiss their wives on Sunday, the Cavalier was courting everything in
sight, and that the Almighty had vouchsafed great increase to the
Cavalier colonies, the huts in the wilderness being as full as the nests
in the woods.
But having incorporated the Cavalier as a fact in your charming little
books, I shall let him work out his own salvation, as he has always
done, with engaging gallantry, and we will hold no controversy as to his
merits. Why should we? Neither Puritan nor Cavalier long survived as
such. The virtues and good traditions of both happily still live for the
inspiration of their sons and the saving of the old fashion. But both
Puritan and Cavalier were lost in the storm of the first Revolution, and
the American citizen, supplanting both and stronger than either, took
possession of the republic bought by their common blood and fashioned to
wisdom, and charged himself with teaching men government and
establishing the voice of the people as the voice of God.
My friends, Dr. Talmage has told you that the typical American has yet
to come. Let me tell you that he has already come. Great types, like
valuable plants, are slow to flower and fruit. But from the union of
these colonists, Puritans and Cavaliers, from the straightening of their
purposes and the crossing of their blood, slow perfecting through a
century, came he who stands as the first typical American, the first who
comprehended within himself all the strength and gentleness, all the
majesty and grace of this republic—Abraham Lincoln. He was the sum of
Puritan and Cavalier, for in his ardent nature were fused the virtues of
both, and in the depths of his great soul the faults of both were lost.
He was greater than Puritan, greater than Cavalier, in that he was
American, and that in his honest form were first gathered the vast and
thrilling forces of his ideal government—charging it with such
tremendous meaning and elevating it above human suffering that
martyrdom, though infamously aimed, came as a fitting crown to a life
consecrated from the cradle to human liberty. Let us, each cherishing
the traditions and honoring his fathers, build with reverent hands to
the type of this simple but sublime life, in which all types are
honored, and in our common glory as Americans there will be plenty and
to spare for your forefathers and for mine.
Dr. Talmage has drawn for you, with a master’s hand, the picture of your
returning armies. He has told you how, in the pomp and circumstance of
war, they came back to you, marching with proud and victorious tread,
reading their glory in a nation’s eyes! Will you bear with me while I
tell you of another army that sought its home at the close of the late
war—an army that marched home in defeat and not in victory—in pathos and
not in splendor, but in glory that equaled yours, and to hearts as
loving as ever welcomed heroes home! Let me picture to you the footsore
Confederate soldier, as buttoning up in his faded gray jacket the parole
which was to bear testimony to his children of his fidelity and faith,
he turned his face southward from Appomattox in April, 1865. Think of
him as ragged, half-starved, heavy-hearted, enfeebled by want and
wounds, having fought to exhaustion, he surrenders his gun, wrings the
hands of his comrades in silence, and lifting his tear-stained and
pallid face for the last time to the graves that dot old Virginia hills,
pulls his gray cap over his brow and begins the slow and painful
journey. What does he find—let me ask you who went to your homes eager
to find, in the welcome you had justly earned, full payment for four
years’ sacrifice—what does he find when, having followed the
battle-stained cross against overwhelming odds, dreading death not half
so much as surrender, he reaches the home he left so prosperous and
beautiful? He finds his house in ruins, his farm devastated, his slaves
free, his stock killed, his barns empty, his trade destroyed, his money
worthless, his social system, feudal in its magnificence, swept away;
his people without law or legal status; his comrades slain, and the
burdens of others heavy on his shoulders. Crushed by defeat, his very
traditions are gone. Without money, credit, employment, material, or
training; and beside all this, confronted with the gravest problem that
ever met human intelligence—the establishing of a status for the vast
body of his liberated slaves.
What does he do—this hero in gray with a heart of gold? Does he sit down
in sullenness and despair? Not for a day. Surely God, who had stripped
him of his prosperity, inspired him in his adversity. As ruin was never
before so overwhelming, never was restoration swifter. The soldier
stepped from the trenches into the furrow; horses that had charged
Federal guns marched before the plow, and fields that ran red with human
blood in April were green with the harvest in June; women reared in
luxury cut up their dresses and made breeches for their husbands, and,
with a patience and heroism that fit women always as a garment, gave
their hands to work. There was little bitterness in all this.
Cheerfulness and frankness prevailed. “Bill Arp” struck the key-note
when he said: “Well, I killed as many of them as they did of me, and now
I’m going to work.” Of the soldier returning home after defeat and
roasting some corn on the roadside, who made the remark to his comrades:
“You may leave the South if you want to, but I am going to Sandersville,
kiss my wife and raise a crop, and if the Yankees fool with me any more,
I’ll whip ’em again.” I want to say to General Sherman, who is
considered an able man in our parts, though some people think he is a
kind of careless man about fire, that from the ashes he left us in 1864
we have raised a brave and beautiful city; that somehow or other we have
caught the sunshine in the bricks and mortar of our homes, and have
builded therein not one ignoble prejudice or memory.
But what is the sum of our work? We have found out that in the summing
up the free negro counts more than he did as a slave. We have planted
the schoolhouse on the hilltop and made it free to white and black. We
have sowed towns and cities in the place of theories, and put business
above politics. We have challenged your spinners in Massachusetts and
your iron-makers in Pennsylvania. We have learned that the $400,000,000
annually received from our cotton crop will make us rich when the
supplies that make it are home-raised. We have reduced the commercial
rate of interest from 24 to 6 per cent., and are floating 4 per cent.
bonds. We have learned that one northern immigrant is worth fifty
foreigners; and have smoothed the path to southward, wiped out the place
where Mason and Dixon’s line used to be, and hung out latchstring to you
and yours. We have reached the point that marks perfect harmony in every
household, when the husband confesses that the pies which his wife cooks
are as good as those his mother used to bake; and we admit that the sun
shines as brightly and the moon as softly as it did before the war. We
have established thrift in city and country. We have fallen in love with
work. We have restored comfort to homes from which culture and elegance
never departed. We have let economy take root and spread among us as
rank as the crabgrass which sprung from Sherman’s cavalry camps, until
we are ready to lay odds on the Georgia Yankee as he manufactures relics
of the battle-field in a one-story shanty and squeezes pure olive oil
out of his cotton seed, against any down-easter that ever swapped wooden
nutmegs for flannel sausage in the valleys of Vermont. Above all, we
know that we have achieved in these “piping times of peace” a fuller
independence for the South than that which our fathers sought to win in
the forum by their eloquence or compel in the field by their swords.
It is a rare privilege, sir, to have had part, however humble, in this
work. Never was nobler duty confided to human hands than the uplifting
and upbuilding of the prostrate and bleeding South—misguided, perhaps,
but beautiful in her suffering, and honest, brave and generous always.
In the record of her social, industrial and political illustration we
await with confidence the verdict of the world.
But what of the negro? Have we solved the problem he presents or
progressed in honor and equity toward solution? Let the record speak to
the point. No section shows a more prosperous laboring population than
the negroes of the South, none in fuller sympathy with the employing and
land-owning class. He shares our school fund, has the fullest protection
of our laws and the friendship of our people. Self-interest, as well as
honor, demand that he should have this. Our future, our very existence
depend upon our working out this problem in full and exact justice. We
understand that when Lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation, your
victory was assured, for he then committed you to the cause of human
liberty, against which the arms of man cannot prevail—while those of our
statesmen who trusted to make slavery the corner-stone of the
Confederacy doomed us to defeat as far as they could, committing us to a
cause that reason could not defend or the sword maintain in sight of
advancing civilization.
Had Mr. Toombs said, which he did not say, “that he would call the roll
of his slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill,” he would have been foolish,
for he might have known that whenever slavery became entangled in war it
must perish, and that the chattel in human flesh ended forever in New
England when your fathers—not to be blamed for parting with what didn’t
pay—sold their slaves to our fathers—not to be praised for knowing a
paying thing when they saw it. The relations of the southern people with
the negro are close and cordial. We remember with what fidelity for four
years he guarded our defenseless women and children, whose husbands and
fathers were fighting against his freedom. To his eternal credit be it
said that whenever he struck a blow for his own liberty he fought in
open battle, and when at last he raised his black and humble hands that
the shackles might be struck off, those hands were innocent of wrong
against his helpless charges, and worthy to be taken in loving grasp by
every man who honors loyalty and devotion. Ruffians have maltreated him,
rascals have misled him, philanthropists established a bank for him, but
the South, with the North, protests against injustice to this simple and
sincere people. To liberty and enfranchisement is as far as law can
carry the negro. The rest must be left to conscience and common sense.
It must be left to those among whom his lot is cast, with whom he is
indissolubly connected, and whose prosperity depends upon their
possessing his intelligent sympathy and confidence. Faith has been kept
with him, in spite of calumnious assertions to the contrary by those who
assume to speak for us or by frank opponents. Faith will be kept with
him in the future, if the South holds her reason and integrity.
But have we kept faith with you? In the fullest sense, yes. When Lee
surrendered—I don’t say when Johnson surrendered, because I understand
he still alludes to the time when he met General Sherman last as the
time when he determined to abandon any further prosecution of the
struggle—when Lee surrendered, I say, and Johnson quit, the South
became, and has since been, loyal to this Union. We fought hard enough
to know that we were whipped, and in perfect frankness accept as final
the arbitrament of the sword to which we had appealed. The South found
her jewel in the toad’s head of defeat. The shackles that had held her
in narrow limitations fell forever when the shackles of the negro slave
were broken. Under the old régime the negroes were slaves to the South;
the South was a slave to the system. The old plantation, with its simple
police regulations and feudal habit, was the only type possible under
slavery. Thus was gathered in the hands of a splendid and chivalric
oligarchy the substance that should have been diffused among the people,
as the rich blood, under certain artificial conditions, is gathered at
the heart, filling that with affluent rapture but leaving the body chill
and colorless.
The old South rested everything on slavery and agriculture, unconscious
that these could neither give nor maintain healthy growth. The new South
presents a perfect democracy, the oligarchs leading in the popular
movement—a social system compact and closely knitted, less splendid on
the surface, but stronger at the core—a hundred farms for every
plantation, fifty homes for every palace—and a diversified industry that
meets the complex need of this complex age.
The new South is enamored of her new work. Her soul is stirred with the
breath of a new life. The light of a grander day is falling fair on her
face. She is thrilling with the consciousness of growing power and
prosperity. As she stands upright, full-statured and equal among the
people of the earth, breathing the keen air and looking out upon the
expanded horizon, she understands that her emancipation came because
through the inscrutable wisdom of God her honest purpose was crossed,
and her brave armies were beaten.
This is said in no spirit of time-serving or apology. The South has
nothing for which to apologize. She believes that the late struggle
between the States was war and not rebellion; revolution and not
conspiracy, and that her convictions were as honest as yours. I should
be unjust to the dauntless spirit of the South and to my own convictions
if I did not make this plain in this presence. The South has nothing to
take back. In my native town of Athens is a monument that crowns its
central hill—a plain, white shaft. Deep cut into its shining side is a
name dear to me above the names of men—that of a brave and simple man
who died in brave and simple faith. Not for all the glories of New
England, from Plymouth Rock all the way, would I exchange the heritage
he left me in his soldier’s death. To the foot of that I shall send my
children’s children to reverence him who ennobled their name with his
heroic blood. But, sir, speaking from the shadow of that memory which I
honor as I do nothing else on earth, I say that the cause in which he
suffered and for which he gave his life was adjudged by higher and
fuller wisdom than his or mine, and I am glad that the omniscient God
held the balance of battle in His Almighty hand and that human slavery
was swept forever from American soil, the American Union was saved from
the wreck of war.
This message, Mr. President, comes to you from consecrated ground. Every
foot of soil about the city in which I live is as sacred as a
battle-ground of the republic. Every hill that invests it is hallowed to
you by the blood of your brothers who died for your victory, and doubly
hallowed to us by the blow of those who died hopeless, but undaunted, in
defeat—sacred soil to all of us—rich with memories that make us purer
and stronger and better—silent but staunch witnesses in its red
desolation of the matchless valor of American hearts and the deathless
glory of American arms—speaking an eloquent witness in its white peace
and prosperity to the indissoluble union of American States and the
imperishable brotherhood of the American people.
Now, what answer has New England to this message? Will she permit the
prejudice of war to remain in the hearts of the conquerors, when it has
died in the hearts of the conquered? Will she transmit this prejudice to
the next generation, that in their hearts which never felt the generous
ardor of conflict it may perpetuate itself? Will she withhold, save in
strained courtesy, the hand which straight from his soldier’s heart
Grant offered to Lee at Appomattox? Will she make the vision of a
restored and happy people, which gathered above the couch of your dying
captain, filling his heart with grace; touching his lips with praise,
and glorifying his path to the grave—will she make this vision on which
the last sigh of his expiring soul breathed a benediction, a cheat and
delusion? If she does, the South, never abject in asking for
comradeship, must accept with dignity its refusal; but if she does not
refuse to accept in frankness and sincerity this message of good will
and friendship, then will the prophecy of Webster, delivered in this
very society forty years ago amid tremendous applause, become true, be
verified in its fullest sense, when he said: “Standing hand to hand and
clasping hands, we should remain united as we have been for sixty years,
citizens of the same country, members of the same government, united,
all united now and united forever.” There have been difficulties,
contentions, and controversies, but I tell you that in my judgment,
“Those opened eyes,
Which like the meteors of a troubled heaven,
All of one nature, of one substance bred,
Did lately meet in th’ intestine shock,
Shall now, in mutual well beseeming ranks,
March all one way.”
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