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THE death of Mr. Henry W. Grady, of the Atlanta _Constitution_, is a
loss to South and North alike. The section which poured out a few days
ago its tributes of regret for the leader of the Southern Confederacy
may well dye its mourning a deeper hue in memory of this greater and
better man, whose useful life is cut short before he had reached his
prime. Mr. Grady has held a peculiar and trying position; and in it he
has done more, perhaps, than any other one man to make the two sections
separated by the War of the Rebellion understand each other, and to
bring them from a mere observance of what we might call a political
_modus vivendi_ to a cordial and real union. It was not as a journalist,
although in his profession he was both strong and brilliant, it was
rather as the earnest and eloquent representative of the New South, and
as the spokesman of her people that he had acquired national prominence.
He was one of the few who both cared and dared to tell to the people of
either section some truths about themselves and about the other that
were wholesome if they were not altogether palatable. He was wholly and
desperately in earnest. He had much of the devotion to his own section
and his own State that characterized the Southerner before the war. But
he had what they had not: a conception of national unity; of the power
and glory and honor of the nation as a whole, that made him respected
everywhere. Whether he appeared in Boston or in Atlanta, he was sure of
an interested and sympathetic audience; and his fervid orations, if they
sometimes avoided unpleasant issues and decked with flowers the scarred
face of the ugly fact, did much, nevertheless, to turn the eyes of the
people away from the past and toward the future.
We have been far from agreeing with Mr. Grady’s opinions, either
socially or politically. The patriotic people of the North can have no
sympathy with the attempt to cover with honor the memory of treason,
which found in him an ardent apologist. We believe that we have gone to
the limit of magnanimity when we agree to forego question and memory,
and simply treat the men who led and the men who followed in the effort
to destroy the nation as if that effort had never been made. And we do
not hold that man as guilty of sectionalism and treason to a reunited
country who talks hotly of “rebels” and sneers at “brigadiers,” as that
man who speaks of these leaders of a lost cause as “patriots,” obedient
to the call of duty. To that error Mr. Grady, in common with other
leaders of his time, inclined the people of his section. Politically he
was, of course, through good or through evil report, an uncompromising
Democrat. Nor can we think his treatment of the race issue a happy one.
The North has come, at last, to do justice to the South in this respect,
and to acknowledge that the problem presented to her for solution in the
existence there of two races, politically equal before the law but
forever distinct in social and sentimental relations, is the gravest and
most difficult in our history. But the mere plea to let it alone, which
is the substance of Mr. Grady’s repeated appeal, is not the answer that
must come. It is not worthy of the people, either North or South. It is
not satisfactory, it is not final, and the present demands more of her
sons. But, in presenting these points of difference, it is not intended
to undervalue the work which Mr. Grady did or underestimate the value of
the service that lay before him. With tongue and pen he taught his
people the beauty and the value of that national unity into which we
have been reborn. He sought to lead them out of the bitterness of
political strife, to set their faces toward the material development
that is always a serviceable factor in the solution of political
problems, and to make of the new South something worthy of the name. The
work that he did was worthy, and there is none who can take and fill his
place. The death that plunged the South in mourning a short time ago was
merely the passing of an unhealthful reminiscence. The death of Grady is
a sorrow and a loss in which her people may feel that the regret and the
sympathy of the North are joined with theirs.
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