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_From the “Philadelphia Times.”_
HENRY W. GRADY is dead, but the lesson of his life will live and bear
fruits for years to come. The young men of the South will not fail to
note that the public journals of every faith in the North have discussed
his life and death in the sincerest sympathy, and that not only his
ability but his candor and courage have elicited universal commendation.
Had Mr. Grady been anything less than a sincere Southerner in sympathy
and conviction, he could have commanded the regulation praise of party
organs in political conflicts, but he would have died little regretted
in either section. He was a true son of the South; faithful to its
interests, to its convictions, to its traditions; and he proved how
plain was the way for the honest Southerner to be an honest patriot and
a devoted supporter of the Union.
There are scores of men in the South, or who have lived there, and who
have filled the highest public trusts within the gifts of their States,
without commanding the sympathy or respect of any section of the
country. Of the South, they were not in sympathy with their people or
interests, and they have played their brief and accidental parts only to
be forgotten when their work was done. They did not speak for the South;
they were instruments of discord rather than of tranquility, and they
left no impress upon the convictions or pulsations of either section.
But Mr. Grady was a true, able, candid, courageous son of the South, and
he was as much respected under the shadows of Bunker Hill as in Georgia.
Sincerely Southern in every sympathy, he was welcomed North and South as
a patriot; and long after the Mahones and the Chalmers shall have been
charitably forgotten, the name of Grady will be fresh in the greenest
memories of the whole people of the country.
There is no better lesson for the young men of the South to study than
the life, the aims and the efforts of Mr. Grady and the universal
gratitude he commanded from every section. He was beloved in the South,
where his noble qualities were commonly known, but he was respected in
the North as an honest Southerner, who knew how to be true to his
birthright and true to the Republic. The Northern press of every shade
of political conviction has united in generous tribute to the young
patriot of Georgia, and if his death shall widen and deepen the
appreciation of his achievement among the young men of the South who
must soon be the actors of the day, he may yet teach even more
eloquently and successfully in the dreamless sleep of the grave than his
matchless oratory ever taught in Atlanta or Boston.
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