Henry W. Grady

“ A great loss has befallen the South in the death of Henry W. Grady, and deep sorrow rests upon the hearts of her people.
He was no ordinary man, and his death calls forth no ordinary grief. Brilliant in intellect, strong in his convictions, untiring in his efforts to promote the welfare of his country, genial, courteous, kind-hearted, ever ready to help the unfortunate, the loss of such a man cannot be estimated. When results were to be achieved, when encouragement was needed, his eloquent tongue, his ready pen, his helping hand were used with telling effect. ”

“ Few men die at thirty-eight whose departure is felt as a national loss, but Henry W. Grady was one. At an age when most men are just beginning to be known in their own States and to be recognized in their own section, he was known to the nation and recognized by the American people. At the South he represented the new pride in the material revival of a section desolated by the war. At the North he stood for loyal and enthusiastic support by the South of the new claims of the Union. ”

“ He was thirty-eight years old at the time of his death, and no private citizen at that age ever attained the renown that Grady had. As an orator and journalist he was without a peer; gifted above his fellows to sway men by his pen or his voice, he won the applause and admiration and love of his countrymen wherever he came in contact with them. His young life and genius had been devoted to deeds of kindness, peace, unity and charity. Selfishness did not enter his heart, that always beat in response to the woes and sufferings of his fellow men. ”

“ Made fatherless in youth by the cruel ravage of war, he struck out with a stout heart and strong hands for success—how well he achieved it, the praises showered upon him from every quarter forcibly demonstrate the fact! Who has not felt the warmth of his sunny nature?—it glows in every stroke of his pen, and shines in all his eloquent utterances, and brightens his memory as his name and triumphs pass into history. Mr. Grady, by his pen and eloquence, has done more for the South than any other of her sons, and their love and appreciation is attested in their universal sorrow. ”

“ No man within the past three years has come so suddenly before the American people, occupying so large a share of interested attention not only in the South but in the North. None has wielded a greater influence or made for himself a higher place in the public regard. The career of Mr. Grady reads like a romance. Like a true Georgian, he was born with the instincts of his people developed to a marked degree, and his rise to a position of honor and usefulness was certain, should his life be spared. ”

“ No man was more entertaining in private life, though it must be confessed that Mr. Grady had moments when he became so absorbed in his own thoughts that he was oblivious to what was passing around him, and men who knew him not were apt to do him an injustice in judging him. His life was devoted to Atlanta and Georgia, 545and to the effacing of the sectional line which divided the South and the North. The bringing of the people of the two sections into closer relations of thought and industry was a mission which it did seem had been especially reserved for him. ”

“ No effort of Toombs or Yancey, even in the days of public excitement, surpassed this last speech of Grady.
He deserves a place among the great men of America, and the South must hold his memory in reverence. A broken shaft must be his monument, for as sure as life had been spared him new honors were in store for this young man. He had made his place in the world, and he was equal to any call made upon him, and the people were learning to look to him as a leader. Few such men are born, and too much honor cannot be done them. ”

“ Grady comes to us as a sorrow with all the force of a painful surprise. He was cut down in the bloom of a robust physical manhood, in the full enjoyment of his magnificent mental powers by which he had just ascended to the very pinnacle of fame. The eyes of the country were fixed upon him, the son of the South, whose transcendent genius inspired the hope of the blessed realization of promises with which his brief but 552brilliant career was so full. But in the death of this illustrious journalist and matchless orator the lesson is enforced that “The path of glory leads but to the grave.” ”

“ Grady was a big-hearted, whole-souled fellow, a man of the people, a statesman and a patriot. His intellectual attainments and all fitted him for the grand and brilliant position which he reached. True as steel to his native South, he was able to conciliate the North. A man of noble impulses, he never offended. ”

“ To the manner born, he loved his State and his South with all the ardor of the highest type of patriot. His tongue was never silent nor his inkhorn dry when our people were aspersed. He met traducers with truths and a glittering wit which were matchless.
Grady was a genius born. His work has proved it. Ah! the sad part of it is that Death has snatched him with so much of the grand mission which was plainly his unfinished. Nature seldom endows her children with the gifts with which she favored Grady. Among modern orators he was the peer of any and his pen spoke as eloquently as his tongue. ”

“ That he should be cut down upon the threshold of a career, for whose brilliant development and broad usefulness all was prepared, is almost as much a public calamity as it is a private grief. We tender to his family, and to Georgia, whom he loved with the adoration of a true son for a mother, the homage of our respectful and profound sympathy.
Mr. Grady became a writer for the Courier-Journal when but little more than a boy and during the darkest days of the Reconstruction period. There was in those days but a single political issue for the South. ”

“ Grady was more of an orator than a writer, and brilliant as his success in journalism was, it was but the moonlight which reflected the sun that dawned only to be obscured by death. Certainly no man in any country or in any age, ever won fame as an orator faster than he. With a wide reputation as a writer, but scarcely any as a speaker, even in his own State, he appeared one night at a banquet in New York, made a speech of twenty minutes, and the next day was known throughout the United States as the foremost of Southern orators. ”

“ Henry W. Grady was a native Georgian. He was born in Athens in 1851, and consequently was too young to participate in the late war, but his father lost his life in defense of the Confederate cause, and the son was an ardent lover of the South. At an early age he developed remarkable talent for journalism and entered the profession as the editor of the Rome, Ga., Commercial. After conducting this paper for several years he moved to Atlanta, and established the Daily Herald. ”

“ Even should an orator, whose eloquence might sway multitudes, rise to reign in the dead hero’s stead, it is more than probable that he would not combine with his oratory the wonderful statistical knowledge possessed by Mr. Grady, whose solid reasoning was only exceeded by the winsome touch, creeping in here and there, of the true artistic nature. He spoke in his last address of the South’s vast resources—of its “cotton whitening by night beneath the stars, and by day the wheat locking the sunshine in its bearded sheaf.” ”

“ Henry Woodfin Grady died Monday morning, December 23, 1889, from bronchial and other troubles, irritated by his recent visit to Boston, where he made his last and greatest speech in behalf of the section and people he loved so well.
Since England lost her Wellington, and America her Lincoln, no greater calamity has moved a people to sympathetic tears than the death of Henry Grady. His life was the fulfillment of a noble man, and his grand impulses touched every phase of humanity. ”

“ To few men has it been given to live as Grady lived; to still less to die as Grady died, in the flush flood-tide of achievement, laying down sword and buckler, the victory won, and bowing farewell while yet the thunder-gust of plaudits shook the arena like a storm. He flamed like a meteor athwart the night and vanished in focal mid-zenith, leaving the illimitable void unstarred by an equal, whose rippling radiance, flashing in splendor from its myriad facets, might gladden our sublimated vision. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Grady was only ten years old when the civil war spread its terrible pall over the land, and he was only a school-boy when his native South was left defeated, desolated and despairing by the failure of the Confederacy. He grew up with the new generation that is so rapidly succeeding the actors of that great conflict in both sections. He escaped the luxury and effeminacy of fortune; he had to grapple with poverty amidst an almost hopeless people; and he was one of the earliest of the new generation to rise to the full stature of manly duty. ”

“ Grady’s work, and he brought to the work of journalism some of its highest qualifications. Ability as a writer, keen appreciation of “news,” and tireless industry, which he had, must all be held second to the power he possessed in an eminent degree of divining the drift and tendency of public feeling, being neither too early to lead it nor too late to control it. This divination Mr. Grady was daily displaying and he never made better use of it than in his last speech in Boston, the best of his life, in which he rose from mere rhetoric to a clear, earnest and convincing handling of fact. ”

“ Out of my life into the beautiful beyond have passed the two friends I loved best on earth—the chivalrous Gordon, the peerless Grady. God keep my friends and lead them gently through the meadow-lands where the river flows in song eternal. I know that near its crystal banks, where the birds sing sweetest and flowers bloom brightest, they have clasped hands in blessed and happy reunion. The love with which Henry Grady inspired his friends has never been surpassed by mortal man. Beautiful and touching have been the expressions of devotion that have come to his family. ”

“ It is no wonder that his splendid genius attracted the gaze and challenged the homage of the continent. It is perhaps even a less wonder that a man with such boundless sympathies for his fellow men and so prodigal with his own time and talent and money in the service of the public, should be so universally and tenderly loved.
The career of Henry Grady is more than unique. It constitutes a new chapter in human experience. No private citizen in the whole eventful history of this Republic ever wore a chaplet so fadeless or linked his name so surely with deathless immortality. ”

“ Grady’s purpose so far as politics were concerned. It is the key-note of his career. He was ambitious—he was fired with that “noble discontent,” born of genius, that spurs men to action, but he lacked the selfishness that leads to office-seeking. It is not to be supposed, however, that he scorned politics. He had unbounded faith in the end and aim of certain principles of government, and he had unlimited confidence in the honesty and justice of the people and in the destiny of the American Union—in the future of the Republic. ”

“ The whole country will unite in deploring the sudden extinction of a faithful life. Mr. Grady’s zeal, activity and patriotism were fully recognized in the North, as we have said, but yet it was pre-eminently to his own people that he was an example and inspiration. His loyalty to the cause in which his father fell was untinged with bitterness, and he never permitted himself to imagine that vain regrets were more sacred than present obligations. ”

“ At the North, the cry is, who shall take his place as a peacemaker? At the South, who shall take his place as a leader, as an orator, and as a peacemaker? In Atlanta, who shall take his place as all of these, and as a builder-up of our interests, our enterprises, and our industries! Who is to make for us the happy and timely suggestion? Who is to speak the right word at the right time! The loss the country has sustained in Mr. Grady’s death can only be measurably estimated when we examine one by one the manifold relations he bore to the people. ”

“ Grady addressed Northern people from the home of Phillips and Sumner, and his words have rung from Boston to San Francisco. His great speech was susceptible to no criticism for taste, for loyalty to our convictions, for impressive oratory or convincing argument. His facts and his logic are as strong as his word painting.
His beautiful tribute to the land which “lies far South” is a literary gem not destined alone to stir the hearts at the time of its utterance. It will live for its poetry, its tender sentiment and its reality. ”

“ That it is obliterated along with the ramparts of fortresses and the earthworks of the war, is as much due, or more, to Henry W. Grady than any man who has lived in the South, a survivor of the war, or brought out of its sequences into prominence. ”