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_From the “Raleigh, N.C., State-Chronicle.”_
Good mother, weep, Cornelia of the South,
For thou indeed has lost a jewel son;
The Gracchi great were not so much beloved,
Nor with more worthy deeds their honors won.
Thy stalwart son deserves a Roman’s fame,
For Cato was not more supremely just;
Augustus was not greater in the State,
Nor Brutus truer to the public trust.
IN the death of Mr. Henry W. Grady the South loses its brightest and
most useful man. He was the only Southern man who really had the ear of
the people of the whole country, and he had just reached the position
where he could be useful in the largest sphere. It is inexplicable why
so young and robust a man—(he was not over thirty-nine years of age)—a
man so brilliant and so able, should be taken just as he was entering
upon the plane of wider influence and greater usefulness. To the South
it is the greatest loss that it has sustained by death in a quarter of a
century. To the whole people of the country, which he loved with his
great-hearted devotion, it is nothing short of a National calamity.
Mr. Grady had the ear and heart of the South because he loved its
history and its very soil, and because he was the leading exponent of
the idea that is working to build up a prosperous manufacturing New
South. He had the ear of the North because, while he had no apologies to
make for Southern actions and was proud of Southern achievements, he had
turned his eyes to the morning and lived in the busy world of to-day. He
recognized changed conditions and did not bemoan fate. He stood up in
his manliness and his faith and went to work to bring prosperity where
poverty cast its blight. He inspired others in the South with faith in
the future of his section, and invited Northern men of money, brains,
and brawn to come South and make a fortune; and when they accepted his
invitation, as not a few did, he gave them a brotherly welcome and made
them feel that they were at home. In this he showed practical
patriotism. Under no temptation—even when speaking in Boston—did he ever
so far forget his manhood as to
Crook the pregnant hinges of the knee,
Where thrift may follow fawning.
The people of the North also heard him because of his candor. He never
deceived them about the race problem or the difficulties in the way of
the South’s future. He admitted their gravity, and sought a peaceful
solution in a just, fair, and honest way. His speech in Boston was a
lamentation and an earnest appeal. He cried aloud for sympathetic help,
and his cry, sealed with his life, we must believe, will not be heard in
vain. God grant that his prayer for Peace and Union may be answered!
Mr. Grady’s most attractive quality was his warm great heartedness. He
was generous to a fault. No tale of suffering or poverty was unheeded by
him. He had a buoyant spirit and a light heart and deep affections. He
was reverent in speech and with pen. He believed in God, had learned the
truth of the gospel at his mother’s knee, “The truest altar I have yet
found,” he said in his last speech. He was a member of the Methodist
church. He had profound convictions, and his eloquent speeches in favor
of Prohibition in Atlanta will not be forgotten. No man ever spoke more
earnest words for what he conceived to be the safety of the homes of
Atlanta than he. They will long be treasured up with fondness by those
who mourn that he was cut down in the zenith of what promised the most
brilliant career that lay out before any man in America.
Henry W. Grady was a grandson of North Carolina. His father was a native
of Macon county, but early in life emigrated to Rome, Georgia, to make
his fortune, and he made it. He was one of those men who succeed in
every undertaking. Everything he touched seemed to turn to gold. He
prospered and made a large estate. When the war came on he had a
presentiment that he would be killed. But notwithstanding that idea took
possession of him, he raised and equipped _at his own expense_ a
regiment of cavalry, and hastened to the front as its captain. His
company was attached as company G to the 25th N.C. Regiment, commanded
by Col. Thos. L. Clingman. Eventually Capt. Grady was promoted to be
major of the regiment. In the first battle he fell mortally wounded,
showing how true was his presentiment of death. He was surrounded by his
men, some of them brave, sturdy North Carolinians. He left a legacy of
honor to his son, who always called North Carolina his grandmother and
had a deep affection for its sons.
Mr. Grady graduated with high honors at the University of Georgia in
Athens. Then he spent two years at the University of Virginia, where he
devoted himself rather to the study of literature and to the work of the
societies than to the regular college course. He won high honors there
as an orator and as a debater. He was as well equipped and as ready and
as effective as a debater as he became later on as an orator and editor.
He was regarded there as a universal genius and the most charming of
men. Leaving college he established a paper at Rome. Later in connection
with Mr. Alston (North Carolina stock) he established the Atlanta
_Herald_. It was a brilliant paper but was not a financial success. Our
readers will remember that Mr. Alston was shot in the Capitol by State
Treasurer Cox. Upon the failure of the _Herald_, Mr. Grady went to New
York. He was without money and went there looking for something to do.
He went into the office of the New York _Herald_ and asked for a
position.
“What can you do?” asked the managing editor, when Mr. Grady asked for a
position. “Anything,” was the reply of the young Georgian, conscious of
his powers and conscious of ability to do any kind of work that was to
be done in a great newspaper office. The editor asked him where he was
from, and learning that he was from Georgia, said: “Do you know anything
about Georgia politics?” Now if there was any subject which he knew all
about it was Georgia politics, and he said so. “Then sit down,” said the
managing editor, “and write me an article on Georgia politics.” He sat
down and dashed off an article of the brightest matter showing thorough
insight into the situation in Georgia and thorough knowledge of the
leaders in that State. He was always a facile writer, and all his
articles were printed without erasing or re-writing. The article was put
into the pigeon-hole, and Mr. Grady took his departure. He left the
office, so he said, very despondent, thinking the article might be
published after several weeks, but fearing that it would never see the
light. What was his surprise and joy to see it in the _Herald_ the next
morning. He went down to the office and was engaged as correspondent for
Georgia and the South. In this capacity he wrote letters upon Southern
topics of such brilliancy as have never been surpassed, if equaled, in
the history of American journalism. They gained for him a wide
reputation, and made him a great favorite in Georgia. The public men of
that State recognized his ability, and saw how much he might do to
develop the resources and advance the prosperity and fame of Georgia if
at the head of a great State paper. The late Alexander H. Stephens
interested himself in Mr. Grady and assisted to get him on the staff of
the _Constitution_. From the day he went to Atlanta on the staff of the
_Constitution_ until his death his best energies and his great abilities
were directed toward making it a great paper, and a powerful factor in
developing the resources of Georgia. It became the most successful of
Southern newspapers, and is to-day a competitor with the great papers of
the North. To have achieved this unprecedented success in journalism
were honor enough to win in a life-time. He was confessedly the Gamaliel
of Southern journalism, and the best of it all was that he was, as was
said of Horace Greeley after his death, “a journalist because he had
something to say which he believed mankind would be the better for
knowing; not because he wanted something for himself which journalism
might secure for him.”
He was a Saul, and stood head and shoulders above all his fellows as an
orator as well as an editor. We cannot dwell upon his reputation as an
orator, or recount the scenes of his successes. We had heard him only in
impromptu efforts and in short introductory speeches, where he easily
surpassed any man whom we ever heard. He had a fine physique, a big,
round, open, manly face, was thick-set, was pleasing in style, and had a
winning and captivating voice. He could rival Senator Vance in telling
an anecdote. He could equal Senator Ransom in a polished, graceful
oration. He could put Governor Fowle to his best in his classical
illustrations. He could equal Waddell in his eloquent flights. In a word
he had more talent as a public speaker than any man we ever knew; and
added to that he had _heart_, _soul_, _fire_—the essentials of true
oratory. We recall four speeches which gave him greatest reputation. One
was in Texas at a college commencement, we think; another at the New
York banquet on “The New South”; the third at the University of
Virginia; and the last—(alas! his last words)—at the Boston banquet just
two weeks ago. These speeches, as well as others he has made, deserve to
live. The last one—published in last week’s _Chronicle_—is emphasized by
his untimely death. In it he had so ably and eloquently defended the
South and so convincingly plead for a united country based upon mutual
confidence and sympathy that, in view of his death, his words seem to
have been touched by a patriotism and a devoutness akin to inspiration.
His broad catholicity and his great patriotism bridged all sectional
lines, and he stood before the country the most eloquent advocate of “a
Union of Hearts” as well as a “Union of Hands.” As the coming greatest
leader of the South, he sounded the key-note of sublimest patriotism.
Less profound than Daniel Webster, his burning words for the perpetuity
of the Union, with mutual trust and no sectional antagonism, were not
less thrilling nor impressive. The Southern people ought to read and
re-read this great speech, which, doubtless, cost him his life, and make
it the lamp to their feet. If we heed his words and bury sectionalism,
it will be written of him that “though dead, he yet speaketh.”
Star of the South!
To thee all eyes and hearts were turned,
As round thy path, from plain to sea,
The glory of thy greatness burned.
Millions were drawn to thee and bound
By mind’s high mastery, millions hailed
In thee a guide-star—and ne’er found
A ray in thee, that waned or failed.
No night’s embrace for thee! nor pall,
But such as mortal hand hath wrought,
Thou livest still in mind—in all
That breathes, or speaks, or lives in thought.
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