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_From the “Augusta Chronicle.”_
TWO weeks ago the people of the South were called upon to mourn the
death of Jefferson Davis. An aged man was gathered to his home in the
fullness of years, with his life-work done. He was the embodiment of a
sacred past, and men turned with reverence to do him honor for the cause
he had championed.
To-day the people again note the presence of the Great Reaper. This time
a young man is cut down in the prime of life. His work lay bright before
him. His face was toward the morning. The one represented all that the
South had been: the other much that she hoped to be. He was the
inspiration of a renewed and awakened South with a heart full of
reverence and hope and buoyancy—bound to the past by tender memories,
but confident of the future with all the heartiness of a sanguine
nature. Possibly it was because of the progressive sentiments which he
breathed that all sections and all people are to-day in grief over the
gifted dead. There is mourning in every Georgia hamlet, such as there
has been for no young man since Thomas R. R. Cobb was brought home a
corpse from Fredericksburg. There are tributes of respect from Boston,
where he stood last week, with his face aglow with the light of a newer
life, to Texas, where last year he delivered a message of fiery
eloquence to his people. It was the national feeling which Henry Grady
had kindled in the South—a faith in our future, a devotion to the
Union—a practical setting to our destiny—that now lament the loss of
such a man, and which sends over the wires from every section of the
country the words, “Untimely, how untimely!”
Henry W. Grady was born in Athens. He was but thirty-eight when he died.
His father was a country merchant who kept his family in competency, and
the house, where little Henry used to leave his romping playmates to
read Dickens under the trees, now stands on Prince avenue, with its deep
shades, its gleaming white pillars, its high fence and old-time
appearance. When war came on the elder Grady went out with his company.
His name now indents the marble side of the soldiers’ monument in
Athens—erected to those who fell in battle. Educated at the State
University, Henry Woodfin Grady graduated in 1868. In his class were
Albert H. Cox, George T. Goetchius, P. W. Meldrin, Julius L. Brown, W.
W. Thomas and J. H. Rucker—among the living—and Charles S. DuBose,
Walter S. Gordon, Davenport Jackson, and F. Bowdre Phinizy among the
dead. In college Henry Grady was more of a reader than a student. He
knew every character in Dickens and could repeat the Christmas Stories
by heart. He was a bright, companionable boy, full of frankness,
brimming over with fun and kindness, and without a thought of the great
career that lay before him. From Athens he went to Rome where he engaged
in newspaper work. His letters to the Atlanta papers attracted the
attention of Col. I. W. Avery, who gave him several odd jobs. There was
a dash and creaminess in his sketch work which became popular at once.
From Rome young Grady went to Atlanta, and with Col. Robert A. Alston
started the Atlanta _Herald_.
From this time he has been a public figure in Georgia. The _Herald_ was
immensely popular. Its methods were all new. Grady widened its columns
to make it look like Horace Greeley’s paper, and hired special engines
in imitation of James Gordon Bennett. He made money but spent it
lavishly for news. His editorial sketches were wonderfully clever. His
“Last Man in the Procession,” “The Trained Journalist,” “Toombs and
Brown,” attracted wide attention. But the _Herald_ could not stand this
high pressure. Under the cool, skilled management of the _Constitution_,
Grady’s paper succumbed, and with it all of his private means were lost.
The young man in 1876 was absolutely penniless. It was then his genius
burst forth, however. The New York _Herald_ ordered everything he could
write. The Augusta _Constitutionalist_ paid for his letters from
Atlanta. He started a Sunday paper, which he afterwards gave up, and
pretty soon he was regularly engaged by the Atlanta _Constitution_.
During the electoral trouble in Florida, Grady kept the Northern papers
full of luminous sketches about politics and fraud. Then he commenced to
write up the orange interests in Florida, winning the attention of the
North and attracting scores of visitors to the Land of Flowers. Next he
took up bee culture and stock raising in Georgia. He made the sand pear
of Thomasville famous. He revived the melon interest, and, in his
wizard-like way, got the people to believe in diversified farming. There
was a richness and lightness in his touch which added interest to the
most practical subject. What he handled was adorned. He drew people to
Atlanta by his pen-pictures of a growing town. In the Philadelphia
_Times_ of this period were fine letters about public men and battles of
the war. He became a personality as well as a power in journalism. No
man was better known in Georgia than Henry Grady.
Henry Grady, shortly after he left college, was married to Miss Jule
King, daughter of Dr. Wm. King, of Athens. Two children, Gussie and
Henry, bear his name. Mr. Grady’s work on the _Constitution_ was
inspirational. When he became interested he would apply himself closely,
working night and day in a campaign or upon a crusade. Then he would
lighten up, contenting himself with general supervision; frequently
taking trips away for diversion. He was singularly temperate—not
drinking wine or using tobacco; but his emotional nature kept him
constantly at concert pitch. His nervous system was in perpetual strain
and he sank as soon as stricken.
It was in 1877 that he made his first appearance as a speaker. His
lecture that year, entitled “Patchwork Palace,” showed his fancy and
talent as a talker as well as a writer. Then came his speeches in the
prohibition contest in 1885. His New England banquet address in
December, 1886, was his first distinctive political speech. It stamped
him as an eloquent orator and made him national fame. His oration at the
Augusta Exposition on Thanksgiving day last year was a perfect effort,
and his Dallas address in October was a fearless and manly analysis of
the race problem. It was this subject, classified and digested, that
made up his Boston address, where, last week, he completed his fame and
met his death. His address last year at the University of Virginia was a
model of its kind.
Of late years Henry Grady had been settling down to the level of a solid
worker, a close thinker and safe leader. If there was anything in his
way to wide influence in earlier life, it was his irrepressible fancy
and bubbling spirit. These protruded in speech and writing. But as he
grew older he lopped off this redundant tegument. He never lost the
artist’s touch or the poet’s enthusiasm. But age and experience brought
conservatism. He became a power in politics from the day the _Herald_
backed Gordon for the Senate in 1872. He followed Ben Hill in his
campaign with great skill, and in 1880 did as much as any man to win the
great Colquitt-Brown victory. In 1886 he managed Gen. Gordon’s canvass
for Governor, and in 1887 planned and conducted the first successful
Piedmont Exposition.
Some may say that Henry Grady died at the right time for his fame. This
may be true as to others, but not as to him. They know not, who thus
judge him, what was in the man. Some mature early in life and their
mentality is not increased by length of years, but the mind of our dead
friend was constantly developing. The evidence of this was his Boston
speech, which in our opinion was the best ever delivered by him. No man
could foresee the possibilities of such a mind as his. He had just
reached the table land on the mountain top, from which his mental vision
could calmly survey the true situation of the South, and his listening
countrymen would hear his inspiring admonitions of truth, wisdom and
patriotism. Mr. Grady had firmly planted his feet on the ladder of fame.
He had the genius of statesmanship, and, had he lived, we have no doubt
that he would have measured up to the full stature of the most gifted
statesmen whose names adorn the annals of the Republic.
In speaking of the loss to this section, we do not wish to indulge in
the language of exaggeration when we say that the South has lost her
most gifted, eloquent and useful son. His death to Georgia is a personal
bereavement. His loss to the country is a public one. He loved Georgia.
He loved the South. With the ardor of a patriot he loved his whole
country, and his last public words touched the patriotic heart of the
people and the responsive throb came back from all sections for a
re-united people and a restored Union.
Henry Grady has not lived in vain. He is dead, but his works will live
after him and bear fruits in the field of patriotism.
There was one thing about Henry Grady. He never ran for office or seemed
to care for public honor. In the white heat of politics for fifteen
years he has been mostly concerned in helping others. The young men of
the State who have sought and secured his aid in striving for public
station are many. But until last year when his own name was mentioned
for the national Senate he had shunned such prominence. At that time it
was seriously urged against him that he had never served in the
Legislature and that his training had not been in deliberative bodies.
But the time was coming when he must have held high public place. The
Governor’s chair or the Senator’s toga would have been his in the near
future. His leadership in practical matters, in great public works, the
impulse he had given the people in building up the material interests of
the South were carrying him so rapidly to the front that he could not
have kept out of public office. But his position at the time of his
death was unique. He was a power behind the throne, mightier than the
throne itself. He was a Warwick like Thurlow Weed. Whether official
station could have increased his usefulness is a question. Whether his
influence would have been advanced by going into politics was a problem
which he had never settled in his own mind. Already he had a
constituency greater than that of governor or senator. He spoke every
week to more people than the chief magistrate of any state in the Union.
He employed a vehicle of more power than the great seal of the State. He
wrote with the pen of genius and spoke the free inspiration of an
untrammeled citizen. He was under no obligations but duty and his own
will. He made friends rather than votes and his reward was the love and
admiration of his people—a more satisfactory return than the curule
chair.
And so his death, cruel, untimely and crushing, may have been a crown to
a noble, devoted and gifted life. His happiness, his influence, his
reputation had little to ask in the turmoil of politics. Its
uncertainties and ingratitudes would have bruised a guileless, generous
heart. Not that he was unequal to it, but because he did not need public
office, may we seek satisfaction in the fact that he lived and died a
faithful worker and a private citizen. His last plea was for the people
of a slandered section—an answer to the President that “the South was
not striving to settle the negro problem.” It was an inspiration and
wrung praise from friend and opponent. It cost him his life, but no man
ever gave up life in nobler cause. He lived to see his State prosperous,
his reputation Union-wide, his name honored and loved, his professional
work full of success, and no man has gone to the grave with greater
evidences of tenderness and respect.
As Grady said of Dawson, so let us say of Grady: “God keep thee,
comrade; rest thy soul in peace, thou golden-hearted gentleman!”
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