Again we are assembled in the house of mourning. Our homes and
public buildings are yet black with the symbols of our grief for
him who went before.
“One woe doth tread upon another’s heel, so fast they follow.”
Two short weeks ago, while we were assembled in our capital
covered with the insignia of grief, to do honor to the memory of
one who had been our chief when the storm of war raged, we
received a telegram, mingling his grief with ours, from him,
then on his journey of duty to Boston, whose sad death we have
met this day to mourn.
Jefferson Davis and Henry Grady are dead. To-day their souls
commune, and we are left to weep. In their deaths the South has
lost two of her noblest sons. One was gathered to his fathers
full of years and rich in honor. He had served his country well.
He had been the chosen leader of our people, when the storms of
war were raging. He, as our representative, had been subjected
to insults and to indignities by the Government he had honored,
and in whose service he had spent the best years of his life. He
passed away, and the sunset of his life was glorious and
beautiful.
We have not yet put aside the sables of grief we wear for
Jefferson Davis, and yet in two short weeks we have met to mourn
the death of him whom we hold dearer; our townsman, our daily
associate and friend.
Henry W. Grady has gone to his last home.
One was an old man, ready and waiting to be called. His day was
over, his work was done, and he was waiting for his rest. His
sun had risen, past its meridian in glory and was sinking in
honor. For him the night in due time had come. The other, was a
young man, full of hope and rich in promise. His sun had just
arisen and it gave promise that before him was yet a glorious
day.
One was the chosen representative of our people before the
storms of war had swept over us. He was the representative of
the South under its old system. The other was the acknowledged
exponent of the South under its altered condition of affairs.
We weep for him to-day.
Of all the young men in America none had such power for good.
None had the ear of the public so completely as he to be heard.
None had so eloquent a tongue to produce conviction. None had so
magnetic a bearing to induce followers. He was ambitious, yes,
but for what? Not for the spoils of office, not for command of
his fellow-man, not for himself, but for his people. Years ago
when his friends all over Georgia urged him to allow his name to
be presented for a post of honor in the counsels of the Nation
he refused. His letter of declination was so strong, so
patriotic, and so unselfish that it commanded the admiration of
the world. I know that even far-off New Zealand published his
words and did him honor. His eloquent speech in New York
completed the structure of his national fame. From the night of
its delivery the whole country ranked him among its foremost
citizens. Even in down-trodden and oppressed Cuba his eloquent
words were translated into the Spanish tongue and read with
delight while I was there. The echoes of his last eloquent,
matchless defense of the South yet linger in Faneuil Hall, and
so long as its historic walls shall stand they will be classed
with the best efforts of Everett and of Webster. His friends all
over the country read his words, and wondered that he was so
great. Ambitious; yes, ambitious to be able to present the cause
of the South in such a manner as to produce conviction in the
minds and in the hearts of its most ultra defamers, that our
people now in good faith accept as final the construction placed
upon the Constitution of this country by the victors, and that
they are as absolutely loyal and devoted, as are the people of
the North, to that Union against which his father had fought.
With no apologies for the past; with no recantation of the
belief that they were patriots, without in any way casting
reproach upon our dead, with a nature grand enough to admire
Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, he had taken for his high
mission on this earth, the task of reconciling the people of the
sections. Until this great mission was accomplished, he had no
time to devote to the narrow duties of a public office. Office,
therefore, he did not seek. Office he would not have. There was
but one office in this land great enough for him. Had he lived
until his sun had reached its meridian splendor there would have
been a complete reconciliation between the sections. Partisan
malignity would not have sought to enact laws aimed at only a
part of this grand country. Soon would there have been a
complete union of hearts between those who had been engaged in
fratricidal strife, which the most ultra partisanship could not
have severed. Too young himself to be in the war, but the son of
a gallant Confederate soldier, killed upon the field of battle,
he, more than any one of older years, could by his chosen
profession bear the messages of peace to the North, and by his
mighty pen, by his eloquent tongue, by his melodious voice, and
by his commanding presence could he procure a hearing from an
audience of strangers and produce conviction. If it be true
that,
The tongues of dying men
Enforce attention like deep harmony,
then his last words, uttered in behalf of his people, will not
have been spoken in vain.
In his death the South has lost its most eloquent advocate and
its most powerful defender. America weeps for one of her noblest
sons. Who is there to finish this work? God grant that there may
rise some one to complete his mission!
He was a man full of impulse and a quick reader of the popular
mind. Well do we all remember the time when the result of a
presidential election became certainly known, how his heart,
wild with joy at what he believed to be the beginning of better
days for the South, organized a street procession and proceeded
to the legislative halls of this State, and with his followers
entered the house, and in his clear, ringing voice announced,
“Mr. Speaker: A message from the American people,” and adjourned
it. ’Tis said that history shows that there have been but two
men who have ever adjourned a parliament without a vote, Oliver
Cromwell and Henry Grady. One was an act of tyranny—the other
the expression of the desire of every member of the house.
A citizen of Atlanta, he loved Georgia; a Georgian, he adored
the South; a Southerner, he worshipped the whole Union. He was
an American in the fullest sense of that term. There was no work
of public or private charity among us which he did not aid by
his tongue, his pen, his head or his purse, whether that work
was to procure the pardon of an abandoned young girl confined in
the chain-gang with criminals, or canvassing the streets of
Atlanta through snow and ice, accompanied with a retinue of
wagons and drays, to accumulate fuel and provisions to prevent
our poor from freezing and from starving. It was in response to
his appeals, more than to all else combined, that a home is now
being erected within sight of the dome of yonder capitol for the
aged and infirm veterans of the Lost Cause. It was to him more
than to all others that our Piedmont Expositions, designed to
show to the world the wealth of our undeveloped mineral,
agricultural and other resources, were carried to a successful
end. It was through his persuasive power that the Chautauqua
Association, designed to more thoroughly educate our people, was
established.
But in the limited time allotted to me, I cannot go into further
details. If you seek his monuments, look around. They are in
every home and every calling of life. In all that which has
tended to develop the material resources of the country, to
enrich his people, to encourage education and a love of the
arts, to relieve suffering, to provide for the poor, and to make
our people better and nobler, he devoted his life, unselfishly
and without hope of other reward than the approval of his
conscience.
He was a model citizen. As a member of society, he was welcomed
to every fireside. He was the center of every group. His doors
were open always to strangers. He was given to hospitality. He
was the life, the soul of every enterprise with which he was
connected. As a patriot, his heart was bowed down with grief
that his countrymen should be estranged. As a humanitarian, his
great heart wept at the suffering of the poor, and his voice was
ever raised in behalf of the afflicted and oppressed. As a
friend, he was devoted, unselfish and loyal. Now, that he is
gone, we know how dear he was to us. We have awakened to the
full appreciation of his great worth, and of the calamity which
has befallen us.
Yesterday we stood by his tomb. No private citizen in this
country ever had such a pageant. For miles the streets were
lined with people. We saw the aged and the young, the rich and
the poor, the white and the black, with eyes dimmed by tears,
with hearts bowed down with sorrow at loss of him. They had left
their homes upon our greatest festal day to pay him the homage
of their tears. To each of them his loss was a personal sorrow.
I knew Henry W. Grady well, and I loved him. To me his death is
a personal grief. He had been my friend for more than
twenty-three years. Well do I remember the day I joined his
class in our University. Well do I picture his friendly presence
as he bade me welcome and invited me to his home. Well do I
recall our meeting in our college societies. Our plans, our
struggles, our defeats and our triumphs there. Since that time,
I have sat with him around social boards. He has been time and
again an honored and a welcomed guest in my house. I shall miss
him there. We have been together in public enterprises, we have
met in the busy marts of men. We have worked side by side, and
we have differed upon questions of policy, but in all these
differences he has been my friend. I loved him, and deplore his
death.
We shall erect in this city a monument to commemorate his many
virtues, and to hold him up as an example before the young and
those who come after us; but however exalted that monument may
be, and however near the skys it may reach, the greatest and
best monument to us who knew him will be the memory of his many
virtues which we shall always treasure in our hearts.
Sink, thou of nobler light.
The land will mourn thee in its darkening hour;
Its heavens grow gray at thy retiring power;
Thou stirring orb of mind, thou beacon power,
Be thy great memory still a guardian might,
When thou art gone from sight.
Judge Emory Speer was on the list of speakers to follow Mr.
Brown, but did not reach the city in time to take part in the
exercises.