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THE SOUTH’S NOBLE SON.
SOUTHERN PRESS.
A NOBLE DEATH.
A LAS, that the hero of the New South should follow, and in so
short a time, the typical hero and representative of the Old! With
hearts still bowed beneath the shadow of the flags at half-mast all
over the South for Jefferson Davis, comes the sad and sudden
message announcing the death of Henry W. Grady.
Poor Grady! Dead in the very summer time and blossom and
golden fruitage of a brilliant life! Fallen, while yet so young and in the
arms of his first overwhelming victory. Fallen on the topmost crest of
a grand achievement—on the shining heights he had just so bravely
won! Hapless fate, that he could not survive to realize the full fruition
of his sublime endeavor! He went North only a few days ago on a
mission of love and reconciliation, his great heart bearing the
sorrows of the South, his big brain pulsing with patriotic purpose. Of
a nervous, sensitive nature, his physical system, in sympathy with
his intellectual triumph, both strained to the utmost tension, rendered
him susceptible to the sudden change of climate, and he contracted
a severe cold which soon developed into pneumonia, attended by a
burning fever. Returning home he was met at the depot by what had
been arranged for a grand ovation and a banquet at the Chamber of
Commerce, by the people of Atlanta, but instead of being carried on
the strong shoulders of the thousands who loved and honored him,
he was received into the gentle arms of his family and physicians
and borne tenderly home, to linger yet for a little while with the fond
circle whose love, deep, strong, and tender as it was, appealed in
vain against the hard decree of the great conqueror.
As Mr. Grady so eloquently expressed in his last hours: “Tell
mother I died for the South, the land I love so well!” And this was as
true as it could be of any patriot who falls on the field of battle.
But has death, indeed, reaped the fruit? May not the very sacrifice,
in itself, consecrate his last eloquent and inspired words till they sink
deeper into the hearts of the North and South alike, thus linked with
a more sacred memory and a sublimer sorrow? If so, we shall find a
larger recompense even in the bitter bereavement.
As far as his personal history is concerned, Henry Grady could not
have died a nobler death. The Greek philosopher said: “Esteem no
man happy while he lives.” He who falls victorious, the citadel won,
in a blaze of glory, is safe; safe from all the vicissitudes of fortune;
safe from any act that might otherwise tarnish an illustrious name. It
descends a rich heritage to after time. During the presidential
campaign of 1844 the wonderful orator, Sargent S. Prentiss,
delivered at Nashville, to an immense audience, the greatest
campaign speech, perhaps, that was ever heard in the United
States. After speaking for several hours, and just as he was closing
an eloquent burst of oratory, he fell fainting in the arms of several of
the bystanders. At once there was a rush to resuscitate him, but
Governor Jones, thoroughly inspired by the speech and occasion,
sprang from his seat, in a stentorian voice shouting: “Die! Prentiss;
die! You’ll never have a better time!”
The Times-Union has heretofore commented on Mr. Grady’s
magnificent oration at Boston. It not only captured New England and
the South, but the entire country. Nothing like it since the war has
been uttered. In force, power, eloquence, it has been but rarely
excelled in any time. Major Audley Maxwell, a leading Boston lawyer,
describes it in a letter to a friend in this city as “a cannon-ball in full
flight, fringed with flowers.” The occasion, the audience, the
surroundings, were all inspiring. He was pleading for the South—for
the people he loved—and to say that he reached the topmost height
of the great argument, is comment and compliment enough. The
closing paragraphs are republished this morning, and no man ever
uttered a sublimer peroration. He spoke as one might have spoken
standing consciously within the circling wings of death, when the
mind is expanded by the rapid crowding of great events and the lips
are touched with prophetic fire.
The death of Henry Grady was a public calamity. He had the ear of
the North as no other Southern man had, or has. He was old enough
to have served in the Confederate armies, yet young enough, at the
surrender, while cherishing the traditions of the past, to still lay firm
hold on the future in earnest sympathy for a restored and reconciled
Union. In this work he was the South’s most conspicuous leader.
But his life-work is finished. Let the people of the South re-form
their broken ranks and move forward to the completion of the work
which his genius made more easy of accomplishment and which his
death has sanctified. In the words he himself would have spoken, the
words employed by another brilliant leader on undertaking a great
campaign, each of the soldiers enlisted for the South’s continued
progress will cry: “Spurn me if I flee; support me if I fall, but let us
move on! In God’s name, let us move on!”
THERE WAS NONE GREATER.
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
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.