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_From the “Warrenton Clipper.”_
THE people of the Southland are wrapped in grief and a nation mourns in
sympathy. While all nature beams with beauteous smiles and December
luxuriates in the balmy breezes of spring, he whom we had learned to
love and to whom his people turned for hope and encouragement, lies
wrapped in earth’s cold embrace. Henry W. Grady is dead. Early Monday
morning his brave spirit forsook its earthly tenement and sought Him who
had given it being. The electric words which flashed the sad news
through the length and breadth of the country carried mourning into
thousands of homes and millions of hearts. The friend of the people was
dead, and one universal sense of sorrow pervaded the minds of all.
Mr. Grady had just returned from Boston, where he had delivered one of
the grandest addresses of his life, before the Boston Merchants’
Association, upon the Southern question. The speech was thoroughly
Southern in its character, and a grand defense of the course of his
people in national politics and their dealings with the colored race.
Exposure in the raw New England atmosphere caused him to contract a
severe cold which rapidly grew worse. He was very ill when he returned
to Atlanta and pneumonia in its worst form soon developed. He lay ill at
his beautiful home in Atlanta for a few days only, gradually growing
worse, until the end came Monday morning.
Though his dangerous situation was known, the probability of his death
did not seem to occur to the people. That the youthful, magnetic,
beloved Grady could die seemed impossible. When the blow had fallen its
effect was to stun, and had we been told that it was a dream, a mistake,
we would really have believed it and sought out some new evidence of his
popularity. Dead! Is it possible! Before he had reached the prime of his
manhood or the zenith of his fame! Did Death but waylay to seize him
just as we were learning his worth? Of the many mysteries of life death
is the greatest.
Nothing shows more the high estimation in which the man was held than
the widespread sources from which came the words of sympathy and
condolence; from field and fireside, from town and hamlet, from city
street and mansion, from every source in which his noble words have
found an echo, poured forth the gentle words of sympathy and sorrow.
Statesmen and soldiers hastened to proffer their sympathy and great men
of every rank condoled with the bereaved ones. Not a prominent Northern
journal but devoted considerable space to his memory. Party and creed
were alike forgotten. Not a whisper of depreciation was heard from any
source.
There never died a man within the history of the State whose fame was so
recent, who was so generally loved and admired in life and so
universally regretted in death. On Christmas, the day of joy and peace,
we laid our hero to rest. Not the less a hero because his were the
victories of peace. No victor, fresh from the bloody field of battle,
was ever more deserving of his laurel wreaths than he of the chaplets we
can only lay upon his grave. The lips that pleaded so eloquently for
peace and union are stilled in death, and the hand that penned so many
beautiful words for the encouragement of his people moves no more. A
sense of peculiar personal loss is upon us. The old men have lost a son,
the young men a brother. Atlanta mourns her foremost citizen, the State
a devoted son, the South an able defender and the Nation an honored
citizen. Our matchless Grady is no more.
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