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_From the “Springfield, Mass., Republican.”_
THE death of Henry Woodfin Grady, the brilliant young Southern editor
and orator, which took place at Atlanta, Ga., was almost tragic in its
suddenness; it will make a profound impression at the South, and will be
deeply deplored here at the North, where he had come to be known as a
florid yet forceful advocate and apologist of his section. He had lately
caught the ear of the country, and while his speeches provoked critical
replies, it may be said in his honor that he, more than any other
Southerner, had lifted the plane of sectional debate from that of futile
recriminations to more dignified and candid interchanges of opinion.
That is saying much for a man who was a lad during the rebellion, and
who had not passed his thirty-ninth birthday. He was a man of pronounced
views, perhaps given more to pictures of prosperity than to the methods
of its attainment, and when upon the platform he carried the crowd by
the force of that genius for passionate appeals which his Irish ancestry
and Southern training had given him in full measure. No Southerner had
put the conflict of races in so reassuring a light; but he was not old
enough or far-seeing enough to realize that the problem can and will be
solved,—and that by Southerners.
Mr. Grady called about him a formidable group of young Democrats filled
with the spirit of the New South. They believed that Georgia would rise
and the South be reconstructed in the broadest sense by the
multiplication of factories and the advancement of trade. These young
men selected Gov. Colquitt for their standard-bearer in the State
election of 1880, and Mr. Grady was made chairman of the campaign
committee. Colquitt during his first term had offended the Democratic
regulars, and the young men carried the war into the back country. The
vote at the primaries was unprecedentedly heavy. Colquitt carried the
State and was the first governor elected under the new constitution.
Grady never held public office, but it was supposed that he had been
selected by the Democratic leaders as Gov. Gordon’s successor, and many
thought that he was angling for the second place on the Democratic
national ticket in 1892.
The attention of the North was first called to the brilliant Georgian by
his address at New York in June, 1887, at the annual dinner of the New
England Society. His speech at the Washington Centennial banquet last
spring was rather a disappointment, but he fully recovered his prestige
the other day at Boston, where he shared the honors of a notable
occasion with Grover Cleveland. Mr. Grady found time from his editorial
work to write an occasional magazine article, but his subject was his
one absorbing study—the South and its future.
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