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_From the “Oglethorpe Echo.”_
TOGETHER with the sorrow of the thousands who loved Henry Grady that he
should be taken from among them, comes the lament of the Nation that one
so gifted and capable of so much good should be cut down just as he was
fairly upon the threshold of his useful career. Viewing the surroundings
from a human standpoint, it would seem that his end was indeed untimely
and a calamity to the whole Nation.
Our own Colquitt and Gordon have won greatly the respect of the Northern
people, but they nor any Southern man had as implicitly their
confidence. Whatever Grady said or wrote, on no matter what subject, our
friends across Mason and Dixon’s line accepted as utterly true and not
to be questioned. They respected also his ability more than they did any
other man of this section, and were more inclined to take his counsel
and be governed by his advice and admonition.
This distinction Grady had honestly won, and by having it he was doing
more than any ten men to obliterate sectional prejudices. His last great
speech, delivered only a few days before his death, was on this line,
and its good effects will be felt the country over, though he has been
taken before he could see them. In that speech he disabused the minds of
his hearers of many erroneous ideas of the relations of the races in the
South. He did it by stating plainly and unhesitatingly facts and giving
a true picture of the situation without varnish. He had the gift of
doing this in such a way as to command the respect of both sides of
whatever question he might be discussing. Just such speakers and just
such speeches is what is now needed to bring the two sections together;
to obliterate sectional prejudices; make the entire Nation one people in
purpose and sentiment. But have we any more Gradys to make them? Perhaps
so, but they are in the background and time must elapse before they can
reach his place. We need them in the front and on the platform now.
Grady was already there, and was doing perhaps, as no other man will
ever do, what is urgently needed to make the Nation more harmonious,
more peaceful and more prosperous; and while we must bow in humble
submission to the will of the Higher Power which saw fit to end his
career, we can but lament the evident loss the people of the South
especially, and the whole Nation, sustains.
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