A NOBLE DEATH.

From the “Jacksonville, Fla., Times-Union.”

ALAS, 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.

506As 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.

’Twas his own genius gave the final blow,

And helped to plant the wound that laid him low.

Yes, she too much indulged the fond pursuit;

She sowed the seed, but death has reaped the fruit!

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, 507describes 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.

From the “Birmingham, Mo., Chronicle.”

The Chronicle confesses to being a hero-worshiper. There is no trait in the human heart more noble than that which applauds and commemorates the feats of brains or 508arms done by our fellow-man. We confess the almost holy veneration we feel for the heroes of song and story from the beginning of tradition. Nimrod to Joseph and Moses to the Maccabees, from Alexander to Cæsar, taking in the heroes of all nations from Cheops to Napoleon and Wellington, Putnam, Sam Houston and Lee and Grant and Lincoln, we do honor to them all.

So too do we worship the sages and orators. Whatever man the people worship is worthy of a place in our Pantheon. The people are the best judges of a man, and when the common people pay tribute to the worth of any man well known to them, we are ready to lift our hats and acknowledge his title to greatness. Any man who has the enthusiastic admiration of his own people is worthy of any honor.

The South has many brilliant writers, but none of them have ever made the columns of a newspaper glisten and glow and hold in magnetic enchantment the mind of the reader as Henry Grady did. In his life-work he was great, and there is none greater. His writings are worthy of a place beside those of Greeley and Watterson, and Grady was still a young man.

In the days gone by the South has sent many orators North to present Southern thought to Northern hearers. Henry Clay, Jefferson Davis, Robert Toombs and William L. Yancey all went before Grady was invited to speak up there. There were never four greater orators in the world’s history, and the story of their speeches has come down to us like music. Yet in this latter day when oratory does not appeal to people as it used to, when the busy world does not stop to read speeches, Grady went North to speak. He was known to the North and had done nothing to challenge the attention of the nation, yet his first speech at the North did catch public attention most pleasantly. His second speech, delivered but a few days ago, was the greatest effort of his life, and all the nations listened to it and all the newspapers commented upon his utterances. His speech was the equal of any oration 509ever delivered in America, and had as much effect on public thought. 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.

A GREAT LEADER HAS FALLEN.

From the “Raleigh, N.C., State-Chronicle.”

Good mother, weep, Cornelia of the South,

For thou indeed has lost a jewel son;

The Gracchi great were not so much beloved,

Nor with more worthy deeds their honors won.

Thy stalwart son deserves a Roman’s fame,

For Cato was not more supremely just;

Augustus was not greater in the State,

Nor Brutus truer to the public trust.

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.

510Mr. 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

Crook the pregnant hinges of the knee,

Where thrift may follow fawning.

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. 511He 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 512established 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 513of 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 514his 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.

Millions were drawn to thee and bound

By mind’s high mastery, millions hailed

In thee a guide-star—and ne’er found

A ray in thee, that waned or failed.

No night’s embrace for thee! nor pall,

But such as mortal hand hath wrought,

Thou livest still in mind—in all

That breathes, or speaks, or lives in thought.

HENRY W. GRADY.

From the “New Orleans Times-Democrat.”

Henry W. Grady, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, died yesterday, after a short illness, from typhoid pneumonia, at the early age of thirty-six. Perhaps no man in 515the South has been more often mentioned in the last few years or attracted more attention than he. His famous speech before the New England Society had the effect of bringing him before the country as the representative of that New South which is building up into prosperity and greatness.

Mr. Grady was a native of Georgia. His father was Colonel of a Confederate regiment during the late war, and to that father he paid the highest tribute a son could pay in several of his speeches. He had a hard struggle at first, like nearly every Southern boy, but he fought his way up to the top by pluck, energy and determination.

Mr. Grady’s first journalistic venture was, we believe, in his native town. He ran a small paper there, moved thence to Atlanta, carrying on another newspaper venture in the Georgia capital. In the course of events this paper was swallowed up by the Constitution, then pushing itself to the front of the Georgia press, and Mr. Grady was selected as co-editor of the latter.

Under him that paper became one of the leading exponents of Southern opinion, a representative of the progressive South, not lingering over dead memories, but living in the light of the present and laboring to build up this section.

Mr. Grady and his paper were always the defenders of the South, yet not afraid to expose and condemn its errors and mistakes. He had the courage to speak out whenever this was necessary, and when, some few months ago, regulators attempted to introduce into Georgia, in the immediate vicinity of Atlanta, the same practices as in Lafayette parish in this State, Mr. Grady, through the Constitution, denounced it vigorously. There were threats, but it did not affect the Constitution, which insisted that the New South must be a South of peace, law and order.

We cannot at this time review Mr. Grady’s entire journalistic career. It is sufficient to say that with his colleagues he built up his paper to be a power in Georgia and the South. His ability was recognized throughout 516this section, but it was not until his famous speech at the New England dinner that his reputation became national.

When at that dinner, speaking for the New South he so well represented, he pledged his brethren of the North the patriotic devotion of the Southern people, he created a sensation. Some of the most famous orators of the country were present, but without a dissenting voice it was declared that Mr. Grady’s speech was the event of the day. It sent a thrill throughout the Union. The Southern people rose to declare that Mr. Grady had fully explained their views and ideas, and before his eloquent words the prejudice which had lingered since the war in many portions of the North disappeared. Perhaps no single event tended more to bring the sections closer together than that speech, which so eloquently voiced the true sentiments of the Southern people. A wave of fraternal feeling swept through the country, and although the Republican politicians managed to counteract some of the good accomplished, much of it remained. Mr. Grady deserves remembrance, for in a few words, burning with eloquence, he swept away the prejudices of years.

The country discovered that it contained an orator of whom it had known but little, a statesman who helped to remove the sectional hatred which had so long retarded its progress. Mr. Grady became at once one of the best-known men in the Union. He was spoken of for United States Senator, he was mentioned as Vice-President, and it looked as though he could be elevated to any position to which he aspired; but he wisely clung to his journalistic career, satisfied that he could thereby best benefit his State and section.

Mr. Grady was not a one-speech man. He has made many addresses since then, and while it is true that his other speeches did not create the same sensation as his first, they were all eloquent, able and patriotic.

His career so auspiciously begun, which promised so much to himself and the country, has been brought suddenly and prematurely to a close. Mr. Grady was a 517young man, and we had every reason to believe that he would play a leading part in the South and in the country. Although his career is thus cut short, he had accomplished much, and the New South for which he spoke will carry on the good work he began of uniting the entire country on one broad and patriotic platform.

SECOND TO NONE.

From the “Louisville Courier-Journal.”

Henry W. Grady died at his home in Atlanta yesterday. There is that in the very announcement which is heart-breaking. He was the rose and expectancy of the young South, the one publicist of the New South, who, inheriting the spirit of the old, yet had realized the present, and looked into the future, with the eyes of a statesman and the heart of a patriot. His own future was fully assured. He had made his place; had won his spurs; and he possessed the gifts, not merely to hold them, but greatly to magnify their importance. 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. Our hand was in the lion’s mouth, and we could do nothing, hope for nothing, until we got it out. The young Georgian was ardent, impetuous, the son of a father slain in battle, the offspring of a section, the child of a province; yet he rose to the situation with uncommon faculties of courage and 518perception; caught the spirit of the struggle against reaction with perfect reach; and threw himself into the liberal and progressive movements of the time with the genius of a man born for both oratory and affairs. He was not long with us. He wished a wider field of duty, and went East, carrying letters in which he was commended in terms which might have seemed extravagant then, but which he more than vindicated. His final settlement in the capital of his native State and in a position where he could speak directly and responsibly, gave him the opportunity he had sought to make a fame for himself, and an audience of his own. Here he carried the policy with which, in the columns of the Courier-Journal, he had early identified himself, to its finest conclusions; coming at once to the front as a champion of a free South and a united country, second to none in efficiency, equaled by none in eloquence.

He was eager and aspiring, and, in the heedlessness of youth, with its aggressive ambitions, may not have been at all times discriminating and considerate in the objects of his attacks; but he was generous to a fault, and, as he advanced upon the highway, he broadened with it and to it, and, if he had lived, would have realized the fullest measure of his own promise and the hopes of his friends. The scales of error, when error he felt he had committed, were fast falling from his eyes, and he was frank to own his changed, or changing view. The vista of the way ahead was opening before him with its far perspective clear to his mental sight. He had just delivered an utterance of exceeding weight and value, at once rhetorically fine and rarely solid, and was coming home to be welcomed by his people with open arms, when the Messenger of Death summoned him to his last account. The tidings of the fatal termination of his disorder are startling in their suddenness and unexpectedness, and will be received North and South with sorrow deep and sincere, and far beyond the bounds compassed by his personality.

The Courier-Journal was always proud of him, hailed 519him as a young disciple who had surpassed his elders in learning and power, recognized in him a master voice and soul, followed his career with admiring interest, and recorded his triumphs with ever-increasing sympathy and appreciation. It is with poignant regret that we record his death. Such spirits are not of a generation, but of an epoch; and it will be long before the South will find one to take the place made conspicuously vacant by his absence.

A LOSS TO THE SOUTH.

From the “Louisville Post.”

The death of Henry W. Grady, of Atlanta, after so brief an illness and in the very prime of a vigorous young manhood, will startle the whole country and will be an especial affliction to the South. Mr. Grady was a brilliant journalist, a man of brain and heart, and by his sensible and enthusiastic policy has identified himself with the interests of the New South. In fact, few men have been more largely instrumental in bringing about that salutary sentiment, now prevailing, that it is best for the South to look with hope and courage to the future, rather than to live in sad inactivity amid the ruins of the past. Mr. Grady was a warm and confident advocate of industrial advancement in the land of his birth. He wanted to see the South interlaced with railroads, her rich mineral deposits opened to development, her cities teeming with factories, her people busy, contented and prosperous. This was his mission as a man and as a journalist, and his influence has been widespread. Just at this time his loss will be doubly severe.

One morning Henry Grady, who had possessed little more than a sectional reputation, woke up to find himself famous throughout the nation. By his speech at a New York banquet he sounded the key-note of fraternal Union 520between North and South, and his appeal for mutual trust and confidence, with commerce and industry to cement more strongly than ever the two great sections of the country, met with a response from both sides of Mason and Dixon’s line more hearty than ever before. Many another man from the South felt the same sentiments and would have expressed them gladly. Many a man in the North felt that in the South those sentiments were sincerely held. But Grady had a peculiar opportunity, and right well did he improve it. He expressed eloquently and forcibly the feelings, the purposes, the very spirit of the New South, and in that very moment he made a reputation that is national. It was his good fortune to express to the business men as well as to the politicians of the nation the idea of an indivisible union of interests, of sentiments and of purposes, as well as of territory.

In Mr. Grady’s own State his death will be most felt. What he has done for Georgia can only be appreciated by those who compare its present activity and prosperity with the apathy and discontent which existed there a few years ago. The dead man will be sincerely mourned, but the idea which he made the fundamental one of his brief career will continue to work out the welfare of the New South.

THE DEATH OF HENRY W. GRADY.

The most brilliant journalist of the South is no more. When the news was sent over the country yesterday morning that Henry W. Grady, the editor of the Atlanta Constitution, was dead, there were sighs of regret which, if they could have been gathered together into one mass, would have been heard across the Atlantic. He was peculiarly gifted. With an imagery and wealth of language that enabled him to clothe the most uninteresting subject 521in a pleasing garb, he had at the same time the genius of common sense more fully developed than most men now prominently before the public. He was born in 1851 in the town of Athens, Georgia, and was therefore less than forty years of age. At college he was remarkable among his fellows for those gifts of speech and pen which made him famous. To his eternal honor, it can be said that in neither the sanctum or the forum were his powers used in a way to add to any one’s sorrow or distress. His writings were clean and pure and in every line gave token of the kind heart that beat in his bosom. Mr. Grady was a lovable man. Those who knew him well entertained for him the deepest affection. His face was itself a fair type of his nature, which was essentially of the sunshine character.

He was restlessly energetic and always agitating matters that he believed would be promotive of the public good. The Cotton States’ Exposition and the Piedmont Exposition, both held in Atlanta, were literally the creations of his energy and enthusiasm and pluck. It will no doubt be readily admitted by his associates of the Constitution that he was its moving spirit, and by his powers largely made it the grand and magnificent success that it undeniably is.

The Young Men’s Christian Association building, costing $100,000, arose as by magic under the persuasive powers of his tongue and pen. The list of his works of a practical kind that now add to Atlanta’s character and position could be indefinitely extended. When he appealed to Atlanta he never spoke in vain, for in addition to brains and energy he had those rare qualities of personal magnetism, which made his originality and zeal wonderfully effective. He entered into everything his big head conceived with his whole heart and soul.

He was loyal to his city and State, and never missed an opportunity for aiding in their advancement. He was sought out by the young and the old, and enjoyed the full confidence of all who knew him.

His name and fame, however, were not confined to 522Georgia. In the Lone Star State, thousands flocked to the city of Dallas to hear his great speech at the Texas State Fair. His New York speech, a year or two ago, fairly thrilled the country and caused the enactment of scenes never before witnessed on similar occasions. No orator had ever received such an ovation in that great city, and none such has been since extended to any speaker. His recent speech at Boston was calculated to do more good for the entire country than anything that has fallen from the lips of any man in the last decade. It will be a monument to his memory more enduring than brass. It made a profound impression on those who heard it. The sentiments and truths he so boldly uttered are echoing and re-echoing among the hills of New England and over the prairies of the great West, and they will bear rich fruit in the near future. They were things known to us all here, but those who did not know and did not care have been set to thinking by his eloquent presentation of the Southern situation. That speech, perhaps, cost him his life; but if it produces the effect on the Northern mind and heart which it deserves, the great sacrifice will not have been in vain. His death will cause a more earnest attention to the great truths he uttered, and result in an emphasis of them that could not have been attained otherwise, sad as that emphasis may be. The death of such a man is a national calamity. He had entered upon a career that would have grown more brilliant each year of his life. His like will not soon be seen and heard again.

UNIVERSAL SORROW.

From the “Nashville American.”

The news of Mr. Grady’s death is received with universal sorrow. No man of his age in the South or in the Union has achieved such prominence or given promise of 523greater usefulness or higher honors. His reputation as a journalist was deservedly high; but he won greater distinction, perhaps, by his public speeches. He was intensely, almost devoutly Southern, but he had always the respectful attention of the North when he spoke for the land of his nativity. There was the ring of sincerity in his fervid utterances, and his audiences, whether in the North or in the South, felt that every word came hot from the heart. He has done as much as any man to put the South right before the world; and few have done more to promote its progress and prosperity. He was a man of tremendous energy, bodily and mental, and always worked at high tension. Whatever subject interested him took his mind and body captive, and into whatever cause he enlisted he threw all the powers of his intellect and all the force of a nature ardent, passionate, and enthusiastic in the extreme. It is probable that the disease which laid hold of him found him an easier prey because of the restless energy which had pushed his physical powers beyond their capacity. His nervous and impetuous temperament showed no mercy to the physical man and made it impossible for him to exercise a prudent self-restraint even when the danger of a serious illness was present with him.

Mr. Grady’s personal traits were such as won the love of all who knew him. All knew the brilliant intellect; but few knew the warm, unselfish heart. The place which he held in public esteem was but one side of his character; the place which he held in the hearts of his friends was the other.

The South has other men of genius and of promise; but none who combine the rare and peculiar qualities which made Henry W. Grady, at the age of thirty-eight, one of the most conspicuous men of his generation.

524

THE HIGHEST PLACE.

From the “Charleston News and Courier.”

The death of Henry W. Grady has removed from earth the most prominent figure among the younger generation of public men in America. He held unquestionably the highest place in the admiration and regard of the people of the South that was accorded to any man of his years, and had won, indeed, by his own efforts and attainments a place among the older and the most honored representatives of the people of the whole country. It was said of him by a Northern writer, a few days before his death, that no other Southern man could command so large a share of the attention of the Northern people, and his death was the result of a visit to New England, whither he went in response to an earnest invitation to speak to the people of that section upon a question of the gravest national concern.

The people of Georgia both honored and loved Henry Grady, and would have elected him to any office within their gift. It is probable that, had he lived but a little while longer, he would have been made Governor of the State, or commissioned to represent it in the Senate of the United States. He would have filled either of these positions acceptably and with credit to himself; and perhaps even higher honors awaited him. When his name was mentioned a few months ago in connection with the nomination for the second highest office in the gift of the people of the whole country, the feeling was general and sincere that he was fully worthy, at least, of the great dignity which it was proposed to confer upon him. Certainly no other evidence is required to prove that the brave and brilliant young Georgian was a marked man, and that he had already made a deep impression on the events and the men of his time when he was so suddenly stricken down in the flower of useful and glorious manhood.

It is inexpressibly saddening to contemplate the untimely 525ending of so promising a career. Only a few days ago the brightest prospect that could open before the eyes of any young man in all this broad land lay before the eyes of Henry Grady. To-day his eyes are closed to all earthly scenes. To-morrow the shadows of the grave will close around him forever. But it will be long before his influence will cease to be felt. The memory of his kindly, gracious presence, of his eloquent words and earnest work, of his generous deeds and noble example in the discharge of all the duties of citizenship, will ever remain with those who knew him best and loved him most.

To his wife and children he has left a rich inheritance in his honored name, though he had left them nothing else. The people of his State and of the South owe him a large debt of gratitude. He served them faithfully and devotedly. What he said so well, only a few months ago, of one who served with him, and who like him was stricken down in the prime of his life, can be said of Henry Grady himself. It is true of him also that “his leadership has never been abused, its opportunities never wasted, its power never prostituted, its suggestions never misdirected.” Georgia surely is a better and more prosperous State “because he lived in it and gave his life freely and daily to her service.”

And surely, again, “no better than this could be said of any man,” as he said, and for as much to be written, in truth and sincerity, over his grave, the best and proudest man might be willing to toil through life and to meet death at last, as he met it, “unfearing and tranquil.” His own life, and the record and the close of his life, are best described in these his own words, written ten months ago, and, perhaps, no more fitting epitaph could be inscribed on his tomb than the words which he spoke, almost at the last, in the hour of his death: “Send word to mother to pray for me. Tell her if I die, that I died while trying to serve the South—the land I love so well.”

526

A BRILLIANT CAREER.

From the “Baltimore Sun.”

The death yesterday at Atlanta of Henry W. Grady, editor of the Constitution of that city, is a distressing shock to the thousands North and South who had learned to admire his vigorous and impressive utterances on public subjects. Young, enterprising, industrious and devoted to the material advancement of his State and section, he was a type of the progressive Southern man of our day. In the face of the greatest possible difficulties and discouragements he achieved success, intellectual and financial, of a most substantial character. Mr. Grady’s career was brief and meteoric, but it was also a useful career. His strong grasp of present facts enabled him to guide and stimulate the energies of those about him into profitable channels. Full of ideas, which his intense, nervous nature fused into sentiment, he exerted an influence which greatly promoted the progress and prosperity of his section. Outside his own State Mr. Grady will be best known, however, as a brilliant and eloquent speaker. For some years past his speeches at social gatherings of a semi-public character in Northern cities have attracted a great deal of attention North and South. His earlier utterances were a trifle effusive, conceding overmuch, perhaps, under the inspiration of the moment, to the prejudices of his audience. In discussing fiscal measures he was sometimes at fault, political economy not being his strongest point, but as regards the relations of the sections, and especially as regards the so-called Southern problem, he was a beacon of light to his Northern auditors. His last speech at Boston the other day—the delivery of which may be said to have brought about his death—is a fitting monument of his genius and impassioned eloquence. It thrilled the country with its assertion of the right of the white race of the South to intelligent government and its determination never again 527to submit to the misrule of the African. Mr. Grady’s speech on this occasion was remarkable not only for its fervor and frankness—which conciliated his most unrelenting political opponents—but also for its wealth of recent fact, concisely stated and conclusive upon the point he had in view. Is the full vote, as shown by the census, not always cast in Southern elections? Neither is it cast in Northern States, Mr. Grady showed, appealing to the facts of the elections of November last. “When,” President Harrison asked in his last message, referring to the colored voter of the South—“when is he to have those full civic rights which have so long been his in law?” He will have them, Mr. Grady answered, when the poor, ignorant, and dependent employé everywhere gets his. The colored voter of the South cannot be reasonably expected, he pointed out, to exercise his civil rights to a greater extent than such rights are exercised by persons in his position in the North and West. The point of view here taken was new to Mr. Grady’s audience and new to the Northern press. The effect of his speech, as a whole, upon Northern opinion has been, it is believed, most beneficial. In the South it was welcomed as an effort to put the Northern partisan in a position to see in their true light the hardship and danger with which the South is perpetually confronted. In some remarks made later at the Bay State Club, in Boston, Mr. Grady adverted to a larger problem—one that confronts the whole country. “It seems to me,” he said, “that the great struggle in this country is a fight against the consolidation of power, the concentration of capital, the domination of local sovereignty and the dwarfing of the individual citizen. It is the democratic doctrine that the citizen is master, and that he is best fitted to carry out the diversified interests of the country. It is the pride, I believe, of the South that her simple and sturdy faith, the homogeneous nature of her people, elevate her citizens above party. We teach the man that his best guide is the consciousness of his sovereignty; that he may not ask the national government for anything the State can do for him, 528and not ask anything of the State that he can do for himself.” These views mark the breadth of the speaker’s statesmanship, and show that it embraced interests wider than those of his own section—as wide, in fact, as the continent itself. Mr. Grady died of pneumonia, complicated with nervous prostration. His early death, at the outset of a most promising career, is a warning to others of our public men who are under a constant nervous tension. Attempting too much, they work under excessive pressure, and when, owing to some accident, they need a margin of strength, there is none.

A PUBLIC CALAMITY.

From the “Selma Times and Mail.”

At forty minutes past three o’clock on Monday morning Henry W. Grady, the distinguished editor of the Atlanta Constitution, died at his home of pneumonia. No announcement of the death of any leading man of the South has ever created a more profound impression, or caused more genuine and universal sorrow than will the sad news of the demise of this brilliant young Georgian, coming as it does when he was at the very zenith of his fame and usefulness. The death of Mr. Grady is a public calamity that will be mourned by the entire country. It is no exaggeration to say that no orator in the United States since the days of S. S. Prentiss has had such wonderful power over his audiences as Henry W. Grady. This fact has been most forcibly illustrated by his two memorable speeches at the North, the first in New York something over a year ago, the second recently delivered in Boston and with the praises of which the country is still ringing. Sad, sad indeed to human perception that such a brilliant light should have been extinguished when 529it was shining the brightest and doing the most to dispel the mists of prejudice. But an All-wise Providence knows best. His servant had run his course, he had fulfilled his destiny. The heart of the South has been made sad to overflowing in a short space of time. Davis—Grady, types of the past and the present, two noble representatives of the highest order of Southern manhood and intelligence, representing two notable eras, have passed away and left a brilliant mark on the pages of history.

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. When Mr. Grady came to the Constitution in 1880 he soon became famous as a correspondent, and his letters were read far and wide, and when he assumed editorial control of the Constitution, the paper at once felt the impulse of his genius, and from that day has pushed steadily forward in popular favor and in influence until both it and its brilliant editor gained national reputation. No agencies have been more potent for the advancement of Atlanta than Grady and the Constitution, the three indissolubly linked together, and either of the three names suggests the other.

As a type of the vigorous young Southerner of the so-called New South Mr. Grady has won the admiration of the country and gone far to the front, but he has been the soul of loyalty to his section, and has ever struck downright and powerful blows for the Democratic cause and for the rule of intelligence in the South. From the Potomac to the Rio Grande all over our beautiful Southland to-day, there will be mourning and sympathy with Georgia for the loss of her gifted son.

530

GRIEF TEMPERS TO-DAY’S JOY.

From the “Austin, Tex., Statesman.”

When an old man, full of years, and smitten with the decrepitude they bring, goes down to the grave, the world, though saddened, bows its acquiescence. It is recognized that lonely journey is a thing foredoomed from the foundation of the world—it is the way of all things mortal. But when a young man, full of the vigor of a sturdy life growing into its prime, is suddenly stricken from the number of the quick, a nation is startled and, resentful of the stroke, would rebel, but that such decrees come from a Power that earth cannot reach, and which, though working beyond the ken of fallible understanding, yet doeth all things well.

For the second time within the past two weeks the South has been called upon to mourn the demise of a chosen and well-beloved son. The two men may be classified according to an analysis first of all instituted by him whose funeral to-day takes place in Atlanta. Jefferson Davis was typical of the Old South—Henry W. Grady of the New. And by this we mean not that the South has put away those things that, as a chosen and proud people, they have cherished since first there was a State government in the South. They have the same noble type of manhood, the same chivalrous ambitions, the same love of home and state and country, they are as determined in purpose, as unswerving in the application of principle. But what is meant is that the material conditions of the South have changed, the economics of an empire of territory have been radically altered. Not only has a new class of field labor taken the place of the long-accustomed slave help, but industries unknown in the South before the war have invaded our fair lands, and the rush and whir of manufactories are all around us. It is in this that the 531South has changed. Jefferson Davis, in his declining years ushered into the reign of peace, was never truly identified with the actualities of the living present, in the sense of a man who, from the present, was for himself carving out a future. His life was past, and for him the past contained the most of earthly life—his was an existence of history, not of activity—he was the personification of the Old South.

Mr. Grady was too young to have participated in the Civil War. He was then but a boy, and has grown into manhood and power since the time when the issues that gave birth to that war were settled. His has been a life of the realistic present. He brought to a study of the changes that were going on around him a keenly perceptive and a well-trained mind—he studied the problems that surrounded him thoroughly and conscientiously, and his conclusions were almost invariably the soundest. He realized the importance and responsibility of his position as the editor of a widely circulating newspaper, and he was unfaltering in his zeal to discharge his every duty with credit to himself and profit to his people. He was the champion of the Southern people through the columns of his paper and upon the rostrum—and when he fell beneath the unexpected stroke of the grim reaper, the South lost a true and valiant friend, the ablest defender with pen and word retort this generation has known.

As two weeks ago the South bowed in sorrow over the last leaf that had fluttered down from the tree of the past, so to-day, as the mortal remains of Henry W. Grady are lowered into the tomb, she should cease from the merriment of the gladsome holiday season, and drop a tear upon the grave of him who, though so young in years, had in such brilliant paragraphs bidden defiance to ancient prejudice, scoffed at partisan bigotry, and proudly invited the closest scrutiny and criticism of the South. That South in him has lost a warm-hearted friend whom manhood bids us mourn.

532

HENRY GRADY’S DEATH.

From the “Charleston Evening Sun.”

Henry Grady is dead.

With what an electric shock of pain and grief will this simple announcement thrill the entire country. His death, following close upon the death of the chieftain of the Old South—full of age and honors, and followed to the grave by the reverential and chastened grief of a whole people—is in striking contrast and more poignant in its nature, since the young Hercules thus prematurely cut down had just sprung to the front as leader and chieftain of the New South, and was largely the embodiment of her renaissance, her rejuvenescent life and hopes and aspirations, as the other was of her dead and sacred past.

In the prime of life and the flower of robust manhood, having just signalized himself by a triumph in which all his powers of culture, talent, and patriotism were taxed to the highest and nobly responded to the demand made them, and having placed himself in the foremost ranks of the world’s great men as a splendid type of the South’s peculiar qualities, as a worthy heir of the virtues of the Old South, and as the strongest champion of the hopes of the New, his death at this time is to her a distinct calamity. And yet for his own individual fame’s sake it is to be doubted whether Mr. Grady, lived he “a thousand years, would find” himself “so apt to die,” as now in the zenith of his fame, with his “blushing honors thick upon him.”

With Burke he could say, “I can shut the book. I might wish to read a page or two more. But this is enough for my measure.”

Mr. Grady had gained the attention of the Northern ear and the confidence of the Northern people as no other Southerner could boast of having done. When those “grave and reverend seigniors” of the stern, inflexible, unemotional Puritan race, who not a fortnight since, in 533Boston’s banquet hall, wept manly unused tears at the magic eloquence and pathos of the young Southerner’s words, and fell to love him for the uncompromising truth, the manliness, the directness and the candor of them, and for the personal grace and fascination and humanitarian kindliness of the speaker—when they learn that this being, so lately among them, the chief object of their care and attention, and so sentient-seeming and bounding with life and the God-given inspiration of more than mortal vigor called genius—that this being, so gifted, so sanguine, lies cold and breathless in the chill arms of death, shall they not, and through them the great people of whom they are the proudest representatives, mingle their tears with ours over the mortal remains of this new dead son of the South, in whose heart was no rankling of the old deathly fratricidal bitterness, but whose voice was ever raised for the re-cementing of the fraternal ties so rudely broken by the late huge world-shaking internecine strife?

And shall not his great appeal—yet echoing over the country—for justice, moderation, forbearance, appreciation for the South and the social evil under which she is providentially unequally laboring to her destiny, be inerasibly impressed upon the country, coming as it does from the lips of a dying man?

In the death of Jefferson Davis the last barrier to a complete reunion of the sections was removed. In the death of Henry Grady the North and the South will be brought together to mourn a mutual bereavement. If it shall be the cause of completing the reunion of the sections, his sad and untimely death will not have been in vain.

TWO DEAD MEN.

From the “Greenville, S. C., News.”

In the early days of this last month of the year Jefferson Davis, old, feeble and weary, was lifted gently from 534this world to the other, borne across the river in the arms of Death as softly as a tired child carried on a father’s breast. Yesterday Henry Grady, a young, strong man, rejoicing in his growing strength, with the blood of life and power and hope bounding through his veins, flushed with the triumph of new and splendid achievement and returned to his home with the proud burden of fresh laurels well won, was swiftly struck down by that relentless power and taken from the world he graced and lighted, to be known and heard no more.

When Mr. Davis died the people of the South turned back to mourn, to heap high the tributes of their honor and affection on the grave wherein sleeps the representative of a cause lost except to memory, of a past gone forever. When Grady went down, a captain of the host, a leader of the present battle, fell, and along all the far-stretching lines the shock and loss will be felt.

He was happy in the time of his death—happy as is the soldier who falls in the supreme moment of triumph, when he has struck a grand and sweeping blow for his cause and the proclamation of his glory and jubilation of his comrades make music to attend his soul in its departure. He had led in the steady march of the South upward to prosperity and a high place among the peoples of the earth; his watchful eye was everywhere in the ranks; his spirit of courage and hope was felt everywhere. His voice rang out clear and stirring as the trumpet’s blare to arouse the lagging, to call the faltering forward, to fill all the air with faith in the South and the glory of her future, so that weak men grew strong in breathing it and the timid were fired with the valor of belief. He stood high and far in the front and proclaimed to all the world the spirit and the purpose of the young men of his country—the men young in heart and living and thinking in the atmosphere and light of to-day. He proclaimed it so well that the measured music of his words was heard above the clamoring of hate and penetrated the dullness of indifferent ears, moving the hearts of the people to unity and stimulating the manhood of the country 535to shake from it factional and sectional rage and consecrate itself to a common patriotism, a single love for a great Republic.

That was his work, and he died doing it as no other man had done it. He had gained his place by the power of his own strength before his years had brought him to the prime of his manhood, and he fell in it just after he had stood shoulder to shoulder and shared hearing and honors with the country’s foremost man who has occupied the country’s highest place.

His life was crowded with successful endeavor; in deeds, in achievement for his country and his people and in honors he was an old man. He had done in less than two-score years more than it is given to most men to do to the time of whitened hair and trembling limbs, and he had earned his rest. The world had little more to offer him but its inevitable cares and disappointments; the promise from his past was that he had much more to do for the world and his fellow-man. The loss is his country’s.

His whole country—and especially the South he loved so well—owes to his memory what it cannot now express to him—honor and gratitude.

His powerful presence is gone; the keen and watchful eyes are closed forever; the vibrant voice is hushed. But his words will live, his work will last and grow; his memory will stand high on the roll of the South’s sons who have wrought gloriously for her in war and in peace, who by valor or wisdom have won the right to be remembered with love and called with pride.

GRADY’S RENOWN.

From the “Birmingham News.”

No such universality of personal poignant sorrow ever pervaded a city as that which overshadows the capital of Georgia. There, everybody knew Henry Grady, and it 536was not the journalist and orator and statesman they saluted familiarly everywhere—in public assemblies and on the streets and at their firesides. Every home in the city was in fact the home of the kindly, generous, laughing philosopher, whose business it was to make his people happy, his city prosperous, and his State the foremost of Southern commonwealths.

And then his grand purpose in life was the restoration of the unity and integrity of the States. His speeches in New York and Boston, that will live as long as unhappy memories of inter-State hostilities, which he proposed to dissipate forever, followed one another naturally. The first portrayed the necessity for a perfect Federal Union. The second and last defined the only method of achieving it. The first paved the way for a presidential contest, from which sectional issues were almost wholly eviscerated. President Cleveland was so thoroughly imbued with the sentiment and purpose of Grady’s oration at the New England dinner in New York that he hazarded, or sacrificed, deliberately the certainty of partisan and personal triumph that the country might escape greater calamities, involved necessarily in a conflict in which African ex-slaves became the sole subject of passionate controversy and maddening declamation. The campaign was one of practical and not sentimental issues.

Everybody has read the recent more wonderful outburst of passionate eloquence that startled Boston and the East, and forced New England, for the first time, to contemplate the relations of races in the South as did Mr. Grady, and as do New Englanders themselves, having homes in the Gulf States. Facts propounded were unquestionable, palpable truths. There was no answer to his irrefragable logic. Grady’s matchless eloquence charmed every listener. His peroration will become the choicest specimen of impassioned oratory declaimed by schoolboys in every academy in which proper pedagogues inculcate proper patriotism in all this broad land.

Then came Grady’s death. It shocked the country 537that a man so gifted and the only American capable of pronouncing an oration as faultless as the philippics of Demosthenes, or as the sturdy, resistless orations of Gladstone, could not live immortal as his prophetic sentences that still illumine the brain and electrify the heart of an entire people.

Grady’s two speeches in the East, if he had never written or spoken aught else, would be the Leuctra and Mantinea, immortal victories and only daughters of an Epaminondas. If there survived no other children of Henry Grady’s genius than these two, his renown would be as lasting as the glory and greatness and peace of the Republic which he gave his life to assure.

HENRY W. GRADY.

From the “Augusta Chronicle.”

Two weeks ago the people of the South were called upon to mourn the death of Jefferson Davis. An aged man was gathered to his home in the fullness of years, with his life-work done. He was the embodiment of a sacred past, and men turned with reverence to do him honor for the cause he had championed.

To-day the people again note the presence of the Great Reaper. This time a young man is cut down in the prime of life. His work lay bright before him. His face was toward the morning. The one represented all that the South had been: the other much that she hoped to be. He was the inspiration of a renewed and awakened South with a heart full of reverence and hope and buoyancy—bound to the past by tender memories, but confident of the future with all the heartiness of a sanguine nature. Possibly it was because of the progressive sentiments which he breathed that all sections and all people are to-day in grief over the gifted dead. There is mourning in every 538Georgia hamlet, such as there has been for no young man since Thomas R. R. Cobb was brought home a corpse from Fredericksburg. There are tributes of respect from Boston, where he stood last week, with his face aglow with the light of a newer life, to Texas, where last year he delivered a message of fiery eloquence to his people. It was the national feeling which Henry Grady had kindled in the South—a faith in our future, a devotion to the Union—a practical setting to our destiny—that now lament the loss of such a man, and which sends over the wires from every section of the country the words, “Untimely, how untimely!”

Henry W. Grady was born in Athens. He was but thirty-eight when he died. His father was a country merchant who kept his family in competency, and the house, where little Henry used to leave his romping playmates to read Dickens under the trees, now stands on Prince avenue, with its deep shades, its gleaming white pillars, its high fence and old-time appearance. When war came on the elder Grady went out with his company. His name now indents the marble side of the soldiers’ monument in Athens—erected to those who fell in battle. Educated at the State University, Henry Woodfin Grady graduated in 1868. In his class were Albert H. Cox, George T. Goetchius, P. W. Meldrin, Julius L. Brown, W. W. Thomas and J. H. Rucker—among the living—and Charles S. DuBose, Walter S. Gordon, Davenport Jackson, and F. Bowdre Phinizy among the dead. In college Henry Grady was more of a reader than a student. He knew every character in Dickens and could repeat the Christmas Stories by heart. He was a bright, companionable boy, full of frankness, brimming over with fun and kindness, and without a thought of the great career that lay before him. From Athens he went to Rome where he engaged in newspaper work. His letters to the Atlanta papers attracted the attention of Col. I. W. Avery, who gave him several odd jobs. There was a dash and creaminess in his sketch work which became popular at once. From Rome young Grady 539went to Atlanta, and with Col. Robert A. Alston started the Atlanta Herald.

From this time he has been a public figure in Georgia. The Herald was immensely popular. Its methods were all new. Grady widened its columns to make it look like Horace Greeley’s paper, and hired special engines in imitation of James Gordon Bennett. He made money but spent it lavishly for news. His editorial sketches were wonderfully clever. His “Last Man in the Procession,” “The Trained Journalist,” “Toombs and Brown,” attracted wide attention. But the Herald could not stand this high pressure. Under the cool, skilled management of the Constitution, Grady’s paper succumbed, and with it all of his private means were lost. The young man in 1876 was absolutely penniless. It was then his genius burst forth, however. The New York Herald ordered everything he could write. The Augusta Constitutionalist paid for his letters from Atlanta. He started a Sunday paper, which he afterwards gave up, and pretty soon he was regularly engaged by the Atlanta Constitution. During the electoral trouble in Florida, Grady kept the Northern papers full of luminous sketches about politics and fraud. Then he commenced to write up the orange interests in Florida, winning the attention of the North and attracting scores of visitors to the Land of Flowers. Next he took up bee culture and stock raising in Georgia. He made the sand pear of Thomasville famous. He revived the melon interest, and, in his wizard-like way, got the people to believe in diversified farming. There was a richness and lightness in his touch which added interest to the most practical subject. What he handled was adorned. He drew people to Atlanta by his pen-pictures of a growing town. In the Philadelphia Times of this period were fine letters about public men and battles of the war. He became a personality as well as a power in journalism. No man was better known in Georgia than Henry Grady.

Henry Grady, shortly after he left college, was married to Miss Jule King, daughter of Dr. Wm. King, of Athens. 540Two children, Gussie and Henry, bear his name. Mr. Grady’s work on the Constitution was inspirational. When he became interested he would apply himself closely, working night and day in a campaign or upon a crusade. Then he would lighten up, contenting himself with general supervision; frequently taking trips away for diversion. He was singularly temperate—not drinking wine or using tobacco; but his emotional nature kept him constantly at concert pitch. His nervous system was in perpetual strain and he sank as soon as stricken.

It was in 1877 that he made his first appearance as a speaker. His lecture that year, entitled “Patchwork Palace,” showed his fancy and talent as a talker as well as a writer. Then came his speeches in the prohibition contest in 1885. His New England banquet address in December, 1886, was his first distinctive political speech. It stamped him as an eloquent orator and made him national fame. His oration at the Augusta Exposition on Thanksgiving day last year was a perfect effort, and his Dallas address in October was a fearless and manly analysis of the race problem. It was this subject, classified and digested, that made up his Boston address, where, last week, he completed his fame and met his death. His address last year at the University of Virginia was a model of its kind.

Of late years Henry Grady had been settling down to the level of a solid worker, a close thinker and safe leader. If there was anything in his way to wide influence in earlier life, it was his irrepressible fancy and bubbling spirit. These protruded in speech and writing. But as he grew older he lopped off this redundant tegument. He never lost the artist’s touch or the poet’s enthusiasm. But age and experience brought conservatism. He became a power in politics from the day the Herald backed Gordon for the Senate in 1872. He followed Ben Hill in his campaign with great skill, and in 1880 did as much as any man to win the great Colquitt-Brown victory. In 1886 he managed Gen. Gordon’s canvass for Governor, and in 1887 planned and conducted the first successful Piedmont Exposition.

541Some may say that Henry Grady died at the right time for his fame. This may be true as to others, but not as to him. They know not, who thus judge him, what was in the man. Some mature early in life and their mentality is not increased by length of years, but the mind of our dead friend was constantly developing. The evidence of this was his Boston speech, which in our opinion was the best ever delivered by him. No man could foresee the possibilities of such a mind as his. He had just reached the table land on the mountain top, from which his mental vision could calmly survey the true situation of the South, and his listening countrymen would hear his inspiring admonitions of truth, wisdom and patriotism. Mr. Grady had firmly planted his feet on the ladder of fame. He had the genius of statesmanship, and, had he lived, we have no doubt that he would have measured up to the full stature of the most gifted statesmen whose names adorn the annals of the Republic.

In speaking of the loss to this section, we do not wish to indulge in the language of exaggeration when we say that the South has lost her most gifted, eloquent and useful son. His death to Georgia is a personal bereavement. His loss to the country is a public one. He loved Georgia. He loved the South. With the ardor of a patriot he loved his whole country, and his last public words touched the patriotic heart of the people and the responsive throb came back from all sections for a re-united people and a restored Union.

Henry Grady has not lived in vain. He is dead, but his works will live after him and bear fruits in the field of patriotism.

There was one thing about Henry Grady. He never ran for office or seemed to care for public honor. In the white heat of politics for fifteen years he has been mostly concerned in helping others. The young men of the State who have sought and secured his aid in striving for public station are many. But until last year when his own name was mentioned for the national Senate he had shunned 542such prominence. At that time it was seriously urged against him that he had never served in the Legislature and that his training had not been in deliberative bodies. But the time was coming when he must have held high public place. The Governor’s chair or the Senator’s toga would have been his in the near future. His leadership in practical matters, in great public works, the impulse he had given the people in building up the material interests of the South were carrying him so rapidly to the front that he could not have kept out of public office. But his position at the time of his death was unique. He was a power behind the throne, mightier than the throne itself. He was a Warwick like Thurlow Weed. Whether official station could have increased his usefulness is a question. Whether his influence would have been advanced by going into politics was a problem which he had never settled in his own mind. Already he had a constituency greater than that of governor or senator. He spoke every week to more people than the chief magistrate of any state in the Union. He employed a vehicle of more power than the great seal of the State. He wrote with the pen of genius and spoke the free inspiration of an untrammeled citizen. He was under no obligations but duty and his own will. He made friends rather than votes and his reward was the love and admiration of his people—a more satisfactory return than the curule chair.

And so his death, cruel, untimely and crushing, may have been a crown to a noble, devoted and gifted life. His happiness, his influence, his reputation had little to ask in the turmoil of politics. Its uncertainties and ingratitudes would have bruised a guileless, generous heart. Not that he was unequal to it, but because he did not need public office, may we seek satisfaction in the fact that he lived and died a faithful worker and a private citizen. His last plea was for the people of a slandered section—an answer to the President that “the South was not striving to settle the negro problem.” It was an inspiration and wrung praise from friend and opponent. It cost him his 543life, but no man ever gave up life in nobler cause. He lived to see his State prosperous, his reputation Union-wide, his name honored and loved, his professional work full of success, and no man has gone to the grave with greater evidences of tenderness and respect.

As Grady said of Dawson, so let us say of Grady: “God keep thee, comrade; rest thy soul in peace, thou golden-hearted gentleman!”

TRUE AND LOYAL.

From the “Athens Banner.”

Henry Grady has done as much for his country as any man, be he living or dead. He has stood by his people and their institutions, and his pen and his voice were always heard in their defence. Henry Grady died as he lived—battling for the good name of the South, and in defending his people from the slander of their enemies. In their grief over the death of this brilliant young journalist and statesman, his section will shed as bitter tears as were showered upon the bier of Jefferson Davis. One died full of years and honor—the other was cut down in the prime of manhood, and spread out before him was the brightest future ever vouchsafed to man. His loss to the South is irreparable. There is no one who can take his place.

But the beautiful traits of Grady’s character were best known to his own people. He was as true to his friends as is the needle to the pole—his hands were ever open to appeals for charity—he was loyalty itself—his heart was as guileless as a child’s and as innocent as a woman’s—his whole aim and ambition was to do good, develop his section, and stand by his people, and do manly battle for their good name and their rights.

544

MR. GRADY’S DEATH.

From the “Savannah Times.”

Henry Woodfin Grady, Georgia’s bright particular genius, is dead!

A dread disease contracted in the bleak North barely a fortnight ago, cut him down ere he had hardly stepped across the threshold of what promised to be the most remarkable life of its generation. Here, in his dearly loved mother State, his brilliant mind was a source of pride to the whole people. Throughout the length and breadth of the South, which owed him incalculably much, Henry Grady’s name is a household word. And as no other Southerner, save possibly our illustrious Gordon, he had caught the ear, aye, and the heart of hearts of the Northern land. Yes, and beyond the seas his fame had gone, and in foreign climes his intellect had impressed the intellectual. 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. Whether at his desk or facing an audience, his thoughts found expression in a rapid, graceful, forcible style. 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 man in the North has shown the breadth of view which marked this Georgian. His last public utterance attracted the attention of the English-speaking world as no other speech in recent years has done and, while the applause was still echoing from shore to shore of this continent, he was stricken.

In his chosen profession, newspaper work, Grady illustrated its great possibilities. What the elder Bennett, Thurlow Weed and Greeley were to the press of the North, Grady was to the press of the South. Public honors were undoubtedly awaiting him, and he had but to stretch out his hand.

A Roman emperor’s boast was that he found the Eternal City one of bricks and left it one of marble. Henry Grady found Atlanta an unpretentious town and literally made it the most progressive city in the South.

A GREAT LOSS TO GEORGIA.

From the “Columbus Enquirer-Sun.”

“Henry W. Grady died at 3:40 o’clock this morning.”

Such was the brief dispatch received early yesterday morning by the Enquirer-Sun. A simple announcement of the death of a private citizen, but of one who had endeared himself to the people of his native State and the entire South, and little wonder is it that it should have caused considerable sensation throughout the city and been the cause of numerous inquiries.

The brilliant Grady dead! He who had just returned from a triumphant ovation at the North where he attracted profound attention by the delivery of one of the grandest, most comprehensive and magnificent speeches on a subject 546of vital importance to the South and the country—cold in the embrace of death. The news was so sad and unexpected that it was difficult to realize, and surprise was engulfed in one universal expression of sorrow and regret, as the full force of the direful announcement, “Grady is dead!” was impressed on the public mind.

The bright, genial, brilliant and magnetic Grady! The fearless, eloquent and talented young Georgian whose name is synonymous with that of his native State throughout this broad land; the earnest, industrious, versatile and able journalist, dead! Cut down in the very prime of life; at the very threshold of a career which held forth greater promise of fame and honors than that of any man in the State at the present moment. This knowledge adds weight to the grief that fills every heart in Georgia at the thought that Henry Grady is no more.

His death is not only a great loss to Atlanta in whose building up he had given the full vigor of his great intellect and tireless energy, the State, whose devoted lover and earnest pleader he was, and the South at large, whose fearless eloquent champion he had ever proved himself on many memorable occasions, but to the country. No man of the present age has done more to bring about a thorough understanding between the two sections than Henry Grady. While there may have been in his two notable speeches at New York and Boston some declarations in which there was not universal coincidence of opinion, either North or South, it is generally recognized that great good has been accomplished in giving the intelligent and fair-minded people of the North a clearer and better insight into Southern affairs and removing unjust prejudices. The people of the South and of Georgia owe much to Henry Grady, and will ever hold in grateful and affectionate remembrance his good work in their behalf.

Georgia has not produced a citizen who, in private station, has achieved such renown, and who has so absorbed the affections of the people as Henry W. Grady. In every city, town, and hamlet throughout the State, will his death 547be mourned, and regret, deep and universal, expressed that the State should be deprived of the services of a citizen so useful and valuable at almost the very commencement of a glorious and brilliant career.

Grady was magnetic, eloquent, warm-hearted, and impulsive, and numbered his personal and devoted friends, as he did his admirers, by the thousands. The writer had known him long and intimately, and thoroughly appreciated his kindness of heart and the strength of his friendship, and his regret at the loss of the State is heightened by the knowledge of the loss of a personal friend and associate.

The sincerity of the grief which pervades Georgia to-day is the greatest tribute that can be paid to the memory of this peerless young Georgian who, in his peculiar magnetism, was simply incomparable.

To his beloved wife and children, and his proud, fond mother, at this hour of fearful bereavement the heartfelt sympathies of the entire State are extended. May God in his infinite mercy temper the force of this terrible blow to them, and enable them to bow in Christian resignation to His Divine will.

THE MAN ELOQUENT.

From the “Rome Tribune.”

In the hush of that dark hour which just precedes the dawn—in its silence and darkness, while Love kept vigil by his couch of pain and breathed sweet benedictions on his dying brow—the spirit of Henry Grady, the South’s fame-crowned son—her lover and her champion—the Man Eloquent—the courtly gentleman—whose laureled brow while yet flushed with earth’s triumphs towered into immortality—the spirit of this man of love and might passed from the scenes which its radiance had illumined to the loftier life of the world beyond.

548From city to city and hamlet to hamlet the wires flashed the sad intelligence. Men paused and doubted as the message passed from lip to lip—paused with wet eyes and wondering, stricken hearts.

The scholar closed his book and reverently bent his head in grief; the toiler in the sanctum stayed his pen and read the message with moistened eyes; the merchant on the busy mart sighed over its fatal sentences—men, women, little children, lifted up their voices and wept.

Our hearts can find no words to voice our grief for him. And how idle are all words now! Vainly we vaunt his virtues—his high nobility of soul—his talents fine—his service to the State, and all the graces rare that crowned his wondrous personality. Vainly, because these are well known to men; and that great fame whose trumpet blast has blown his name about the world, has also stamped it deeply upon grateful, loving hearts, that rise up and call him blessed.

We would stand in silence in the presence of a death like this; for the presence of the Lord is there, and the place is sacred. The hand of God is in it: This man, who, though he had reached the heights, was but upon the threshold of his brilliant career—this man, elected to a high and noble work, to whom we had entrusted the future of the South, and sent him forth to fight her battles with the world—in the morning of his days, in the midst of his great usefulness, flushed with the triumphs of his last and mightiest effort; with the applause of thousands ringing in his ear and the “well-done” of his people crowning all—suddenly, and without warning, renounces his worldly honors—lays down the burden which he had but taken up, and sighs farewell to all!

We cannot understand it. The reality is too much!

We falter where we firmly trod,

And, falling with our weight of cares

Upon the great world’s altar stairs

That slope through darkness up to God,

We stretch blind hands of Faith that grope!

549But God reigns, and in the mystery of His providence willeth all things well. Grady is dead. “He has fought a good fight; he has finished his course; he has kept the faith!” A hero, he died at his post; in the full blaze of his fame, with the arms of the South around him, he breathed away his life upon her breast. Could man desire more?

The South will miss him long and sorely. There is no man to take his place; to do that high, especial work which he has done so well. Aye! miss him, sweet South, and shed for him your tenderest tears of love, for he loved you and gave himself for you—he laid down his life for your sake! And you, ye sons and daughters of the South! if ye can see his face for weeping, draw near and look your last! And let the North draw near and clasp strong hands of sympathy above his bier!

Farewell to thee, comrade! Knightly and noble-hearted gentleman—farewell! The fight is over—the victory won, and lo! while yet we weep upon the field deserted, a shout rings through the portals of the skies and welcomes the victor home! And there, while the lofty pæan sounds from star to star, thy peaceful tent is pitched within the verdant valleys of eternal rest!

DEATH OF HENRY W. GRADY.

From the “Savannah News.”

Georgia mourns for one of her most distinguished sons. Henry W. Grady, who, a week ago last Thursday, held entranced, and at times moved to enthusiastic applause, by his eloquence, an audience composed of Boston’s prominent citizens, and whose name on the following day was on the lips of millions of people, is cold in death in his Atlanta home. He died before he had reached the meridian of life or the zenith of his fame. His mind was steadily broadening, and he was constantly giving evidence of the possession of still greater ability than he had yet displayed. 550In his Boston speech he handled the race question in a way that showed that he was not a mere rhetorician, but a genuine orator, who could direct the minds of men as well as touch their hearts and dazzle their imaginations. Had he lived, he would have won a name that would have had a permanent place in the history of his country. As it is, he will be remembered as a brilliant young man whom death claimed before he had time to show that he was fully capable of meeting the expectations which were entertained with regard to him.

Mr. Grady was full of resources and a tireless worker. He entered the profession of journalism very early in life, and such was the energy and intensity with which he devoted himself to it, that even if he had not possessed extraordinary talents, he could hardly have failed to succeed; but, having a special fitness for his work and ability of a very high order, it was not strange that he quickly made a reputation that was not confined by the lines of his State.

Mr. Grady was never satisfied with what he had accomplished. He felt that he was capable of still better things, and he strove constantly to reach a higher mark of excellence. No sooner was he done with one undertaking than his busy brain was engaged with another; and it can be said of him that his aims were not selfish ones. No doubt he had the ambitions which every man of marked ability has, but the good of others entered largely into his thoughts and plans. Atlanta owes to his memory a debt she can never repay. During all the time he was a resident within her limits he kept her interests steadily in view. He contributed to her prosperity in a hundred ways, and when her people were lukewarm in enterprises which he or others suggested, he pointed out to them their duty, and urged them to perform it so eloquently and strongly that they fell into line and won success when many thought success was impossible.

Mr. Grady was not apparently anxious to accumulate wealth. Money did not remain with him long. His purse 551was always open to his friends, and those who had claims never had to ask him twice for assistance when he was able to render it. Doubtless there are hundreds in Atlanta who are able to speak from personal knowledge of his free-handed liberality.

Mr. Grady never held public office. Had he lived, however, it is probable that he would have entered the political arena. He was gradually being drawn in that direction, and during the last two or three years his name was frequently mentioned in connection with the offices of Senator and Governor. His triumphs were won as a journalist and an orator. In the latter character he first achieved a national reputation at the dinner of the New England Society in 1886.

Georgians loved Mr. Grady and were proud of him. The death of very few other men could have so filled their hearts with sorrow.

HENRY W. GRADY DEAD.

From the “Albany News and Advertiser.”

The flash that announced over the wires the death of Henry W. Grady shocked the country, for it was a national calamity.

It is seldom that a people are called upon in so short a space of time to mourn the loss of two such men as Jefferson Davis and Henry W. Grady. The first was a blow for which we were prepared, for like ripened grain, Mr. Davis fell, full of years and honor, before the scythe of the reaper; but the death of Mr. 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.”

Mr. Grady grew up in the refined atmosphere of cultured Athens, and his mental nature treasured the classic light of that seat of learning, and it glowed with attractive radiance in all of his editorial work. In his death the press of the country loses its brightest ornament, and the South loses a champion without compare, whose pen was a trenchant blade in fighting her battles, and a shield when used to defend her from the hurtling arrows of envy and malice. His luminous pen made the path of the South’s progress glow, as with unflagging zeal he devoted his best endeavors to the amelioration of her war-ruined condition.