Ladies and Gentlemen: When Death like Nature’s chastening rod
hath smitten our common humanity, we realize the eternal truth
that “silence is the law of being, sound the breaking of the
rule.” Standing here as the representative of those who were
knit to the distinguished dead by as close a tie as that of
natural brotherhood, while a continent is yet vocal with the
echoes of his eloquence, my heart tells me that the infinite
possibilities of silence constitute the only worthy tribute
which I can pay to the memory of Henry Grady. The most
distinguished member of our fraternity is lost to us forever. O,
Death, there is thy sting; O, Grave, there is thy victory.
Though our ranks are full of gifted and famous men, in all the
tribes of our Israel, there is no Elisha upon whom the mantle of
this translated Elijah can descend.
My fellow Georgians, how shall I speak to you of him? It is meet
that sympathy should veil her weeping eyes, when she mourns the
darling child who bore her gentle image ever mirrored in his
life. As well may the tongue speak when the soul has departed,
as Southern oratory declaim when Southern eloquence is buried in
the grave of Grady. Even American patriotism is voiceless as she
stands beside the coffined chieftain of her fast-assembling
host. Was he good? Let his neighbors answer. To-night Atlanta is
shrouded in as deep a pall as that which wrapped Egypt in gloom
when the angel of the Lord smote the first-born in every house.
In the busiest city of the State the rattle of commerce to-day
was suspended, the hum of industry was hushed, and in that gay
capital bright pleasure hath stayed her shining feet to drop a
tear upon the grave of him the people loved so well. Was he
great? From the pinnacle of no official station has he fallen;
the pomp and circumstance of war did not place him upon a
pedestal of prominence; no book has he given to the literature
of the nation; no wealth has he amassed with which to
crystallize his generosity into fame; and yet to-night a
continent stands weeping by his new-made grave, and as the waves
come laden with the message of the Infinite to the base of the
now twice historic Plymouth Rock, the sympathetic sobbing of the
sea can only whisper to the stricken land, “Peace, be still; my
everlasting arms are round you.”
His greatness cannot be measured by his speeches, though they
were so masterful that they form a portion of his country’s
history. It will rather be gauged by that patient, brilliant
daily work, which made it possible for him to command the
nation’s ear, that power of which these public utterances were
but the exponents; his daily toil in his private sanctum in the
stately building of the _Constitution_, that magnificent
manufactory of public thought, which he wielded as a weaver does
his shuttle. A small and scantily furnished room, with nothing
in it save Grady, his genius and his God,—and yet thus
illumined, it warmed with the light of fraternal love both
sections of a Republic, compared to which that of historic
Greece was but as a perfumed lamp to the noontide splendor of
the sun. As a journalist Mr. Grady had no superior in America.
As a writer he exercised the princely prerogative of genius
which is to create and not obey the laws of rhetoric. As well
attempt to teach the nightingale to sing by note, or track the
summer lightning as we do the sun, as measure Grady’s style by
any rhetorician’s rule. I have thought that Mr. Grady was more
of an orator than a writer, and brilliant as his success in
journalism was, it was but the moonlight which reflected the sun
that dawned only to be obscured by death. Certainly no man in
any country or in any age, ever won fame as an orator faster
than he. With a wide reputation as a writer, but scarcely any as
a speaker, even in his own State, he appeared one night at a
banquet in New York, made a speech of twenty minutes, and the
next day was known throughout the United States as the foremost
of Southern orators. No swifter stride has been made to fame
since the days of David, for like that heroic stripling, with
the sling of courage and the stone of truth, he slew
Sectionalism, the Goliath which had so long threatened and
oppressed his people.
Since Appomattox two historic speeches have been made by
Southern men; the one was that delivered in the Congress of the
United States upon the proposition to strike from the general
amnesty of the government the name of Jefferson Davis, when
Benjamin H. Hill broke the knightliest lance ever shivered in a
people’s honor, full on the haughty crest of the plumed knight;
the other was the Boston speech of Mr. Grady which, like a magic
key, will yet unlock the shackles that have so long manacled a
people who, strangest paradox in history, were enslaved by the
emancipation of their slaves. The logic of Hill was powerful as
the club of Hercules; the eloquence of Grady was irresistible as
the lyre of Orpheus.
My countrymen, if it shall be written in the history of America
that by virtue of the genius of her Toombs and Cobb and Brown,
on the breast of our native State was cradled a revolution which
rocked a continent, upon another page of that history it will be
recorded that Georgia’s Grady was the Moses who led the Southern
people through a wilderness of weakness and of want at least to
the Pisgah whence, with prophetic eye, he could discern a New
South true to the traditions of the past as was the steel which
glittered on the victorious arm, at Manassas, but whose hopeful
hearts and helpful hands shall transform desolation into wealth
and convert the defeat of one section of our common country into
the haughty herald of that country’s future rank in the
civilization of the world.
Even, when prompted by the tender relations of the fraternity
which I represent, I cannot trust myself to speak of Mr. Grady’s
private and social life. He was my friend. Nearly ten years
since his kindly glowing words revealed to me an ambition, which
I had scarcely dared to confess unto myself. As the summer days
still linger with us, so does the daily intercourse which it was
my fortune to enjoy with him some three months since—seem yet to
“compass me about.” By the royal right of intellect he commanded
the homage of my admiration; with the clarion voice of
patriotism he challenged my reverence, but with the magnetism of
his munificent manhood he bade Confidence, that sentry which
guards the human heart, surrender this citadel at discretion. I
trust that it will not be deemed inappropriate for me, man of
the world as I am, to bear my public testimony to the power of
Christianity illustrated in his life. Familiar in his youth with
every phase of pleasure, with the affluent blood of early
manhood yet running riot through his veins, with the temptations
of a continent spread like a royal feast, to which his talent
and his fame gave him easy access, yet when he bowed his head in
reverence to the meek and lowly Nazarene, his life was the
unimpeachable witness of his creed. A thousand sermons to me
were concentrated in the humanized Christianity of his faith and
his works. And God was good to him.—The magnificent success of
the Piedmont Exposition was to him the exponent of that
industrial progress which he had labored to establish. The
bountiful harvest of this closing year had seemed to set the
seal of God’s commendation upon his labors for the agricultural
interests of the South. Such was his fame that sixty million
Americans revered him as a patriot. With a wife beautiful and
brilliant, adoring him as only a woman can love a genius whom
she comprehends; with two children just verging into
adolescence, and reverencing him as an neophyte does his faith;
with the highest official station within his grasp; with the
curule chair of the Governorship already opening its arms to
receive him; with the future lifting the senatorial toga to
drape his eloquence; with possibilities of the White House
flashing through the green vista of the coming years,—with all
of these he made no murmur at the summons of his God.
A widow weeps where yesterday a wife adored. Two orphans mourn
to-day where yesterday two children leaned upon a father’s arm.
A nation’s hope is turned to mourning. It needed the great heart
of Grady to gently murmur, “Thy will, not mine, be done.”
But by all that he has accomplished, and by all that he has
projected, which the coming years will yet work out, I tell you
to-night, my fellow Georgians, that Henry Grady still lives an
abiding influence in the destinies of his country. Greatest
enemy of monopoly while he lived, the grandest of all monopolies
shall be his after death, for every industrial enterprise
hereafter inaugurated in the South must pay its royalty of fame
to him. Sleep on, my friend, my brother, brilliant and beloved;
let no distempered dream of unaccomplished greatness haunt thy
long last sleep. The country that you loved, that you redeemed
and disenthralled, will be your splendid and ever growing
monument, and the blessings of a grateful people will be the
grand inscription, which shall grow longer as that monument
rises higher among the nations of the earth. Wherever the peach
shall blush beneath the kisses of the Southern sun, wherever the
affluent grape shall don the royal purple of Southern
sovereignty, a votive offering from the one and a rich libation
from the other, the grateful husbandman will tender unto you.
The music of no machinery shall be heard within this Southland
which does not chant a pæan in your praise. Wherever Eloquence,
the deity whom this people hath ever worshiped, shall retain a
temple, no pilgrim shall enter there, save he bear thy dear name
as a sacred shibboleth on his lips. So long as patriotism shall
remain the shining angel who guards the destinies of our
Republic, her starry finger will point to Grady on Plymouth
Rock, for Fame will choose to chisel his statue there, standing
as the sentinel whom God had placed to keep eternal watch over
the liberties of a re-united people!
* * * * *
The exercises were concluded with the benediction by the Rev. G. A.
Nunnally, D.D., President of Mercer University.
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