Chapter II (6)

THE death of Henry W. Grady of the Atlanta _Constitution_ is a loss to journalism, to the South and to the nation. He had done good work for each, and still more could reasonably be expected of him but for his untimely death at the comparatively early age of thirty-eight. His fatal illness was contracted when serving the cause of the whole country by pleading in the North for a more generous and just judgment of the Southern people and of their efforts to solve the race problem. He has done much toward bringing about a better understanding by his brilliant, earnest and logical addresses to Northern audiences, in which he abated nothing of that intense love for that part of the Union of which he was a native, but at the same time appealed to them as citizens of the same country, as brothers, to bury past differences, make allowance for conditions that were not desired and could not be avoided, and substitute friendly confidence for prejudiced suspicion. More of the same good work was expected of him, but as his mother said when speaking of his dangerous condition: “May be his work is finished.” Under his management the _Constitution_ worked unceasingly for the physical and moral regeneration of the South. It preached the gospel of the “New South,” redeemed by work, by enterprise and by devotion to the Union of which the South is an integral part, and its preaching has not been in vain. With pen and tongue, equally eloquent with both, Mr. Grady labored in behalf of the cause he had so much at heart, and, although dying thus early, he had the satisfaction of knowing that his work was not in vain; that it is certain to bring forth good fruit.

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THE BEST REPRESENTATIVE OF THE NEW SOUTH.

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_From the “Albany, N.Y., Journal.”_

BY the death of Henry Woodfin Grady the country loses one of its most brilliant journalists.

THROUGHOUT the country his death will be deplored as most untimely, for the future was bright before him. He had already, although only thirty-eight years old, reached the front rank in his profession, and he had been talked of as nominee for the vice-presidency. This eminence he won not only by his brilliant writing, but also by his integrity and high purposes. He never held an office, for though he could make and unmake political destinies, he never took for himself the distinctions he was able to bestow upon others. Though he inherited many ante-bellum prejudices and feelings, yet no editor of the South was more earnest, more fearless in denouncing the outrages and injustices from time to time visited upon the negro. So the American people have come to believe him the best representative of the “New South,” whose spokesman he was—an able journalist and an honest man who tried according to his convictions to make the newspaper what it should be, a living influence for the best things in our political, industrial and social life.

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A LAMENTABLE LOSS TO THE COUNTRY.

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_From the “Cincinnati Commercial Gazette.”_

HE was a man of high faculties and purposes, and of great breadth of sympathy. He had courage of heart equal to capacity of brain, and placed in the core of the South, in her most busy city, and the undoubted representative man of her ambition and progress, it is lamentable that he should be lost to the country.

It seemed to be in no man’s grasp to do more good than he had appointed for his task. He has done that which will be memorable. It is something forever, to plow one deep furrow in fertile land for the seed that is in the air.

He is dead, as the poets that are loved must die, still counting his years in the thirties; and there is this compensation, that it may yet be said of him in the South, as was so beautifully sung by Longfellow of Burns in Scotland, that he haunts her fields in “immortal youth.”

And then to die so young, and leave
Unfinished what he might achieve.
... He haunts his native land
As an immortal youth; his hand
Guides every plow,
He sits beside each ingle-nook;
His voice is in each rushing brook,
Each rustling bough.

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A SAD LOSS.

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_From the “Buffalo, N.Y., Express.”_

THE death of no other man than Henry Woodfin Grady could have plunged Georgia into such deep mourning as darkens all her borders to-day. Atlanta is the center of Georgia life, and Grady was the incarnation of Atlanta vitality. His was a personality difficult to associate with the idea of death. He was so thoroughly alive, bodily and mentally, he was so young, the fibers of his being reached out and were embedded in so many of the living interests of Georgia and the whole South, that no thought of his possible sudden end would rise in the minds of any who knew him. And his friends were legion. Everybody called him Henry.

In ten years he rose from obscurity to a prominence that made him the foremost figure of his day in the South, and had already linked his name with the second office in the gift of the American people. As an orator he was the pride of the South, as Chauncey M. Depew is of the North. As a journalist no Northern man bears the relation to his section that Grady did to the South. As a public-spirited citizen it seemed only necessary for Grady to espouse a project for it to succeed beyond all expectations. Yet but a few years ago he started three newspapers in succession and they all failed! Failure was the alphabet of his success.

When Mr. Grady bought a quarter interest in the Atlanta _Constitution_ he had had but slender training in journalism. He had written a great deal, which is quite another thing. Though the _Constitution_ has remained intensely provincial in its methods ever since, he has given it an influence in the South unrivalled by any other paper, with possibly one exception. Under his inspiration the _Constitution_ viewed everything Georgian, and especially Atlantian, as better than similar things elsewhere. It backed up local enterprises with a warmth that shames the public spirit of most Northern cities. It boasted of local achievements with a vehemence that was admirable while it sometimes was amusing. Florid in his own speech and writing, Mr. Grady gathered about him on the _Constitution_ men of similar gifts, who often wrote with pens dipped, as it were, in parti-colored inks, and filled its columns with ornate verbal illuminations. Yet amid much that was over-done and under-done there often appeared work of genuine merit. For the _Constitution_ under Grady has been the vehicle by which some of the most talented of the late Southern writers have become familiar to the public. Grady was proud of them, and of his paper. “I have the brightest staff and the best newspaper in the United States,” he once remarked to this writer. And Mr. Grady firmly believed what he said.

It was as a speech-maker that Grady was best known at the North. Echoes of his eloquence had been heard here from time to time, but soon after the Charleston earthquake he made the address on “The New South,” before the New England Society at New York, that won for him the applause of the entire country, and must now stand as the greatest effort of his life. His recent speech in Boston is too fresh in mind to need attention here. Mr. Grady’s style was too florid to be wholly pleasing to admirers of strong and simple English. He dealt liberally in tropes and figures. He was by turns fervid and pathetic. He made his speeches, as he conducted his newspaper, in a manner quite his own. It pleased the people in Georgia, and even when he and his partner, Capt. Howell, ran the _Constitution_ on both sides of the Prohibition question it was regarded as a brilliant stroke of journalistic genius.

Personally Mr. Grady was one of the most companionable and lovable of men. His hand and his purse were always open. His last act in Atlanta, when waiting at the depot for the train that bore him to the Boston banquet, was to head a subscription to send the Gate City Guard to attend Jefferson Davis’s funeral. His swarthy face was lighted by a bright, moist, black eye that flashed forth the keen, active spirit within. The impression left upon the mind after meeting him was of his remarkable alertness.

He will be a sad loss to Georgia, and to the South. There is none to take his place. His qualities and his usefulness must be divided henceforth among a number. No one man possesses them all.

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WORDS OF VIRGIN GOLD.

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_From the “Oswego, N.Y., Palladium.”_

THE peaceful serenity of the Christmas festival is sadly married by the intelligence flashed over the wires from the fair Southern city of Atlanta to-day. “Death loves a shining mark,” and without warning it came and took away Henry W. Grady, the renowned orator and the brilliant editor, the man above all others who could least be spared by the South at this time. A week ago last Thursday night he stood up in the banquet hall at Boston and with charming eloquence delivered to the people of the North a message from the loyal South—a message that went out over the land and across the sea in words of pure, virgin gold, that will live long after he from whose lips they fell has returned to dust. Mr. Grady’s effort on that occasion attracted the admiration of the whole country. He spoke as one inspired, and his pathetic words at times moved strong men to tears and made a lasting impression upon all who were privileged to hear him. When he resumed his seat exhausted and perspiring, he became a prey to the chilling draughts and took a very severe cold. The evening next following he was banqueted by the Bay State Club of Boston, and when he arose to respond to a happy sentiment offered by the toastmaster in honor of the guest of the evening, he could scarcely speak. He apologized for his condition and spoke but briefly, and when he had finished the company arose and gave him a double round of cheers. Among the fine sentiments of his closing words, the last of his public utterances, were these: “There are those who want to fan the embers of war, but just as certain as there is a God in the heaven, when these uneasy insects of the hour perish in the heat that gave them life, the great clock of this Republic will tick out the slow moving and tranquil hour and the watchmen in the street will cry, ‘All is well! All is well!’” His last words were these: “We bring to your hearts that yearn for your confidence and love, the message of fellowship from our home, and this message comes from consecrated ground—ground consecrated to us by those who died in defeat. It is likely that I shall not again see Bostonians assembled together, therefore I want to take this occasion to thank you and my excellent friends of last night, and those friends who accompanied us this morning to Plymouth, for all that you have done for us since we have been here, and to say that whenever you come South, just speak your name and remember that Boston and Massachusetts is the watchword, and we will meet you at the gate.”

Mr. Grady returned home immediately, and his friends, who had prepared to greet him with a great reception, met him at the train only to learn that he was sick unto death. He was carried home suffering with pneumonia and at 3:40 A.M. to-day breathed his last. The nations will stop amid the Christmas festivities to lay upon the bier of the dead Southerner a wealth of tenderness and love.

It was as an editor that Grady was best known. His brilliant and forceful contributions made the Atlanta _Constitution_ famous from one end of this broad land to the other. As an orator he was master of an accurate and rhythmical diction which swept through sustained flights to majestic altitudes. We will deal with the statistical record of his life at another time, and can only add here that it is a matter for sincere regret that he has been taken away before he had reached the summit of his fame or the meridian of his usefulness.

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SAD NEWS.

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_From the “Boston Advertiser.”_

THE untimely death yesterday of Henry Woodfin Grady is sad news. He was predisposed to lung diseases, and the circumstances of his visit to Boston were most unfortunate. The weather was very mild when he arrived here, but became suddenly chill and wintry just before his departure. Half our native population seemed to have caught cold owing to the sudden and severe change in temperature, and Mr. Grady contracted pneumonia in its most violent form, so that he grew steadily worse to the end. His trip to Boston was eagerly anticipated, both because he had never been in New England, and also for the reason that the greatest interest had been created both North and South over the announcement that he would speak on the race problem. The impression made by his address—for it rose far above the ordinary after-dinner speech—is still strong, and the expectation created in the South is attested by the fact that a body-guard, as it were, of admiring friends from among leading representative Southerners made the trip with Mr. Grady for the express purpose of hearing his exposition of the race problem.

Of Mr. Grady’s address there is nothing new to add. It was one of the finest specimens of elegant and fervid oratory which this generation has heard. It met the fondest anticipations of his friends, and the people of his native State had planned to pay him extraordinary honors for the surpassing manner in which he plead their cause. The address, considered in all respects, was superior to that which he delivered in New York and which won national reputation for him. His treatment of the race problem was in no respect new, and it met with only a limited approval, but while he did not convince, Mr. Grady certainly won from the North a larger measure of intelligent appreciation of the problem laid upon the South. It was impossible not to perceive his sincerity, and we recognized in him and in his address the type and embodiment of the most advanced sentiment in the generation which has sprung up at the South since the war. Mr. Grady’s father lost his life in the Confederate army; Mr. Grady himself spoke in the North to Union veterans and their sons. It was perhaps impossible, from the natural environments of the situation, that he should speak to the entire acceptance of his auditors, or that he should give utterance to the ultimate policy which will prevail in the settlement of the race problem. But we of the North can and do say that Mr. Grady has made it easier for one of another generation, removed from the war, to see with clearer vision and to speak to the whole country on the race problem with greater acceptance than would now be possible. To have done this is to do much, and it is in striking contrast with the latter-day efforts of that other great figure in Southern life who has but lately gone down to the grave unreconciled.

The North laments the death of Mr. Grady, and sincerely trusts that his mantle as an apostle of the New South will fall upon worthy shoulders. Business interests are bringing the North and South together at a wonderfully rapid rate. This is not the day nor the generation in which to witness perfect that substantial agreement for which we all hope. But we are confident that if to the firmness of the Northern views upon the civil rights of the black man there be added a fuller measure of sympathy for those who must work out the problem, and if Mr. Grady’s spirit of loyalty, national pride and brotherly kindness becomes deeply rooted in the South, the future will be promising for the successful solution of that problem which weighs so heavily upon every lover of his country.

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A LEADER OF LEADERS.

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_From the “Philadelphia Times.”_

THE death of Henry W. Grady, chief editor of the Atlanta _Constitution_, is an irreparable loss to the South. Of all the many and influential newspaper men of that section, Mr. Grady can only be compared with Mr. Watterson, of the Louisville _Courier-Journal_, in point of distinction; and while Watterson is the better equipped journalist, Grady was the greater popular leader. He was not only a brilliant and forceful writer, but a most eloquent and impressive speaker, and one of the most sagacious in council.

Mr. 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. Thoroughly Southern in sympathy, and keenly sharing the memories which are sacred to all who wore and supported the gray, he saw the new occasion with its new duties as the latent wealth of the South, that so long slumbered under the blight of slavery, gave promise of development; and alike in his own Empire State of the South, and in the great metropolis of the Union and in the Bay State citadel of opposite political views, he ever declared the same sentiments and cemented the bond of common brotherhood.

And no other young man of the South gave so much promise of future honors and usefulness as did Mr. Grady. He has fallen ere he had reached the full noontide of life, and when his public career was just at its threshold. He could have been United States Senator at the last election had he not given his plighted faith to another; and even with the office left to go by default, it was with reluctance that the Legislature, fresh from the people, passed him by in obedience to his own command. That he would have been leader of leaders in the South, yea, in the whole Union, is not doubted; and he was the one man of the present in the South who might have been called to the Vice-Presidency had his life been spared. He was free from the blemish of the Confederate Brigadier, that is ever likely to be an obstacle to a popular election to the Presidency or Vice-Presidency, and he was so thoroughly and so grandly typical of the New South, with its new pulsations, its new progress, its new patriotism, that his political promotion seemed plainly written in the records of fate.

But Henry W. Grady has fallen in the journey with his face yet looking to the noonday sun, and it is only the vindication of truth to say that he leaves no one who can fully take his place. Other young men of the South will have their struggling paths brightened by the refulgence his efforts and achievements reflect upon them, but to-day his death leaves a gap in Southern leadership that will not be speedily filled. And he will be mourned not only by those who sympathized with him in public effort. He was one of the most genial, noble and lovable of men in every relation of life, and from the homes of Georgia, and from the by-ways of the sorrowing as well as from the circles of ambition, there will be sobbing hearts over the grave of Henry W. Grady.

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A FORCEFUL ADVOCATE.

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_From the “Springfield, Mass., Republican.”_

THE death of Henry Woodfin Grady, the brilliant young Southern editor and orator, which took place at Atlanta, Ga., was almost tragic in its suddenness; it will make a profound impression at the South, and will be deeply deplored here at the North, where he had come to be known as a florid yet forceful advocate and apologist of his section. He had lately caught the ear of the country, and while his speeches provoked critical replies, it may be said in his honor that he, more than any other Southerner, had lifted the plane of sectional debate from that of futile recriminations to more dignified and candid interchanges of opinion. That is saying much for a man who was a lad during the rebellion, and who had not passed his thirty-ninth birthday. He was a man of pronounced views, perhaps given more to pictures of prosperity than to the methods of its attainment, and when upon the platform he carried the crowd by the force of that genius for passionate appeals which his Irish ancestry and Southern training had given him in full measure. No Southerner had put the conflict of races in so reassuring a light; but he was not old enough or far-seeing enough to realize that the problem can and will be solved,—and that by Southerners.

Mr. Grady called about him a formidable group of young Democrats filled with the spirit of the New South. They believed that Georgia would rise and the South be reconstructed in the broadest sense by the multiplication of factories and the advancement of trade. These young men selected Gov. Colquitt for their standard-bearer in the State election of 1880, and Mr. Grady was made chairman of the campaign committee. Colquitt during his first term had offended the Democratic regulars, and the young men carried the war into the back country. The vote at the primaries was unprecedentedly heavy. Colquitt carried the State and was the first governor elected under the new constitution. Grady never held public office, but it was supposed that he had been selected by the Democratic leaders as Gov. Gordon’s successor, and many thought that he was angling for the second place on the Democratic national ticket in 1892.

The attention of the North was first called to the brilliant Georgian by his address at New York in June, 1887, at the annual dinner of the New England Society. His speech at the Washington Centennial banquet last spring was rather a disappointment, but he fully recovered his prestige the other day at Boston, where he shared the honors of a notable occasion with Grover Cleveland. Mr. Grady found time from his editorial work to write an occasional magazine article, but his subject was his one absorbing study—the South and its future.

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HIS GREAT WORK.

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_From the “Boston Post.”_

THE death of the brilliant young Southerner whose eloquence yet rings in our ears followed so closely upon his visit to Boston that it doubtless arouses a keener sense of regret and a clearer realization of loss here than in other communities. Mr. Grady, moreover, in speaking for the New South, whose aspirations he so ably represented, while addressing the whole nation, yet brought himself more closely to New England in his arguments, his contrasts and his fervid appeals; and, whether it was admiration of his courage in combating the remnants of traditional prejudices in the heart of the section in which this feeling once was the strongest, or a sympathy with the sentiments which he expressed in such captivating language, it cannot be doubted that the warmest recognition which he has received outside his own State is that which he won from this community.

In all his efforts to spread that knowledge of the sentiments and the purposes of the South which would tend to make the restored union of the States more secure and more harmonious, Mr. Grady has addressed himself especially to New England. It was at the meeting of the New England Society in New York, in 1886, that he made the first notable speech which evoked such a ready and generous response from all sections of the country; and the last public words which he spoke in furtherance of the same purpose were those delivered upon Plymouth Rock at the end of the recent visit which he described as a pilgrimage.

It is seldom, indeed, that a people or an idea has the fortune to possess such an advocate as Mr. Grady. He not only knew where to carry his plea, but he had a rare gift of eloquence in presenting it. Whether Mr. Grady, as his field of effort enlarged, would have developed a more varied talent as an orator, can never be known; but in the illustration of the one subject on which he made himself heard before the people he showed himself a master of the art. On this topic, full of inspiration for him, he spoke with a brilliancy and power which were unapproachable. Since Wendell Phillips, there is none possessed of such a strength of fervid eloquence as that which this young man displayed. Much of the effect produced by his speeches, of course, must be attributed to the existence of a sentiment seldom aroused, but ready to respond to such an appeal; but when every allowance is made for the circumstances under which he achieved his triumphs of oratory, there remains the inimitable charm which gave power and effect to his words.

If Mr. Grady had been simply a rhetorician, his place in the public estimation would be far different from that which is now accorded him. Without the talent which he possessed in so remarkable degree, he could not have produced the effect which he did; but back of the manner in which he said what he had to say, which moved men to tears and to applause, were the boldness, the frankness and the entire sincerity of the man. His words brought conviction as his glowing phrases stirred the sentiment of his hearers, and amid all the embellishments of oratory there was presented the substantial fabric of fact. His last speech in Boston was as strong in its argument as it was delightful in its rhetoric.

The influence which Mr. Grady has exerted upon the great movement which has consolidated the Union and brought the South forward in the march of industrial development cannot now be estimated. He has not lived to see the realization of what he hoped. But there can be no doubt that his short life of activity in the great work will have far-reaching results.

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NEW ENGLAND’S SORROW.

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_From the “Boston Herald.”_

THE death of Henry W. Grady comes at a time and under conditions which will cause a deep feeling of sorrow and regret in the minds of the people of New England. He came to us only a few days ago as a representative of our Southern fellow-countrymen, grasping the hand of good will that was extended to him, and professing, in the eloquent addresses that he made, a desire to do all that he could to allay any differences of opinion or prejudices that might exist between the people of the North and those of the South. One means of doing this, and one which appealed particularly to the inhabitants of New England, was the unquestioned admiration that he had for our traditions and institutions, an admiration which he owned was so far cherished in the South as to lead many of its people to copy our methods. The New South was a change from the Old South, for the reason that its people were discarding their former theories and opinions, and were to a large degree copying those which we have always held.

It is needless at this time to speak of Mr. Grady’s attempt to defend the Southern method of settling the race problem, but, although there were many who believed that he did not fully make out his case, his statement of it threw a light upon the question which was probably new to a large number of those who heard or read his words.

Of Mr. Grady’s eloquence it can be said that it was spontaneity itself. Rarely has a man been gifted with so remarkable a command of language and so complete a knowledge of its felicitous use. There was in his address an exuberance of fancy which age and a wider experience of men and methods would have qualified, but no one can doubt that this gift of his, combined as it was with high intentions and honesty of purpose, would have made of him in a few years more, if he had been spared, a man of national importance in the affairs of our country.

It is sad to think that this young and promising life was thus unexpectedly cut off, and by causes which seem to have been avoidable ones. It is probable that Mr. Grady unconsciously overtaxed himself on his Northern trip. He arrived in this city suffering from a severe cold, which would probably have yielded to a day or two of complete rest. But not only were there fixed appointments which he had come here to meet, but new engagements and duties were assumed, so that during his short stay here he was not only in a whirl of mental excitement, but was undergoing constant physical exposure.

A man of less rugged strength would have yielded under this trial before it was half over, but Mr. Grady’s physique carried him through, and those who heard his last speech, probably the last he ever delivered, at the dinner of the Bay State Club, will remember that, though he excused himself on account of his physical disabilities, the extemporaneous address was full of the fire and pathos of his native eloquence. But, although unaware of the sacrifice he was making, it is probable that Mr. Grady weakened himself by these over-exertions to an extent that made him an easy prey to the subtle advance of disease.

His death causes a vacancy that cannot easily be filled. The South was in need, and in years to come may be in still greater need, of an advocate such as he would have been. She will, no doubt, find substitutes for this journalist-orator, but we doubt whether any of these will, in so short a time, win by their words the attention of the entire American people or so deservedly hold their respect and admiration.

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A NOBLE LIFE ENDED.

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_From the “Philadelphia Telegraph.”_

THE country will be startled to learn of the death of Henry W. Grady. 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. But like the average man, even in this country of free opportunities, he had to fight his way over obstacles which would have discouraged if not crushed out the spirit of a less courageous and indomitable man. He was too young to take any part in the late great internal strife, but as a bright-minded boy he emerged from that contest with vivid and bitter memories, an orphan, his father having fallen beneath the “Stars and Bars.” His young manhood, while not altogether clouded by poverty, started him upon the battle of life without any special favoring circumstances, and without the support of influential friends to do for him in a measure what doubtless would gladly have been done could his future have been foreseen. But he started out for himself, and in the rugged school of experience was severely taught the lessons of self-reliance and individual energy which were to prepare him for the responsibilities of intellectual leadership amongst a people in a sadly disorganized condition, who were groping in the dark, as it were, seeking the light of prosperity. He never but for a short time left his own State, and as his field of observation and work enlarged and his influence extended, his love for it seemed to grow more intense. It became with him, indeed, a passion that was always conspicuous, and upon which he loved to dwell, with pen or tongue, and some of his tributes to the Empire Commonwealth of the South, as he loved to call it, will proudly be recorded by the future historian of the annals of the time.

It was as an active editor of the Atlanta _Constitution_ that Mr. Grady found the sphere of labor in which he was to win high honor, and from which he was to send out an influence measured only by the boundaries of the South itself, if it did not extend, in fact, to the borders of the nation. He wrote and spoke, when appearing in public, from a patriotic and full heart. His utterances were those of a man deeply in love with his country, and earnestly desirous of promoting her highest prosperity and happiness. Some of his deliverances were prose poems that will be read with delight by future generations of Southern youth. They came forth flashing like meteors, doubtless to the astonishment of their author himself, for he seemed to reach national prominence at a single bound. There were times when Mr. Grady seemed to falter and slip aside in discussing some of the burning questions of the hour, but this was due to his great sympathy with his own people, his toleration of their prejudices, and his desire to keep step with them and be one with them throughout his work in their behalf. But he was an ardent young patriot, a zealous and true friend of progress, and the New South will miss him as it would miss no other man of the time. He set a brilliant example to the younger men as well. He reached for and grasped with a hearty grip the hand of the North in the spirit of true fraternity, and it is a pathetic incident that the climax to his career should have been an address in the very center of the advanced thought of New England. His death seems almost tragic, and doubtless was indirectly, at least, due to the immense pace at which he had been traveling within the past three years; a victim of the prevailing American vice of intellectual men, driving the machine at a furious rate, when suddenly the silver cord is loosed, the golden bowl is broken, and the people of the Southland will go mourning for one who ought, they will sadly think, to have been spared them for many years, to help them work out their political, industrial, and social salvation. The name of Henry W. Grady is sure of an enduring and honored place in the history of the State of Georgia, and in the annals of the public discussions in the American press, during a time of great importance, of questions of vast concern to the whole people.

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A TYPICAL SOUTHERNER.

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_From the “Chicago Tribune.”_

IN the death of Henry W. Grady the South has lost one of its most eminent citizens and the newspaper press of the whole country one of its most brilliant and dashing editors. He was a typical Southerner, impulsive, sentimental, emotional, and magnetic in his presence and speech, possessing those qualities which Henry Watterson once said were characteristic of Southerners as compared with the reasoning, reflective, mathematical nature of Northern men. His death will be a sad loss to his paper and to the journalism of the whole country. He was a high-toned, chivalrous gentleman, and a brilliant, enthusiastic, and able editor, who worked his way to the top by the sheer force of his native ability and gained a wide circle of admirers, not alone by his indefatigable and versatile pen but also by the magnetism and eloquence of his oratory. It is a matter for profound regret that a journalist of such abilities and promise should have been cut off even before he had reached his prime.

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HIS NAME A HOUSEHOLD POSSESSION.

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_From the “Independence, Mo., Sentinel.”_

A FEW years ago there shot athwart the sky of Southern journalism a meteor of unusual brilliancy. From its first flash to its last expiring spark it was glorious, beautiful, strong. It gave light where there had been darkness, strength where there had been weakness, hope where there had been despair. To the faint-hearted it had given cheer, to the timid courage, to the weary vigor and energy.

The electric wires yesterday must have trembled with emotion while flashing to the outside world the startling intelligence that Henry W. Grady, the editor of the Atlanta _Constitution_, was dead. It was only last week this same world was reading the touching and pathetic tribute his pen had paid to the dead Southern chief; or less than a week, listening with pleased and attentive ears to the silver tones of his oratory at the base of Plymouth Rock, as he plead for fair play for the people of his own sunny Southland.

Henry W. Grady was one of the foremost journalists of the day. He was still numbered among the young men of the Republic, yet his name and fame had already become a household possession in every part of the Union. Not only was he a writer of remarkable vigor, but he was also a finished orator and a skillful diplomat. As a writer he combined the finish of a Prentiss with the strength and vigor of a Greeley. Not so profuse, possibly, as Watterson, he was yet more solid and consistent. By force of genius he had trodden difficulty and failure under foot and had climbed to the highest rung of the ladder.

By his own people he was idolized—by those of other sections highly esteemed. Whenever he wrote all classes read. When he spoke, all people listened.

He was a genuine product of the South, yet he was thoroughly National in his views. The vision of his intelligence took in not only Georgia and Alabama, but all the States; for he believed in the Republic and was glad the South was a part of it.

His death is not only a loss to Atlanta and Georgia, to the South and the North, but a calamity to journalism.

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EDITOR, ORATOR, STATESMAN, PATRIOT.

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_From the “Kansas City Globe.”_

IN the death of Henry W. Grady the South has lost one of its foremost and best men. He was pre-eminently the foremost man of the South, and to the credit of the section it can be said that he had not attained to such a position by services in the past, but by duty conceived and well discharged in the present. He was not a creature of the war, but was born of the events succeeding the war and which, in turn, he has helped to shape for the good of the South, in a way that has represented a sentiment which has induced immigration and the investment of capital, so that, short as has been the span of his life of usefulness, it has been long enough to see the realization of his greatest ambition and hopes—the South redeemed from the despair of defeat and made a prosperous part of a great nation and a factor in working out a glorious future for a reunited people.

Intensely Southern in his sentiments, devotedly attached to his section and as proud of it in poverty and defeat as in the day of its present prosperity, to which he much contributed, Henry W. Grady comprehended the situation as soon as man’s estate allowed him to begin the work of his life, and he set about making a New South, in no sense, as he claimed in his famous Boston speech, in disparagement of the Old South, but because new ideas had taken root, because of new conditions; and the new ideas he cultivated to a growth that opened a better sentiment throughout the South, produced a better appreciation of Southern sentiment in the North, and helped to harmonize the difference between the sections that war sought to divide, but which failing still left “a bloody chasm” to be spanned or filled up. 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.

Early appreciating the natural advantages, the undeveloped resources of the South, he has advocated as editor and orator the same fostering care of Southern industry that has enabled the North to become the manufacturing competitor with any people of the world. He sought, during his life, to allay the political prejudice of the South and the political suspicion of the North, and to bring each section to a comprehension of the mutual advantages that would arise from the closest social and business relations. He fought well, wrote convincingly and spoke eloquently to this end, and dying, though in the very prime of his usefulness, he closed his eyes upon work well done, upon a New South that will endure as a nobler and better monument to his memory than would the Confederacy, if it had succeeded, have been for Jefferson Davis.

The South has lost its ablest and best exponent, the representative of the South as it is, and the whole country has lost a noble character, whose sanctified mission, largely successful, was to make the country one in sentiment, as it is in physical fact.

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A SOUTHERN BEREAVEMENT.

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_From the “Cincinnati Times-Star.”_

THE loss which the _Daily Constitution_ sustains in the death of Mr. Grady is not a loss to a newspaper company only; it is a loss to Atlanta, to Georgia, to the whole South. Mr. Grady belonged to a new era of things south of the Ohio River. He was never found looking over his shoulder in order to keep in sympathy with the people among whom he had always lived. He was more than abreast of the times in the South, he kept a little in advance, and his spirit was rapidly becoming contagious. He wasted no time sighing over the past, he was getting all there is of life in the present and preparing for greater things for himself and the South in the future. His life expectancy was great, for though already of national reputation he had not yet reached his prime.

There was much of the antithetical in the lives of the two representative Southern men who have but just passed away. The one lived in the past, the other in the future. The one saw but little hope for Southern people because the “cause” was “lost,” the other believed in a mightier empire still because the Union was preserved. The one, full of years, had finished his course, which had been full of mistakes. The other had not only kept the faith, but had barely entered upon a course that was full of promise. The one was the ashes of the past, the other, like the orange-tree of his own sunny clime, had the ripe fruit of the present and the bud of the future. The death of the one was long since discounted, the death of the other comes like a sudden calamity in a happy Christmas home. The North joins the South to-day in mourning for Grady.

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A MAN WHO WILL BE MISSED.

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THE death of Mr. Henry W. Grady, of the Atlanta _Constitution_, is a loss to South and North alike. The section which poured out a few days ago its tributes of regret for the leader of the Southern Confederacy may well dye its mourning a deeper hue in memory of this greater and better man, whose useful life is cut short before he had reached his prime. Mr. Grady has held a peculiar and trying position; and in it he has done more, perhaps, than any other one man to make the two sections separated by the War of the Rebellion understand each other, and to bring them from a mere observance of what we might call a political _modus vivendi_ to a cordial and real union. It was not as a journalist, although in his profession he was both strong and brilliant, it was rather as the earnest and eloquent representative of the New South, and as the spokesman of her people that he had acquired national prominence. He was one of the few who both cared and dared to tell to the people of either section some truths about themselves and about the other that were wholesome if they were not altogether palatable. He was wholly and desperately in earnest. He had much of the devotion to his own section and his own State that characterized the Southerner before the war. But he had what they had not: a conception of national unity; of the power and glory and honor of the nation as a whole, that made him respected everywhere. Whether he appeared in Boston or in Atlanta, he was sure of an interested and sympathetic audience; and his fervid orations, if they sometimes avoided unpleasant issues and decked with flowers the scarred face of the ugly fact, did much, nevertheless, to turn the eyes of the people away from the past and toward the future.

We have been far from agreeing with Mr. Grady’s opinions, either socially or politically. The patriotic people of the North can have no sympathy with the attempt to cover with honor the memory of treason, which found in him an ardent apologist. We believe that we have gone to the limit of magnanimity when we agree to forego question and memory, and simply treat the men who led and the men who followed in the effort to destroy the nation as if that effort had never been made. And we do not hold that man as guilty of sectionalism and treason to a reunited country who talks hotly of “rebels” and sneers at “brigadiers,” as that man who speaks of these leaders of a lost cause as “patriots,” obedient to the call of duty. To that error Mr. Grady, in common with other leaders of his time, inclined the people of his section. Politically he was, of course, through good or through evil report, an uncompromising Democrat. Nor can we think his treatment of the race issue a happy one. The North has come, at last, to do justice to the South in this respect, and to acknowledge that the problem presented to her for solution in the existence there of two races, politically equal before the law but forever distinct in social and sentimental relations, is the gravest and most difficult in our history. But the mere plea to let it alone, which is the substance of Mr. Grady’s repeated appeal, is not the answer that must come. It is not worthy of the people, either North or South. It is not satisfactory, it is not final, and the present demands more of her sons. But, in presenting these points of difference, it is not intended to undervalue the work which Mr. Grady did or underestimate the value of the service that lay before him. With tongue and pen he taught his people the beauty and the value of that national unity into which we have been reborn. He sought to lead them out of the bitterness of political strife, to set their faces toward the material development that is always a serviceable factor in the solution of political problems, and to make of the new South something worthy of the name. The work that he did was worthy, and there is none who can take and fill his place. The death that plunged the South in mourning a short time ago was merely the passing of an unhealthful reminiscence. The death of Grady is a sorrow and a loss in which her people may feel that the regret and the sympathy of the North are joined with theirs.

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AT THE BEGINNING OF A GREAT CAREER.

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_From the “Pittsburg Post.”_

THE death of Henry W. Grady will be received with profound regret throughout the Northern States, while in the South there will be deeper and more heartfelt sorrow than the death of Jefferson Davis called forth. The book of Mr. Davis’s life was closed before his death, but it seemed as if we were but at the beginning of Mr. Grady’s career, with a future that held out brilliant promise. He had all the characteristics of warm-blooded Southern oratory, and his magnetic periods, that touched heart and brain alike, were devoted to the single purpose of rehabilitating the South by an appeal to the generosity and justice of the North. No speech of recent years had a greater effect than his splendid oration at the New England Society dinner in New York last year on the “New South.” It was happily and appropriately supplemented by his recent address to the merchants of Boston. He was a martyr to the cause he advocated and personated, for it was in the chill atmosphere of New England he contracted the disease of which he died. Rarely has it been given to any man to gain such reputation and appreciation as fell to Mr. Grady as the outcome of his two speeches in New York and Boston. He was only thirty-eight years old; at the very beginning of what promised to be a great career, of vast benefit to his section and country. He was essentially of the New South; slavery and old politics were to him a reminiscence and tradition. At home he was frank and courageous in reminding the South of its duties and lapses. At the North he was the intrepid and eloquent defender and champion of the South. Both fields called for courage and good faith.

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THE PEACE-MAKERS.

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_From the “New York Churchman.”_

THE premature death of Mr. Grady has taken from the career of journalism one of its most brilliant followers. In him has passed away also an orator of exceptional powers, ready, versatile, and eloquent, a man of many gifts, a student with the largest resources of literary culture, and at the same time enabled by his practical experience and training to use these resources to the best advantage.

But the point we wish especially to note is that Mr. Grady, while deeply attached to the South, and inheriting memories of the great civil contest which made him early an orphan, was one of those who both recognized the finality of the issue and had the courage to say so.

He will be remembered at the North as one who spoke eloquent words of conciliation and friendship, who did his share in healing the wounds of war, and in smoothing the way toward complete national accord. “Blessed are the peace-makers” is the inscription one would place above his too-early opened grave.

We have not the space at our command to do extended justice to Mr. Grady’s great powers, or to picture at length his bright history. That has been done in other places and by other hands. But we cannot pass by the work he did for reconciliation without some expression of acknowledgment. Such words as his, offered in behalf of peace, will survive not merely in their immediate effect, but in the example they set.

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ONE OF THE BRIGHTEST.

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_From the “Seattle Press.”_