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Title: Joel Chandler Harris' Life of Henry W. Grady including his writings and speeches
Author: Joel Chandler Harris, - To be updated
Language: English
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HENRY W. GRADY INCLUDING HIS WRITINGS AND SPEECHES ***
HENRY W. GRADY
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
ENGRAVED FROM PHOTOGRAPH BY C. W. MOTES.
H. W. Grady.
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS’
LIFE OF
HENRY W. GRADY
INCLUDING HIS
WRITINGS AND SPEECHES.
---------------------
A Memorial Volume
COMPILED BY MR. HENRY W. GRADY’S CO-WORKERS ON
“_THE CONSTITUTION_,”
AND EDITED BY
JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS
(_UNCLE REMUS_).
THIS MEMORIAL VOLUME IS SOLD ONLY BY SUBSCRIPTION, AND IN THE INTERESTS
OF THE FAMILY AND MOTHER OF MR. GRADY.
---------------------
NEW YORK:
CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY,
104 & 106 FOURTH AVENUE.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
COPYRIGHT,
1890,
By MRS. HENRY W. GRADY.
_All rights reserved_.
Press W. L. Mershon & Co.,
Rahway, N. J.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LOOKING FORWARD TO THE REALIZATION OF THE LOFTY PURPOSE THAT GUIDED OUR
_MESSENGER OF PEACE_,
AND TO THE SPLENDID CLIMAX OF HIS HOPES AND ASPIRATIONS,
THIS MEMORIAL VOLUME
OF THE LIFE AND SERVICES OF
=Henry Woodfin Grady,=
IS DEDICATED TO THE
PEACE, UNITY AND FRATERNITY
OF THE
NORTH AND SOUTH, AND TO THE PROGRESS AND PROSPERITY OF
_A RE-UNITED COUNTRY WITH ONE FLAG AND ONE DESTINY_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS.
-------
PAGE
IN MEMORIAM—_Henry Watterson_, 5
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH—_Joel Chandler 9
Harris_,
MEMORIAL SKETCH—_Marion Verdery_, 69
SPEECHES.
THE NEW SOUTH—Delivered at the Banquet 83
of the New England Club, New York,
December 21, 1886,
THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEM—At the Dallas, 94
Texas, State Fair, October 26, 1887,
AT THE AUGUSTA EXPOSITION—In November, 121
1887,
AGAINST CENTRALIZATION—Before the 142
Society of the University of Virginia,
June 25, 1889,
THE FARMER AND THE CITIES—At Elberton, 158
Georgia, in June, 1889,
AT THE BOSTON BANQUET—Before the 180
Merchants’ Association, in December,
1889,
BEFORE THE BAY STATE CLUB—1889, 199
WRITINGS.
“SMALL JANE”—The Story of a Little 211
Heroine,
DOBBS—A Thumb-nail Sketch of a Martyr—A 220
Blaze of Honesty—The Father of
Incongruity—Five Dollars a Week—A
Conscientious Debtor,
A CORNER LOT, 227
THE ATHEISTIC TIDE SWEEPING OVER THE 230
CONTINENT—The threatened Destruction
of the Simple Faith of the Fathers by
the Vain Deceits of Modern
Philosophers,
ON THE OCEAN WAVE—An Amateur’s 238
Experience on a Steamship—How
Sea-Sickness Works—The Sights of the
Sea—The Lovers and the Pilot—Some
Conclusions not Jumped at
TWO MEN WHO HAVE THRILLED THE STATE—An 245
Accidental Meeting on the Street, in
which Two Great Men are Recognized as
the Types of Two Clashing
Theories—Toombs’s Successes—Brown’s
Judgment,
“BOB.” HOW AN OLD MAN “COME HOME”—A 252
Story Without a Moral, Picked out of a
Busy Life,
COTTON AND ITS KINGDOM, 272
IN PLAIN BLACK AND WHITE—A Reply to Mr. 285
Cable,
THE LITTLE BOY IN THE BALCONY, 308
POEMS BY VARIOUS HANDS.
GRADY—_F. L. Stanton_, 313
ATLANTA—_Josephine Pollard_, 316
HENRY W. GRADY—_James Whitcombe Riley_, 317
A REQUIEM IN MEMORY OF “HIM THAT’S 318
AWA’”—_Montgomery M. Folsom_,
HENRY WOODFIN GRADY—_Henry O’Meara_, 320
HENRY W. GRADY—_Henry Jerome Stockard_, 322
WHO WOULD CALL HIM BACK?—_Belle Eyre_, 323
HENRY W. GRADY—_G. W. Lyon_, 324
WHAT THE MASTER MADE—_Mel. R. Colquitt_, 326
IN ATLANTA, CHRISTMAS, 1889—_Henry Clay 327
Lukens_,
IN MEMORY OF HENRY WOODFIN GRADY—_Lee 328
Fairchild_,
A SOUTHERN CHRISTMAS DAY—_N.C. 329
Thompson_,
IN MEMORY OF HENRY W. GRADY—_Elizabeth 331
J. Hereford_,
HENRY W. GRADY—_Mary E. Bryan_, 333
THE OLD AND THE NEW—_J. M. Gibson_, 334
HENRY W. GRADY—_E. A. B., from the 336
Boston Globe_,
AT GRADY’S GRAVE—_Charles W. Hubner_, 338
MEMORIAL MEETINGS.
THE ATLANTA MEMORIAL MEETING, 345
The Chi Phi Memorial, 347
Address of Hon. Patrick Walsh, 350
Address of Hon. B. H. Hill, 353
Address of Julius L. Brown, 356
Address of Hon. Albert Cox, 362
Address of Walter B. Hill, 365
Address of Judge Howard Van Epps, 369
Address of Prof. H. C. White, 373
Address of Hon. John Temple Graves, 378
Address of Governor Gordon, 382
MEMORIAL MEETING AT MACON, GA., 385
Resolutions, 387
Alumni Resolutions, 389
Address of Mr. Richardson, 385
Address of Mr. Boifeuillet, 391
Address of Major Hanson, 396
Address of Judge Speer, 398
Address of Mr. Washington, 406
Address of Mr. Patterson, 409
PERSONAL TRIBUTES.
THOUGHTS ON H. W. GRADY—By _B. H. 417
Samett_,
SARGENT S. PRENTISS AND HENRY W. GRADY. 421
Similarity of Genius and Patriotism—By
_Joseph F. Pon_,
SERMON—By _Dr. T. DeWitt Talmage_, 428
TRIBUTES OF THE NORTHERN PRESS.
He was the Embodiment of the Spirit of 443
the New South—_From the “New York
World,”_
A Thoroughly American Journalist—_From 444
the “New York Herald,”_
A Loss to the Whole Country—_From the 445
“New York Tribune,”_
What Henry W. Grady Represented—_From 446
the “New York Commercial Advertiser,”_
A Far-sighted Statesman—_From the “New 448
York Star,”_
An Apostle of the New Faith—_From the 448
“New York Times,”_
The Foremost Leader—_From the “New York 449
Christian Union,”_
A Glorious Mission—_From the “Albany, 450
N.Y., Argus,”_
His Lofty Ideal—_From the “Philadelphia 452
Press,”_
His Patriotism—_From the “Philadelphia 454
Ledger,”_
Oratory and the Press—_From the “Boston 457
Advertiser,”_
The Lesson of Mr. Grady’s Life—_From the 458
“Philadelphia Times,”_
His Loss a General Calamity—_From the 459
“St. Louis Globe-Democrat,”_
Saddest of Sequels—_From the 461
“Manchester, N.H., Union,”_
A Life of Promise—_From the “Chicago 462
Inter-Ocean,”_
Electrified the Whole Country—_From the 464
“Pittsburg Dispatch,”_
A Large Brain and a Large Heart—_From 465
the “Elmira, N.Y., Advertiser,”_
The Model Citizen—_From the “Boston 467
Globe,”_
A Loyal Unionist—_From the “Chicago 468
Times,”_
His Work was Not in Vain—_From the 468
“Cleveland, O., Plaindealer,”_
The Best Representative of the New 469
South—_From the “Albany, N.Y.,
Journal,”_
A Lamentable Loss to the Country—_From 470
the “Cincinnati Commercial Gazette,”_
A Sad Loss—_From the “Buffalo, N.Y., 471
Express,”_
Words of Virgin Gold—_From the “Oswego, 473
N.Y., Palladium,”_
Sad News—_From the “Boston Advertiser,”_ 475
A Leader of Leaders—_From the 477
“Philadelphia Times,”_
A Forceful Advocate—_From the 479
“Springfield, Mass., Republican,”_
His Great Work—_From the “Boston Post,”_ 480
New England’s Sorrow—_From the “Boston 482
Herald,”_
A Noble Life Ended—_From the 484
“Philadelphia Telegraph,”_
A Typical Southerner—_From the “Chicago 486
Tribune,”_
His Name a Household Possession—_From 487
the “Independence, Mo., Sentinel,”_
Editor, Orator, Statesman, Patriot—_From 488
the “Kansas City Globe,”_
A Southern Bereavement—_From the 490
“Cincinnati Times-Star,”_
A Man Who will be Missed, 491
At the Beginning of a Great Career—_From 493
the “Pittsburg Post,”_
The Peace-Makers—_From the “New York 494
Churchman,”_
One of the Brightest—_From the “Seattle 495
Press,”_
The South’s Noble Son—_From the 496
“Rockland, Me., Opinion,”_
Brilliant and Gifted—_Dr. H. M. Field in 497
“New York Evangelist,”_
The Death of Henry W. Grady—_John Boyle 499
O’Reilly in the “Boston Pilot,”_
TRIBUTES OF THE SOUTHERN PRESS.
A Noble Death—_From the “Jacksonville, 505
Fla., Times-Union,”_
There Was None Greater—_From the 507
“Birmingham, Mo., Chronicle,”_
A Great Leader Has Fallen—_From the 509
“Raleigh, N.C., State Chronicle,”_
N.H._From the “New Orleans 514
Times-Democrat,”_
Second to None—_From the “Louisville 517
Courier-Journal,”_
A Loss to the South—_From the 519
“Louisville Post,”_
The Death of Henry W. Grady, 520
Universal Sorrow—_From the “Nashville 522
American,”_
The Highest Place—_From the “Charleston 524
News and Courier,”_
A Brilliant Career—_From the “Baltimore 526
Sun,”_
A Public Calamity—_From the “Selma Times 528
and Mail,”_
Grief Tempers To-day’s Joy—_From the 530
“Austin, Tex., Statesman,”_
Henry Grady’s Death—_From the 532
“Charleston Evening Sun,”_
Two Dead Men—_From the “Greenville, 533
N.C., News,”_
Grady’s Renown—_From the “Birmingham 535
News,”_
Henry W. Grady—_From the “Augusta 537
Chronicle,”_
True and Loyal—_From the “Athens 543
Banner,”_
Mr. Grady’s Death—_From the “Savannah 544
Times,”_
A Great Loss to Georgia—_From the 545
“Columbia Enquirer-Sun,”_
The Man Eloquent—_From the “Rome 547
Tribune,”_
Death of Henry W. Grady—_From the 549
“Savannah News,”_
Henry W. Grady Dead—_From the “Albany 551
News and Advertiser,”_
Stilled is the Eloquent Tongue—_From the 553
“Brunswick Times,”_
A Shining Career—_From the “Macon 554
Telegraph,”_
The Greatest Calamity—_From the “Augusta 557
News,”_
No Ordinary Grief—_From the “Columbus 559
Ledger,”_
A Place Hard to Fill—_From the “Griffin 559
News,”_
“Just Human”—_From the “Thomasville 560
Enterprise,”_
Georgia Weeps—_From the “Union News,”_ 561
A Grand Mission—_From the “West Point 563
Press,”_
The South Loved Him—_From the “Darien 564
Timber Gazette,”_
No Sadder News—_From the “Marietta 565
Journal,”_
Georgia’s Noble Son—_From the “Madison 566
Advertiser,”_
The Death of Henry Grady—_From the 569
“Hawkinsville Dispatch,”_
A Measureless Sorrow—_From the “Lagrange 572
Reporter,”_
Grady’s Death—_From the “Oglethorpe 573
Echo,”_
He Loved his Country—_From the “Cuthbert 574
Liberal,”_
A Resplendent Record—_From the “Madison 575
Madisonian,”_
Dedicated to Humanity—_From the 576
“Sandersville Herald and Georgian,”_
The South Laments—_From the “Middle 578
Georgia Progress,”_
His Career—_From the “Dalton Citizen,”_ 579
Our Fallen Hero—_From the “Hartwell 581
Sun,”_
A Deathless Name—_From the “Gainesville 582
Eagle,”_
A Great Soul—_From the “Baxley Banner,”_ 583
In Memoriam—_From the “Henry Co. 585
Times,”_
A People Mourn—_From the “Warrenton 587
Clipper,”_
Henry W. Grady is No More—_From the 589
“Valdosta Times,”_
“Maybe his Work is Finished”—_From the 590
“Dalton Argus,”_
He Never Offended—_From the “Washington 592
Chronicle,”_
The South in Mourning—_From the 593
“Elberton Star,”_
Stricken at its Zenith—_From the 594
“Greenesboro Herald and Journal,”_
The Southland Mourns—_From the “Griffin 596
Morning Call,”_
THE “CONSTITUTION” AND ITS WORK, 601
LETTERS AND TELEGRAMS FROM DISTINGUISHED PERSONS.
Hon. Chauncey M. Depew, 623
Ex-President Cleveland, 624
Hon. A. S. Colyar, 625
Hon. Murat Halstead, 626
Hon. Samuel J. Randall, 627
Mr. Andrew Carnegie, 627
Hon. Edward S. Bradford, 628
Mr. J. H. Parker, 628
Hon. Alonzo B. Cornell, 628
Mr. Ballard Smith, 628
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IN MEMORIAM.
-------
IT is within the bounds of entire accuracy to say that the death of no
man ever created a deeper and more universal sorrow than that which
responded to the announcement that HENRY WOODFIN GRADY had paid his
final debt of nature, and was gone to his last account. The sense of
grief and regret attained the dignity of a national bereavement, and was
at one and the same time both public and personal. The young and gifted
Georgian had made a great impression upon his country and his time;
blending an individuality, picturesque, strong and attractive, and an
eloquence as rarely solid as it was rhetorically fine, into a character
of the first order of eminence and brilliancy. In every section of the
Union, the people felt that a noble nature and a splendid intellect had
been subtracted from the nation’s stock of wisdom and virtue. This
feeling was intensified the nearer it approached the region where he was
best known and honored: but it reached the farthest limits of the land,
and was expressed by all classes and parties with an homage equally
ungrudging and sincere.
In Georgia, and throughout the Southern States, it rose to a
lamentation. He was, indeed, the hope 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
qualities, 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 magnificent development and broad usefulness all was prepared,
seemed a cruel dispensation of Providence and aroused a heart-breaking
sentiment far beyond the bounds compassed by Mr. Grady’s personality.
Of the details of his life, and of his life-work, others have spoken in
the amplest terms. I shall, in this place, content myself with placing
on the record my own remembrance and estimate of the man as he was known
to me. Mr. Grady became a writer for the press 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 perception; 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. At first, his sphere of work was confined to the
newspapers of the South. But, not unreasonably or unnaturally, 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 name and
fame for himself, and an audience of his own. Here he carried the policy
with which 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, winning universal applause, and was coming home to be welcomed by
his people with open arms, when the Messenger of Death summoned him to
his God. The tidings of the fatal termination of his disorder, so
startling in their suddenness and unexpectedness, added to the last
scene of all a feature of dramatic interest.
For my own part, I can truly say that I was from the first and always
proud of him, hailed him 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. We had broken a lance or
two between us; but there had been no lick below the belt, and no hurt
which was other than skin-deep, and during considerably more than a year
before his death a most cordial and unreserved correspondence had passed
between us. The telegram which brought the fatal news was a grievous
shock to me, for it told me that I had lost a good friend, and the cause
of truth a great advocate. It is with a melancholy satisfaction that I
indite these lines, thankful for the opportunity afforded me to do so by
the kindness of his associates and family. 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.
HENRY WATTERSON.
LOUISVILLE, _February 9, 1890_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
THE HOME OF GRADY’S BOYHOOD, ATHENS.
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
OF
HENRY W. GRADY.
-------
BY JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS.
-------
ORDINARILY, it is not a difficult matter to write a biographical sketch.
Here are the dates, one in faded ink in an old Bible, the other
glistening under the morning sun, or the evening stars, on the cold
gravestone. Here is the business, the occupation, the profession,
success or failure—a little scrap of paper here and there, and beyond
and above everything, the fact of death; of death that, in a pitiful
way, becomes as perfunctory as any other fact or event. Ordinarily,
there is no difficulty in grouping these things, throwing in a word of
eulogy here and there, and sympathizing in a formal way with the friends
and relatives and the community in general.
But to give adequate shape to even the slightest sketch of the unique
personality and the phenomenal career of Henry Woodfin Grady, who died,
as it were, but yesterday, is well-nigh impossible; for here was a life
that has no parallel in our history, productive as our institutions have
been of individuality. A great many Americans have achieved fame in
their chosen professions,—have won distinction and commanded the popular
approval, but here is a career which is so unusual as to have no
precedent. In recalling to mind the names of those who have been most
conspicuously successful in touching the popular heart, one fact
invariably presents itself—the fact of office. It is not, perhaps, an
American fact peculiarly, but it seems to be so, since the proud and the
humble, the great and the small, all seem willing to surrender to its
influence. It is the natural order of things that an American who is
ambitious—who is willing, as the phrase goes, to serve the people (and
it is a pretty as well as a popular phrase)—should have an eye on some
official position, more or less important, which he would be willing to
accept even at a sacrifice if necessary. This is the American plan, and
it has been so sanctified by history and custom that the modern
reformers, who propose to apply a test of fitness to the office-seekers,
are hooted at as Pharisees. After our long and promiscuous career of
office-seeking and office-holding, a test of fitness seems to be a
monarchical invention which has for its purpose the destruction of our
republican institutions.
It is true that some of the purest and best men in our history have held
office, and have sought it, and this fact gives additional emphasis to
one feature of Henry Grady’s career. He never sought office, and he was
prompt to refuse it whenever it was brought within his reach. On one
occasion a tremendous effort was made to induce him to become a
candidate for Congress in the Atlanta district. The most prominent
people in the district urged him, his friends implored him, and a
petition largely signed was presented to him. Never before in Georgia
has a citizen been formally petitioned by so large a number of his
fellow-citizens to accept so important an office. Mr. Grady regarded the
petition with great curiosity. He turned it over in his mind and played
with it in a certain boyish and impulsive way that belonged to
everything he did and that was one of the most charming elements of his
character. His response to the petition is worth giving here. He was, as
he said, strongly tempted to improve a most flattering opportunity. He
then goes on to read a lesson to the young men of the South that is
still timely, though it was written in 1882. He says:
When I was eighteen years of age, I adopted journalism as my
profession. After thirteen years of service, in which I have had
various fortunes, I can say that I have never seen a day when I
regretted my choice. On the contrary, I have seen the field of
journalism so enlarged, its possibilities so widened, and its
influence so extended, that I have come to believe earnestly
that no man, no matter what his calling, his elevation, or his
opportunity, can equal in dignity, honor and usefulness the
journalist who comprehends his position, fairly measures his
duties, and gives himself entirely and unselfishly to his work.
But journalism is a jealous profession, and demands the fullest
allegiance of those who seek its honors or emoluments. Least of
all things can it be made the aid of the demagogue, or the
handmaid of the politician. The man who uses his journal to
subserve his political ambition, or writes with a sinister or
personal purpose, soon loses his power, and had best abandon a
profession he has betrayed. Within my memory there are frequent
and striking examples of men who have sacrificed the one
profession, only to be sacrificed in the other. History has not
recorded the name of a single man who has been great enough to
succeed in both. Therefore, devoted as I am to my profession,
believing as I do that there is more of honor and usefulness for
me along its way than in another path, and that my duty is clear
and unmistakable, I am constrained to reaffirm in my own mind
and to declare to you the resolution I made when I entered
journalism, namely, that as long as I remain in its ranks I will
never become a candidate for any political office, or draw a
dollar from any public treasury. This rule I have never broken,
and I hope I never shall. As a matter of course, every young man
of health and spirit must have ambition, I think it has been the
curse of the South that our young men have considered little
else than political preferment worthy of an ambitious thought.
There is a fascination about the applause of the hustings that
is hard to withstand. Really, there is no career that brings so
much of unhappiness and discontent—so much of subservience,
sacrifice, and uncertainty as that of the politician. Never did
the South offer so little to her young men in the direction of
politics as she does at present. Never did she offer so much in
other directions. As for me, my ambition is a simple one. I
shall be satisfied with the labors of my life if, when those
labors are over, my son, looking abroad upon a better and
grander Georgia—a Georgia that has filled the destiny God
intended her for—when her towns and cities are hives of
industry, and her country-side the exhaustless fields from which
their stores are drawn—when every stream dances on its way to
the music of spindles, and every forest echoes back the roar of
the passing train—when her valleys smile with abundant harvests,
and from her hillsides come the tinkling of bells as her herds
and flocks go forth from their folds—when more than two million
people proclaim her perfect independence, and bless her with
their love—I shall be more than content, I say, if my son,
looking upon such scenes as these, can stand up and say:
“My father bore a part in this work, and his name lives in the
memory of this people.”
While I am forced, therefore, to decline to allow the use of my
name as you request, I cannot dismiss your testimonial,
unprecedented, I believe, in its character and compass, without
renewing my thanks for the generous motives that inspired it.
Life can bring me no sweeter satisfaction than comes from this
expression of confidence and esteem from the people with whom I
live, and among whom I expect to die. You have been pleased to
commend the work I may have done for the old State we love so
well. Rest assured that you have to-day repaid me amply for the
past, and have strengthened me for whatever duty may lie ahead.
Brief as it is, this is a complete summary of Mr. Grady’s purpose so far
as politics were concerned. It is the key-note of his career. He was
ambitious—he was fired with that “noble discontent,” born of genius,
that spurs men to action, but he lacked the selfishness that leads to
office-seeking. It is not to be supposed, however, that he scorned
politics. He had unbounded faith in the end and aim of certain
principles of government, and he had unlimited confidence in the honesty
and justice of the people and in the destiny of the American Union—in
the future of the Republic.
What was the secret of his popularity? By what methods did he win the
affections of people who never saw his face or heard his voice? His
aversion to office was not generally known—indeed, men who regarded him
in the light of rivalry, and who had access to publications neither
friendly nor appreciative, had advertised to the contrary. By them it
was hinted that he was continually seeking office and employing for that
purpose all the secret arts of the demagogue. Yet, in the face of these
sinister intimations, he died the best beloved and the most deeply
lamented man that Georgia has ever produced, and, to crown it all, he
died a private citizen, sacrificing his life in behalf of a purpose that
was neither personal nor sectional, but grandly national in its aims.
In the last intimate conversation he had with the writer of this, Mr.
Grady regretted that there were people in Georgia who misunderstood his
motives and intentions. We were on the train going from Macon to
Eatonton, where he was to speak.
“I am going to Eatonton solely because you seem to have your heart set
on it,” he said. “There are people who will say that I am making a
campaign in my own behalf, and you will hear it hinted that I am going
about the State drumming up popularity for the purpose of running for
some office.”
The idea seemed to oppress him, and though he never bore malice against
a human being, he was keenly hurt at any interpretation of his motives
that included selfishness or self-seeking among them. In this way, he
was often deeply wounded by men who ought to have held up his hands.
When he died, those who had wronged him, perhaps unintentionally, by
attributing to him a selfish ambition that he never had, were among the
first to do justice to his motives. Their haste in this matter (there
are two instances in my mind) has led me to believe that their instinct
at the last was superior to their judgment. I have recently read again
nearly all the political editorials contributed to the _Constitution_ by
Mr. Grady during the last half-dozen years. Taken together, they make a
remarkable showing. They manifest an extraordinary growth, not in style
or expression—for all the graces of composition were fully developed in
Mr. Grady’s earliest writings—but in lofty aim, in the high and
patriotic purpose that is to be found at its culmination in his Boston
speech. I mention the Boston speech because it is the last serious
effort he made. Reference might just as well have been made to the New
England speech, or to the Elberton speech, or to the little speech he
delivered at Eatonton, and which was never reported. In each and all of
these there is to be found the qualities that are greater than literary
nimbleness or rhetorical fluency—the qualities that kindle the fires of
patriotism and revive and restore the love of country.
In his Eatonton speech, Mr. Grady was particularly happy in his
references to a restored Union and a common country, and his earnestness
and his eloquence were as conscientious there as if he were speaking to
the largest and most distinguished audience in the world, and as if his
address were to be printed in all the newspapers of the land. I am
dwelling on these things in order to show that there was nothing
affected or perfunctory in Mr. Grady’s attitude. He had political
enemies in the State—men who, at some turn in their career, had felt the
touch and influence of his hand, or thought they did—and these men were
always ready, through their small organs and mouthpieces, to belittle
his efforts and to dash their stale small beer across the path of this
prophet of the New South, who strove to impress his people with his own
brightness and to lead them into the sunshine that warmed his own life
and made it beautiful. Perhaps these things should not be mentioned in a
sketch that can only be general in its nature; and yet they afford a key
to Mr. Grady’s character; they supply the means of getting an intimate
glimpse of his motives. That the thoughtless and ill-tempered criticisms
of his contemporaries wounded him is beyond question. They troubled him
greatly, and he used to talk about them to his co-workers with the
utmost freedom. But they never made him malicious. He always had some
excuse to offer for those who misinterpreted him, and no attack, however
bitter, was ever made on his motives, that he could not find a
reasonable excuse for in some genial and graceful way.
The great point about this man was that he never bore malice. His heart
was too tender and his nature too generous. The small jealousies, and
rivalries, and envies that appertain to life, and, indeed, are a
definite part of it, never touched him in the slightest degree. He was
conscious of the growth of his powers, and he watched their development
with the curiosity and enthusiasm of a boy, but the egotism that is
based on arrogance or self-esteem he had no knowledge of. The
consciousness of the purity of his motives gave him strength and power
in a direction where most other public men are weak. This same
consciousness gave a breadth, an ardor, and an impulsiveness to his
actions and utterances that seem to be wholly lacking in the lives of
other public men who have won the applause of the public. The secret of
this it would be difficult to define. When his companions in the office
insisted that it was his duty to prepare at least an outline of his
speeches so that the newspapers could have the benefit of such a basis,
the suggestion fretted him. His speech at the annual banquet of the New
England Society, which created such a tremendous sensation, was an
impromptu effort from beginning to end. It was the creature of the
occasion. Fortunately, a reporter of the New York _Tribune_ was present,
and he has preserved for us something of the flavor and finish of the
words which the young Southerner uttered on his first introduction to a
Northern audience. The tremendous impression that he made, however, has
never been recorded. There was a faint echo of it in the newspapers, a
buzz and a stir in the hotel lobbies, but all that was said was
inadequate to explain why these sons of New England, accustomed as they
were to eloquence of the rarer kind, as the volumes of their proceedings
show, rose to their feet and shouted themselves hoarse over the simple
and impromptu effort of this young Georgian.
Mr. Grady attended the New England banquet for the purpose of making a
mere formal response to the toast of “The South,” but, as he said
afterwards, there was something in the scene that was inspiring. Near
him sat General Tecumseh Sherman, who marched through Georgia with fire
and sword, and all around him were the fat and jocund sons of New
England who had prospered by the results of the war while his own people
had had the direst poverty for their portion. “When I found myself on my
feet,” he said, describing the scene on his return, “every nerve in my
body was strung as tight as a fiddle-string, and all tingling. I knew
then that I had a message for that assemblage, and as soon as I opened
my mouth it came rushing out.”
That speech, as we all know, was an achievement in its way. It stirred
the whole country from one end to the other, and made Mr. Grady famous.
Invitations to speak poured in upon him from all quarters, and he at
last decided to deliver an address at Dallas, Texas. His friends advised
him to prepare the speech in advance, especially as many of the
newspapers of the country would be glad to have proofs of it to be used
when it was delivered. He saw how essential this would be, but the
preparation of a speech in cold blood (as he phrased it) was irksome to
him, and failed to meet the approval of his methods, which were as
responsive to the occasion as the report of the thunder-clap is to the
lightning’s flash. He knew that he could depend on these methods in all
emergencies and under all circumstances, and he felt that only by
depending on them could he do himself justice before an audience. The
one characteristic of all his speeches, as natural to his mind as it was
surprising to the minds of others, was the ease and felicity with which
he seized on suggestions born of the moment and growing out of his
immediate surroundings. It might be some incident occurring to the
audience, some failure in the programme, some remark of the speaker
introducing him, or some unlooked-for event; but, whatever it was, he
seized it and compelled it to do duty in pointing a beautiful moral, or
he made it the basis of that swift and genial humor that was a feature
not only of his speeches, but of his daily life.
He was prevailed on, however, to prepare his Dallas speech in advance.
It was put in type in the _Constitution_ office, carefully revised, and
proof slips sent out to a number of newspapers. Mr. Grady’s journey from
Atlanta to Dallas, which was undertaken in a special car, was in the
nature of an ovation. He was met at every station by large crowds, and
his appearance created an enthusiasm that is indescribable. No such
tribute as this has ever before been paid, under any circumstances, to
any private American citizen, and it is to be doubted whether even any
public official, no matter how exalted his station, has ever been
greeted with such hearty and spontaneous enthusiasm. His reception in
Dallas was the culmination of the series of ovations through which he
had passed. Some sort of programme had been arranged by a committee, but
the crowds trampled on this, and the affair took the shape of an
American hullaballoo, so to speak, and, as such, it was greatly enjoyed
by Mr. Grady.
Meanwhile, the programme that had been arranged for the speech-making
was fully carried out. The young editor completely captured the vast
crowd that had assembled to hear him. This information had been promptly
carried to the _Constitution_ office by private telegrams, and
everything was made ready for giving the speech to the public the next
morning; but during the afternoon this telegram came:
“_Suppress speech: It has been entirely changed. Notify other
papers._”
At the last moment, his mind full of the suggestions of his
surroundings, he felt that the prepared speech could not be depended on,
and he threw it away. It was a great relief to him, he told me
afterward, to be able to do this. Whatever in the prepared speech seemed
to be timely he used, but he departed entirely from the line of it at
every point, and the address that the Texans heard was mainly an
impromptu one. It created immense enthusiasm, and confirmed the promise
of the speech before the New England Society.
The speech before the University of Virginia was also prepared
beforehand, but Mr. Grady made a plaything of the preparation before his
audience. “I was never so thoroughly convinced of Mr. Grady’s power,”
said the Hon. Guyton McLendon, of Thomasville, to the writer, “as when I
heard him deliver this speech.” Mr. McLendon had accompanied him on his
journey to Charlottesville. “We spent a day in Washington,” said Mr.
McLendon, recalling the incidents of the trip. “The rest of the party
rode around the capital looking at the sights, but Mr. Grady, myself,
and one or two others remained in the car. While we were waiting there,
Mr. Grady read me the printed slips of his speech, and I remember that
it made a great impression on me. I thought it was good enough for any
occasion, but Mr. Grady seemed to have his doubts about it. He examined
it critically two or three times, and made some alterations. Finally he
laid it away. When he did come to deliver the speech, I was perhaps the
most astonished person you ever saw. I expected to hear again the speech
that had been read to me in the Pullman coach, but I heard a vastly
different and a vastly better one. He used the old speech only where it
was most timely and most convenient. The incident of delivering the
prize to a young student who had won it on a literary exercise of some
sort, started Mr. Grady off in a new vein and on a new line, and after
that he used the printed speech merely to fill out with here and there.
It was wonderful how he could break away from it and come back to it,
fitting the old with the new in a beautiful and harmonious mosaic. If
anybody had told me that the human mind was capable of such a
performance as this on the wing and in the air, so to speak, I shouldn’t
have believed it. To me it was a wonderful manifestation of genius, and
I knew then, for the first time, that there was no limit to Mr. Grady’s
power and versatility as a speaker.”
In his speeches in the country towns of Georgia and before the farmers,
Mr. Grady made no pretense of preparation. His private secretary, Mr.
James R. Holliday, caught and wrote out the pregnant paragraphs that go
to make up his Elberton speech, which was the skeleton and outline on
which he based his speeches to the farmers. Each speech, as might be
supposed, was a beautiful variation of this rural theme to which he was
wedded, but the essential part of the Elberton speech was the bone and
marrow of all. I think there is no passage in our modern literature
equal in its effectiveness and pathos to his picture of a Southern
farmer’s home. It was a matter on which his mind dwelt. There was that
in his nature to which both sun and soil appealed. The rain falling on a
fallow field, the sun shining on the bristling and waving corn, and the
gentle winds of heaven blowing over all—he was never tired of talking of
these, and his talk always took the shape of a series of picturesque
descriptions. He appreciated their spiritual essence as well as their
material meaning, and he surrendered himself entirely to all the
wholesome suggestions that spring from the contemplation of rural
scenes.
I suppose it is true that all men—except those who are brought in daily
contact with the practical and prosy side of it—have a longing for a
country life. Mr. Grady’s longing in that direction took the shape of a
passion that was none the less serious and earnest because he knew it
was altogether romantic. In the Spring of 1889, the matter engaged his
attention to such an extent, that he commissioned a compositor in the
_Constitution_ office to purchase a suburban farm. He planned it all out
beforehand, and knew just where the profits were to come in. His
descriptions of his imaginary farm were inimitable, and the details, as
he gave them out, were marked by the rare humor with which he treated
the most serious matters. There was to be an old-fashioned spring in a
clump of large oak-trees on the place, meadows of orchard grass and
clover, through which mild-eyed Jerseys were to wander at will, and in
front of the house there was to be a barley patch gloriously green, and
a colt frolicking and capering in it. The farm was of course a dream,
but it was a very beautiful one while it lasted, and he dwelt on it with
an earnestness that was quite engaging to those who enjoyed his
companionship. The farm was a dream, but he no doubt got more enjoyment
and profit out of it than a great many prosy people get out of the farms
that are real. Insubstantial as it was, Mr. Grady’s farm served to
relieve the tension of a mind that was always busy with the larger
affairs of this busy and stirring age, and many a time when he grew
tired of the incessant demands made on his time and patience he would
close the door of his room with a bang and instruct the office-boy to
tell all callers that he had “gone to his farm.” The fat cows that
grazed there lowed their welcome, the chickens cackled to see him come,
and the colt capered nimbly in the green expanse of barley—children of
his dreams all, but all grateful and restful to a busy mind.
II.
In this hurriedly written sketch, which is thrown together to meet the
modern exigencies of publishing, the round, and full, and complete
biography cannot be looked for. There is no time here for the selection
and arrangement in an orderly way of the details of this busy and
brilliant life. Under the circumstances, even the hand of affection can
only touch it here and there so swiftly and so lightly that the random
result must be inartistic and unsatisfactory. It was at such moments as
these—moments of hurry and high-pressure—that Mr. Grady was at his best.
His hand was never surer,—the machinery of his mind was never more
responsive to the tremendous demands he made on it,—than when the huge
press of the _Constitution_ was waiting his orders; when the forms were
waiting to be closed, when the compositors were fretting and fuming for
copy, and when, perhaps, an express train was waiting ten minutes over
its time to carry the _Constitution_ to its subscribers. All his
faculties were trained to meet emergencies; and he was never happier
than when meeting them, whether in a political campaign, in conventions,
in local issues, or in the newspaper business as correspondent or
managing editor. Pressed by the emergency of his death, which to me was
paralyzing, and by the necessity of haste, which, at this juncture, is
confusing, these reminiscences have taken on a disjointed shape sadly at
variance with the demands of literary art. Let me, therefore, somewhere
in the middle, begin at the beginning.
Henry Woodfin Grady was born in Athens, Georgia, on the 24th of April,
1850. As a little boy he was the leader of all the little boys of his
acquaintance—full of that moral audacity that takes the lead in all
innocent and healthy sports. An old gentleman, whose name I have
forgotten, came into the _Constitution_ editorial rooms shortly after
Mr. Grady delivered the New England banquet speech, to say that he knew
Henry when a boy. I listened with interest, but the memory of what he
said is vague. I remember that his reminiscences had a touch of
enthusiasm, going to show that the little boy was attractive enough to
make a deep impression on his elders. He had, even when a child, all
those qualities that draw attention and win approval. It is easy to
believe that he was a somewhat boisterous boy. Even after he had a
family of his own, and when he was supposed (as the phrase is) to have
settled down, he still remained a boy to all intents and purposes. His
vitality was inexhaustible, and his flow of animal spirits unceasing. In
all athletic sports and out-door exercises he excelled while at school
and college, and it is probable that his record as a boxer, wrestler,
sprinter, and an all-around athlete is more voluminous than his record
for scholarship. To the very last, his enthusiasm for these sports was,
to his intimate friends, one of the most interesting characteristics of
this many-sided man.
One of his characteristics as a boy, and it was a characteristic that
clung to him through all his life, was his love and sympathy for the
poor and lowly, for the destitute and the forlorn. This was one of the
problems of life that he could never understand,—why, in the economy of
Providence, some human beings should be rich and happy, and others poor
and friendless. When a very little child he began to try to solve the
problem in his own way. It was a small way, indeed, but if all who are
fortunately situated should make the same effort charity would cause the
whole world to smile, and Heaven could not possibly withhold the rich
promise of its blessings. From his earliest childhood, Mr. Grady had a
fondness for the negro race. He was fond of the negroes because they
were dependent, his heart went out to them because he understood and
appreciated their position. When he was two years old, he had a little
negro boy named Isaac to wait on him. He always called this negro
“Brother Isaac,” and he would cry bitterly, if any one told him that
Isaac was not his brother. As he grew older his interest in the negroes
and his fondness for them increased. Until he was eight or nine years
old he always called his mother “Dear mother,” and when the weather was
very cold, he had a habit of waking in the night and saying: “Dear
mother, do you think the servants have enough cover? It’s so cold, and I
want them to be warm.” His first thought was always for the destitute
and the lowly—for those who were dependent on him or on others. At home
he always shared his lunch with the negro children, and after the slaves
were freed, and were in such a destitute condition, scarcely a week
passed that some forlorn-looking negro boy did not bring his mother a
note something like this: “DEAR MOTHER: Please give this child something
to eat. He looks so hungry. H. W. G.” It need not be said that no one
bearing credentials signed by this thoughtful and unselfish boy was ever
turned away hungry from the Grady door. It may be said, too, that his
love and sympathy for the negroes was fully appreciated by that race.
His mother says that she never had a servant during all his life that
was not devoted to him, and never knew one to be angry or impatient with
him. He could never bear to see any one angry or unhappy about him. As a
child he sought to heal the wounds of the sorrowing, and to the last,
though he was worried by the vast responsibilities he had taken on his
shoulders and disturbed by the thoughtless demands made on his time and
patience, he suffered more from the sorrows of others than from any
troubles of his own. When he went to school, he carried the same
qualities of sympathy and unselfishness that had made him charming as a
child. If, among his school-mates, there was to be found a poor or a
delicate child, he took that child under his especial care, and no one
was allowed to trouble it in any way.
Shortly after he graduated at the State University, an event occurred
that probably decided Mr. Grady’s future career. In an accidental way he
went on one of the annual excursions of the Georgia Press Association as
the correspondent of the _Constitution_. His letters describing the
incidents of the trip were written over the signature of “King Hans.”
They were full of that racy humor that has since become identified with
a large part of Mr. Grady’s journalistic work. They had a flavor of
audacity about them, and that sparkling suggestiveness that goes first
by one name and then another, but is chiefly known as individuality. The
letters created a sensation among the editors. There was not much that
was original or interesting in Georgia journalism in that day and time.
The State was in the hands of the carpet-baggers, and the newspapers
reflected in a very large degree the gloom and the hopelessness of that
direful period. The editors abused the Republicans in their editorial
columns day after day, and made no effort to enlarge their news service,
or to increase the scope of their duties or their influence. Journalism
in Georgia, in short, was in a rut, and there it was content to jog.
Though the “King Hans” letters were the production of a boy, their
humor, their aptness, their illuminating power (so to say), their light
touch, and their suggestiveness, showed that a new star had arisen. They
created a lively diversion among the gloomy-minded editors for a while,
and then the procession moved sadly forward in the old ruts. But the
brief, fleeting, and humorous experience that Mr. Grady had as the
casual correspondent of the _Constitution_ decided him. Perhaps this was
his bent after all, and that what might be called a happy accident was
merely a fortunate incident that fate had arranged, for to this
beautiful and buoyant nature fate seemed to be always kind. Into his
short life it crowded its best and dearest gifts. All manner of
happiness was his—the happiness of loving and of being beloved—the
happiness of doing good in directions that only the Recording Angel
could follow—and before he died Fame came and laid a wreath of flowers
at his feet. Fate or circumstance carried him into journalism. His “King
Hans” letters had attracted attention to him, and it seemed natural that
he should follow this humorous experiment into a more serious field.
He went to Rome not long afterwards, and became editor of the Rome
_Courier_. The _Courier_ was the oldest paper in the city, and therefore
the most substantial. It was, in fact, a fine piece of property. But the
town was a growing town, and the _Courier_ had rivals, the Rome _Daily_,
if my memory serves me, and the Rome _Commercial_. Just how long Mr.
Grady edited the _Courier_, I have no record of; but one fine morning,
he thought he discovered a “ring” of some sort in the village. I do not
know whether it was a political or a financial ring. We have had so many
of these rings in one shape or another that I will not trust my memory
to describe it; but it was a ring, and probably one of the first that
dared to engage in business. Mr. Grady wrote a fine editorial denouncing
it, but when the article was submitted to the proprietor, he made some
objection. He probably thought that some of his patrons would take
offense at the strong language Mr. Grady had used. After some
conversation on the subject, the proprietor of the _Courier_ flatly
objected to the appearance of the editorial in his paper. Mr. Grady was
about eighteen years old then, with views and a little money of his own.
In the course of a few hours he had bought out the two opposing papers,
consolidated them, and his editorial attack on the ring appeared the
next morning in the Rome _Daily Commercial_. It happened on the same
morning that the two papers, the _Courier_ and the _Daily Commercial_,
both appeared with the name of Henry W. Grady as editor. The ring, or
whatever it was, was smashed. Nobody heard anything more of it, and the
_Commercial_ was greeted by its esteemed contemporaries as a most
welcome addition to Georgia journalism. It was bright and lively, and
gave Rome a new vision of herself.
It was left to the _Commercial_ to discover that Rome was a city set on
the hills, and that she ought to have an advertising torch in her hands.
The _Commercial_, however, was only an experiment. It was run, as Mr.
Grady told me long afterwards, as an amateur casual. He had money to
spend on it, and he gave it a long string to go on. Occasionally he
would fill it up with his bright fancies, and then he would neglect it
for days at a time, and it would then be edited by the foreman. It was
about this time that I met Mr. Grady. We had had some correspondence. He
was appreciative, and whatever struck his fancy he had a quick response
for. Some foolish paragraph of mine had appealed to his sense of humor,
and he pursued the matter with a sympathetic letter that made a lasting
impression. The result of that letter was that I went to Rome, pulled
him from his flying ponies, and had a most enjoyable visit. From Rome we
went to Lookout Mountain, and it is needless to say that he was the life
of the party. He was its body, its spirit, and its essence. We found, in
our journey, a dissipated person who could play on the zither. Just how
important that person became, those who remember Mr. Grady’s pranks can
imagine. The man with the zither took the shape of a minstrel, and in
that guise he went with us, always prepared to make music, which he had
often to do in response to Mr. Grady’s demands.
Rome, however, soon ceased to be large enough for the young editor.
Atlanta seemed to offer the widest field, and he came here, and entered
into partnership with Colonel Robert A. Alston and Alex St.
Clair-Abrams. It was a queer partnership, but there was much that was
congenial about it. Colonel Alston was a typical South Carolinian, and
Abrams was a Creole. It would be difficult to get together three more
impulsive and enterprising partners. Little attention was paid to the
business office. The principal idea was to print the best newspaper in
the South, and for a time this scheme was carried out in a magnificent
way that could not last. Mr. Grady never bothered himself about the
finances, and the other editors were not familiar with the details of
business. The paper they published attracted more attention from
newspaper men than it did from the public, and it was finally compelled
to suspend. Its good will—and it had more good will than capital—was
sold to the _Constitution_, which had been managed in a more
conservative style. It is an interesting fact, however, that Mr. Grady’s
experiments in the _Herald_, which were failures, were successful when
tried on the _Constitution_, whose staff he joined when Captain Evan P.
Howell secured a controlling interest. And yet Mr. Grady’s development
as a newspaper man was not as rapid as might be supposed. He was
employed by the _Constitution_ as a reporter, and his work was
intermittent.
One fact was fully developed by Mr. Grady’s early work on the
_Constitution_,—namely, that he was not fitted for the routine work of a
reporter. One day he would fill several columns of the paper with his
bright things, and then for several days he would stand around in the
sunshine talking to his friends, and entertaining them with his racy
sayings. I have seen it stated in various shapes in books and magazines
that the art of conversation is dead. If it was dead before Mr. Grady
was born, it was left to him to resurrect it. Charming as his pen was,
it could bear no reasonable comparison with his tongue. I am not
alluding here to his eloquence, but to his ordinary conversation. When
he had the incentive of sympathetic friends and surroundings, he was the
most fascinating talker I have ever heard. General Toombs had large
gifts in that direction, but he bore no comparison in any respect to Mr.
Grady, whose mind was responsive to all suggestions and to all subjects.
The men who have made large reputations as talkers have had the habit of
selecting their own subjects and treating them dogmatically. We read of
Coleridge buttonholing an acquaintance and talking him to death on the
street, and of Carlyle compelling himself to be heard by sheer
vociferousness. Mr. Grady could have made the monologue as interesting
as he did his orations, but this was not his way. What he did was to
take up whatever commonplace subject was suggested, and so charge it
with his nimble wit and brilliant imagination as to give it a new
importance.
It was natural, under the circumstances, that his home in Atlanta should
be the center of the social life of the city. He kept open house, and,
aided by his lovely wife and two beautiful children, dispensed the most
charming hospitality. There was nothing more delightful than his
home-life. Whatever air or attitude he had to assume in business, at
home he was a rollicking and romping boy. He put aside all dignity
there, and his most distinguished guest was never distinguished enough
to put on the airs of formality that are commonly supposed to be a part
of social life. His home was a typical one,—the center of his affections
and the fountain of all his joys—and he managed to make all his friends
feel what a sacred place it was. It was the headquarters of all that is
best and brightest in the social and intellectual life of Atlanta, and
many of the most distinguished men of the country have enjoyed the
dispensation of his hospitality, which was simple and homelike, having
about it something of the flavor and ripeness of the old Southern life.
In writing of the life and career of a man as busy in so many directions
as Mr. Grady, one finds it difficult to pursue the ordinary methods of
biographical writing. One finds it necessary, in order to give a clear
idea of his methods, which were his own in all respects, to be
continually harking back to some earlier period of his career. I have
alluded to his distaste for the routine of reportorial work. The daily
grind—the treadmill of trivial affairs—was not attractive to him; but
when there was a sensation in the air—when something of unusual
importance was happening or about to happen—he was in his element. His
energy at such times was phenomenal. He had the faculty of grasping all
the details of an event, and the imagination to group them properly so
as to give them their full force and effect. The result of this is shown
very clearly in his telegrams to the New York _Herald_ and the
_Constitution_ from Florida during the disputed count going on there in
1876 and the early part of 1877. Mr. Tilden selected Senator Joseph E.
Brown, among other prominent Democrats, to proceed to Florida, and look
after the Democratic case there. Mr. Grady went as the special
correspondent of the New York _Herald_ and the Atlanta _Constitution_,
and though he had for his competitors some of the most famous special
writers of the country, he easily led them all in the brilliancy of his
style, in the character of his work, and in his knack of grouping
together gossip and fact. He was always proud of his work there; he was
on his mettle, as the saying is, and I think there is no question that,
from a journalist’s point of view, his letters and telegrams, covering
the history of what is known politically as the Florida fraud, have no
equal in the newspaper literature of the day. There is no phase of that
important case that his reports do not cover, and they represent a vast
amount of rapid and accurate work—work in which the individuality of the
man is as prominent as his accuracy and impartiality. One of the results
of Mr. Grady’s visit to Florida, and his association with the prominent
politicians gathered there, was to develop a confidence in his own
powers and resources that was exceedingly valuable to him when he came
afterwards to the management of the leading daily paper in the South. He
discovered that the men who had been successful in business and in
politics had no advantage over him in any of the mental qualities and
attributes that appertain to success, and this discovery gave purpose
and determination to his ambition.
Another fruitful fact in his career, which he used to dwell on with
great pleasure, was his association while in Florida with Senator
Brown—an association that amounted to intimacy. Mr. Grady always had a
very great admiration for Senator Brown, but in Florida he had the
opportunity of working side by side with the Senator and of studying the
methods by which he managed men and brought them within the circle of
his powerful influence. Mr. Grady often said that it was one of the most
instructive lessons of his life to observe the influence which Senator
Brown, feeble as he was in body, exerted on men who were almost total
strangers. The contest between the politicians for the electoral vote of
Florida was in the nature of a still hunt, where prudence, judgment,
skill, and large knowledge of human nature were absolutely essential. In
such a contest as this, Senator Brown was absolutely master of the
situation, and Mr. Grady took great delight in studying his methods, and
in describing them afterwards.
Busy as Mr. Grady was in Florida with the politicians and with his
newspaper correspondence, he nevertheless found time to make an
exhaustive study of the material resources of the State, and the result
of this appeared in the columns of the _Constitution_ at a later date in
the shape of a series of letters that attracted unusual attention
throughout the country. This subject, the material resources of the
South, and the development of the section, was always a favorite one
with Mr. Grady. He touched it freely from every side and point of view,
and made a feature of it in his newspaper work. To his mind there was
something more practical in this direction than in the heat and fury of
partisan politics. Whatever would aid the South in a material way,
develop her resources and add to her capital, population, and
industries, found in him not only a ready, but an enthusiastic and a
tireless champion. He took great interest in politics, too, and often
made his genius for the management of men and issues felt in the affairs
of the State; but the routine of politics—the discussion that goes on,
like Tennyson’s brook, forever and forever—were of far less importance
in his mind than the practical development of the South. This seemed to
be the burthen of his speeches, as it was of all his later writings. He
never tired of this subject, and he discussed it with a brilliancy, a
fervor, a versatility, and a fluency marvelous enough to have made the
reputation of half a dozen men. Out of his contemplation of it grew the
lofty and patriotic purpose which drew attention to his wonderful
eloquence, and made him famous throughout the country—the purpose to
draw the two sections together in closer bonds of union, fraternity,
harmony, and good-will. The real strength and symmetry of his career can
only be properly appreciated by those who take into consideration the
unselfishness with which he devoted himself to this patriotic purpose.
Instinctively the country seemed to understand something of this, and it
was this instinctive understanding that caused him to be regarded with
affectionate interest and appreciation from one end of the country to
the other by people of all parties, classes, and interests. It was this
instinctive understanding that made him at the close of his brief career
one of the most conspicuous Americans of modern times, and threw the
whole country into mourning at his death.
III.
When in 1880 Mr. Grady bought a fourth interest in the _Constitution_,
he gave up, for the most part, all outside newspaper work, and proceeded
to devote his time and attention to his duties as managing editor, for
which he was peculiarly well fitted. His methods were entirely his own.
He borrowed from no one. Every movement he made in the field of
journalism was stamped with the seal of his genius. He followed no
precedent. He provided for every emergency as it arose, and some of his
strokes of enterprise were as bold as they were startling. He had a
rapid faculty of organization. This was shown on one occasion when he
determined to print official reports of the returns of the congressional
election in the seventh Georgia district. Great interest was felt in the
result all over the State. An independent candidate was running against
the Democratic nominee, and the campaign was one of the liveliest ever
had in Georgia. Yet it is a district that lies in the mountains and
winds around and over them. Ordinarily, it was sometimes a fortnight and
frequently a month before the waiting newspapers and the public knew the
official returns. Mr. Grady arranged for couriers with relays of horses
at all the remote precincts, and the majority of them are remote from
the lines of communication, and his orders to these were to spare
neither horse-flesh nor money in getting the returns to the telegraph
stations. At important points, he had placed members of the
_Constitution’s_ editorial and reportorial staff, who were to give the
night couriers the assistance and directions which their interest and
training would suggest. It was a tough piece of work, but all the
details and plans had been so perfectly arranged that there was no
miscarriage anywhere. One of the couriers rode forty miles over the
mountains, fording rushing streams and galloping wildly over the rough
roads. It was a rough job, but he had been selected by Mr. Grady
especially for this piece of work; he was a tough man and he had tough
horses under him, and he reached the telegraph station on time. This
sort of thing was going on all over the district, and the next morning
the whole State had the official returns. Other feats of modern
newspaper enterprise have been more costly and as successful, but there
is none that I can recall to mind showing a more comprehensive grasp of
the situation or betraying a more daring spirit. It was a feat that
appealed to the imagination, and therefore on the Napoleonic order.
And yet it is a singular fact that all his early journalistic ventures
were in the nature of failures. The Rome _Commercial_, which he edited
before he had attained his majority, was a bright paper, but not
financially successful. Mr. Grady did some remarkably bold and brilliant
work on the Atlanta _Daily Herald_, but it was expensive work, too, and
the _Herald_ died for lack of funds. Mr. Marion J. Verdery, in his
admirable memorial of Mr. Grady, prepared for the Southern Society of
New York (which I have taken the liberty of embodying in this volume)
alludes to these failures of Mr. Grady, and a great many of his admirers
have been mystified by them. I think the explanation is very simple. Mr.
Grady was a new and a surprising element in the field of journalism, and
his methods were beyond the comprehension of those who had grown gray
watching the dull and commonplace politicians wielding their heavy pens
as editors, and getting the news accidentally, if at all. There are a
great many people in this world of ours—let us say the average people,
in order to be mathematically exact—who have to be educated up to an
appreciation of what is bright and beautiful, or bold and interesting.
Some of Mr. Grady’s methods were new even in American journalism, and it
is no wonder that his dashing experiments with the _Daily Herald_ were
failures, or that commonplace people regarded them as crude and reckless
manifestations of a purpose and a desire to create a sensation.
Moreover, it should be borne in mind that when the _Daily Herald_ was
running its special locomotives up and down the railroads of the State,
the field of journalism in Atlanta was exceedingly narrow and
provincial. The town had been rescued from the village shape, but
neither its population nor its progress warranted the experiments on the
_Herald_. They were mistakes of time and place, but they were not
mistakes of conception and execution. They helped to educate and
enlighten the public, and to give that dull, clumsy, and slow-moving
body a taste of the spirit and purpose of modern journalism. The public
liked the taste that it got, and smacked its lips over it and remembered
it, and was always ready after that to respond promptly to the efforts
of Mr. Grady to give it the work of his head and hands.
Bright and buoyant as he was, his early failures in journalism dazed and
mortified him, but they did not leave him depressed. If he had his hours
of depression and gloom he reserved them for himself. Even when all his
resources had been exhausted, he was the same genial, witty, and
appreciative companion, the center of attraction wherever he went. The
year 1876 was the turning-point in his career in more ways than one. In
the fall of that year, Captain Evan P. Howell bought a controlling
interest in the _Constitution_. The day after the purchase was made,
Captain Howell met Mr. Grady, who was on his way to the passenger
station.
“I was just hunting for you,” said Captain Howell. “I want to have a
talk with you.”
“Well, you’ll have to talk mighty fast,” said Mr. Grady. “Atlanta’s
either too big for me, or I am too big for Atlanta.”
It turned out that the young editor, discomfited in Atlanta, but not
discouraged, was on his way to Augusta to take charge of the
_Constitutionalist_ of that city. Captain Howell offered him a position
at once, which was promptly accepted. There was no higgling or
bargaining; the two men were intimate friends; there was something
congenial in their humor, in their temperaments, and in a certain fine
audacity in political affairs that made the two men invincible in
Georgia politics from the day they began working together. Before the
train that was to bear Mr. Grady to Augusta had steamed out of the
station, he was on his way to the _Constitution_ office to enter on his
duties, and then and there practically began between the two men a
partnership as intimate in its relations of both friendship and business
as it was important on its bearings on the wonderful success of the
_Constitution_ and on the local history and politics of Georgia. It was
an ideal partnership in many respects, and covered almost every
movement, with one exception, that the two friends made. That exception
was the prohibition campaign in Atlanta, that attracted such widespread
attention throughout the country. Mr. Grady represented the
prohibitionists and Captain Howell the anti-prohibitionists, and it was
one of the most vigorous and amusing campaigns the town has ever
witnessed. Each partner was the chief speaker of the side he
represented, and neither lost an opportunity to tell a good-humored joke
at the other’s expense. Thus, while the campaign was an earnest one in
every respect, and even embittered to some small extent by the
thoughtless utterances of those who seem to believe that moral issues
can best be settled by a display of fanaticism, the tension was greatly
relieved by the wit, the humor, the good nature and the good sense which
the two leaders injected into the canvas.
The sentimental side of Mr. Grady’s character was more largely and more
practically developed than that of any other person I have ever seen. In
the great majority of cases sentiment develops into a sentimentality
that is sometimes maudlin, sometimes officious, and frequently
offensive. In most people it develops as the weakest and least
attractive side of their character. It was the stronghold of Mr. Grady’s
nature. It enveloped his whole career, to use Matthew Arnold’s phrase,
in sweetness and light, and made his life a real dispensation in behalf
of the lives of others. Wherever he found suffering and sorrow, no
matter how humble—wherever he found misery, no matter how coarse and
degraded, he struck hands with them then and there, and wrapped them
about and strengthened them with his abundant sympathy. Until he could
give them relief in some shape, he became their partner, and a very
active and energetic partner he was. I have often thought that his words
of courage and cheer, always given with a light and humorous touch to
hide his own feelings, was worth more than the rich man’s grudging gift.
It was this side of Mr. Grady’s nature that caused him to turn with such
readiness to the festivities of Christmas. He was a great admirer of
Charles Dickens, especially of that writer’s Christmas literature. It
was an ideal season with Mr. Grady, and it presented itself to his mind
less as a holiday time than as an opportunity to make others happy—the
rich as well as the poor. He had a theory that the rich who have become
poor by accident or misfortune suffer the stings of poverty more keenly
than the poor who have always been poor, for the reason that they are
not qualified to fight against conditions that are at once strange and
crushing. Several Christmases ago, I had the pleasure of witnessing a
little episode in which he illustrated his theory to his own
satisfaction as well as to mine.
On that particular Christmas eve, there was living in Atlanta an old
gentleman who had at one time been one of the leading citizens of the
town. He had in fact been a powerful influence in the politics of the
State, but the war swept away his possessions, and along with them all
the conditions and surroundings that had enabled him to maintain himself
comfortably. His misfortunes came on him when he was too old to begin
the struggle with life anew with any reasonable hope of success. He gave
way to a disposition that had been only convivial in his better days
when he had hope and pride to sustain him, and he sank lower until he
had nearly reached the gutter.
I joined Mr. Grady as he left the office, and we walked slowly down the
street enjoying the kaleidoscopic view of the ever-shifting, ever
hurrying crowd as it swept along the pavements. In all that restless and
hastening throng there seemed to be but one man bent on no message of
enjoyment or pleasure, and he was old and seedy-looking. He was gazing
about him in an absent-minded way. The weather was not cold, but a
disagreeable drizzle was falling.
“Yonder is the Judge,” said Mr. Grady, pointing to the seedy-looking old
man. “Let’s go and see what he is going to have for Christmas.”
I found out long afterwards that the old man had long been a pensioner
on Mr. Grady’s bounty, but there was nothing to suggest this in the way
in which the young editor approached the Judge. His manner was the very
perfection of cordiality and consideration, though there was just a
touch of gentle humor in his bright eyes.
“It isn’t too early to wish you a merry Christmas, I hope,” said Mr.
Grady, shaking hands with the old man.
“No, no,” replied the Judge, straightening himself up with dignity; “not
at all. The same to you, my boy.”
“Well,” remarked Mr. Grady lightly, “you ought to be fixing up for it.
I’m not as old as you are, and I’ve got lots of stirring around and
shopping to do if I have any fun at home.”
The eyes of the Judge sought the ground. “No. I was—ah—just
considering.” Then he looked up into the laughing but sympathetic eyes
of the boyish young fellow, and his dignity sensibly relaxed. “I was
only—ah—Grady, let me see you a moment.”
The two walked to the edge of the pavement, and talked together some
little time. I did not overhear the conversation, but learned afterwards
that the Judge told Mr. Grady that he had no provisions at home, and no
money to buy them with, and asked for a small loan.
“I’ll do better than that,” said Mr. Grady. “I’ll go with you and buy
them myself. Come with us,” he remarked to me with a quizzical smile.
“The Judge here has found a family in distress, and we are going to send
them something substantial for Christmas.”
We went to a grocery store near at hand, and I saw, as we entered, that
the Judge had not only recovered his native dignity, but had added a
little to suit the occasion. I observed that his bearing was even
haughty. Mr. Grady had observed it, too, and the humor of the situation
so delighted him that he could hardly control the laughter in his voice.
“Now, Judge,” said Mr. Grady, as we approached the counter, “we must be
discreet as well as liberal. We must get what you think this suffering
family most needs. You call off the articles, the clerk here will check
them off, and I will have them sent to the house.”
The Judge leaned against the counter with a careless dignity quite
inimitable, and glanced at the well-filled shelves.
“Well,” said he, thrumming on a paper-box, and smacking his lips
thoughtfully, “we will put down first a bottle of chow-chow pickles.”
“Why, of course,” exclaimed Mr. Grady, his face radiant with mirth; “it
is the very thing. What next?”
“Let me see,” said the Judge, closing his eyes reflectively—“two
tumblers of strawberry jelly, three pounds of mince-meat, and two pounds
of dates, if you have real good ones, and—yes—two cans of deviled ham.”
Every article the Judge ordered was something he had been used to in his
happier days. The whole episode was like a scene from one of Dickens’s
novels, and I have never seen Mr. Grady more delighted. He was delighted
with the humor of it, and appreciated in his own quaint and charming way
and to the fullest extent the pathos of it. He dwelt on it then and
afterwards, and often said that he envied the broken-down old man the
enjoyment of the luxuries of which he had so long been deprived.
On a memorable Christmas day not many years after, Mr. Grady stirred
Atlanta to its very depths by his eloquent pen, and brought the whole
community to the heights of charity and unselfishness on which he always
stood. He wrought the most unique manifestation of prompt and thoughtful
benevolence that is to be found recorded in modern times. The day before
Christmas was bitter cold, and the night fell still colder, giving
promise of the coldest weather that had been felt in Georgia for many
years. The thermometer fell to zero, and it was difficult for
comfortably clad people to keep warm even by the fires that plenty had
provided, and it was certain that there would be terrible suffering
among the poor of the city. The situation was one that appealed in the
strongest manner to Mr. Grady’s sympathies. It appealed, no doubt, to
the sympathies of all charitably-disposed people; but the shame of
modern charity is its lack of activity. People are horrified when
starving people are found near their doors, when a poor woman wanders
about the streets until death comes to her relief; they seem to forget
that it is the duty of charity to act as well as to give. Mr. Grady was
a man of action. He did not wait for the organization of a relief
committee, and the meeting of prominent citizens to devise ways and
means for dispensing alms. He was his own committee. His plans were
instantly formed and promptly carried out. The organization was complete
the moment he determined that the poor of Atlanta should not suffer for
lack of food, clothing, or fuel. He sent his reporters out into the
highways and byways, and into every nook and corner of the city. He took
one assignment for himself, and went about through the cold from house
to house. He had a consultation with the Mayor at midnight, and cases of
actual suffering were relieved then and there. The next morning, which
was Sunday, the columns of the _Constitution_ teemed with the results of
the investigation which Mr. Grady and his reporters had made. A stirring
appeal was made in the editorial columns for aid for the poor—such an
appeal as only Mr. Grady could make. The plan of relief was carefully
made out. The _Constitution_ was prepared to take charge of whatever the
charitably disposed might feel inclined to send to its office—and
whatever was sent should be sent early.
The effect of this appeal was astonishing—magical, in fact. It seemed
impossible to believe that any human agency could bring about such a
result. By eight o’clock on Christmas morning—the day being Sunday—the
street in front of the _Constitution_ office was jammed with wagons,
drays, and vehicles of all kinds, and the office itself was transformed
into a vast depot of supplies. The merchants and business men had opened
their stores as well as their hearts, and the coal and wood dealers had
given the keys of their establishments into the gentle hands of charity.
Men who were not in business subscribed money, and this rose into a
considerable sum. When Mr. Grady arrived on the scene, he gave a shout
of delight, and cut up antics as joyous as those of a schoolboy. Then he
proceeded to business. He had everything in his head, and he organized
his relief trains and put them in motion more rapidly than any general
ever did. By noon, there was not a man, woman, or child, white or black,
in the city of Atlanta that lacked any of the necessaries of life, and
to such an extent had the hearts of the people been stirred that a large
reserve of stores was left over after everybody had been supplied. It
was the happiest Christmas day the poor of Atlanta ever saw, and the
happiest person of all was Henry Grady.
It is appropriate to his enjoyment of Christmas to give here a beautiful
editorial he wrote on Christmas day a year before he was buried. It is a
little prose poem that attracted attention all over the country. Mr.
Grady called it
A PERFECT CHRISTMAS DAY.
No man or woman now living will see again such a Christmas day
as the one which closed yesterday, when the dying sun piled the
western skies with gold and purple.
A winter day it was, shot to the core with sunshine. It was
enchanting to walk abroad in its prodigal beauty, to breathe its
elixir, to reach out the hands and plunge them open-fingered
through its pulsing waves of warmth and freshness. It was June
and November welded and fused into a perfect glory that held the
sunshine and snow beneath tender and splendid skies. To have
winnowed such a day from the teeming winter was to have found an
odorous peach on a bough whipped in the storms of winter. One
caught the musk of yellow grain, the flavor of ripening nuts,
the fragrance of strawberries, the exquisite odor of violets,
the aroma of all seasons in the wonderful day. The hum of bees
underrode the whistling wings of wild geese flying southward.
The fires slept in drowsing grates, while the people, marveling
outdoors, watched the soft winds woo the roses and the lilies.
Truly it was a day of days. Amid its riotous luxury surely life
was worth living to hold up the head and breathe it in as
thirsting men drink water; to put every sense on its gracious
excellence; to throw the hands wide apart and hug whole armfuls
of the day close to the heart, till the heart itself is
enraptured and illumined. God’s benediction came down with the
day, slow dropping from the skies. God’s smile was its light,
and all through and through its supernal beauty and stillness,
unspoken but appealing to every heart and sanctifying every
soul, was His invocation and promise, “Peace on earth, good will
to men.”
IV.
Mr. Grady took great interest in children and young people. It pleased
him beyond measure to be able to contribute to their happiness. He knew
all the boys in the _Constitution_ office, and there is quite a little
army of them employed there in one way and another; knew all about their
conditions, their hopes and their aspirations, and knew their histories.
He had favorites among them, but his heart went out to all. He
interested himself in them in a thousand little ways that no one else
would have thought of. He was never too busy to concern himself with
their affairs. A year or two before he died he organized a dinner for
the newsboys and carriers. It was at first intended that the dinner
should be given by the _Constitution_, but some of the prominent people
heard of it, and insisted in making contributions. Then it was decided
to accept contributions from all who might desire to send anything, and
the result of it was a dinner of magnificent proportions. The tables
were presided over by prominent society ladies, and the occasion was a
very happy one in all respects.
This is only one of a thousand instances in which Mr. Grady interested
himself in behalf of young people. Wherever he could find boys who were
struggling to make a living, with the expectation of making something of
themselves; wherever he could find boys who were giving their earnings
to widowed mothers—and he found hundreds of them—he went to their aid as
promptly and as effectually as he carried out all his schemes, whether
great or small. It was his delight to give pleasure to all the children
that he knew, and even those he didn’t know. He had the spirit and the
manner of a boy, when not engrossed in work, and he enjoyed life with
the zest and enthusiasm of a lad of twelve. He was in his element when a
circus was in town, and it was a familiar and an entertaining sight to
see him heading a procession of children—sometimes fifty in line—going
to the big tents to see the animals and witness the antics of the
clowns. At such times, he considered himself on a frolic, and laid his
dignity on the shelf. His interest in the young, however, took a more
serious shape, as I have said. When Mr. Clark Howell, the son of Captain
Evan Howell, attained his majority, Mr. Grady wrote him a letter, which
I give here as one of the keys to the character of this many-sided man.
Apart from this, it is worth putting in print for the wholesome advice
it contains. The young man to whom it was written has succeeded Mr.
Grady as managing editor of the _Constitution_. The letter is as
follows:
ATLANTA, GA., _Sept. 20, 1884_.
MY DEAR CLARK:—I suppose that just about the time I write this
to you—a little after midnight—you are twenty-one years old. If
you were born a little later than this hour it is your mother’s
fault (or your father’s), and I am not to blame for it. I
assume, therefore, that this is your birthday, and I send you a
small remembrance. I send you a pen (that you may wear as a
cravat-pin) for several reasons. In the first place, I have no
money, my dear boy, with which to buy you something new. In the
next place, it is the symbol of the profession to which we both
belong, in which each has done some good work, and will, God
being willing, do much more. Take the pen, wear it, and let it
stand as a sign of the affection I have for you.
Somehow or other (as the present is a right neat one I have the
right to bore you a little) I look upon you as my own boy. My
son will be just about your age when you are about mine, and he
will enter the paper when you are about where I am. I have got
to looking at you as a sort of prefiguring of what my son may
be, and of looking over you, and rejoicing in your success, as I
shall want you to feel toward him. Let me write to you what I
would be willing for you to write to him.
_Never Gamble._ Of all the vices that enthrall men, this is the
worst, the strongest, and the most insidious. Outside of the
morality of it, it is the poorest investment, the poorest
business, and the poorest fun. No man is safe who plays at all.
It is easiest _never_ to play. I never knew a man, a gentleman
and man of business, who did not regret the time and money he
had wasted in it. A man who plays poker is unfit for every other
business on earth.
_Never Drink._ I love liquor and I love the fellowship involved
in drinking. My safety has been that I never drink at all. It is
much easier not to drink at all than to drink a little. If I had
to attribute what I have done in life to any one thing, I should
attribute it to the fact that I am a teetotaler. As sure as you
are born, it is the pleasantest, the easiest, and the safest
way.
_Marry Early._ There is nothing that steadies a young fellow
like marrying a good girl and raising a family. By marrying
young your children grow up when they are a pleasure to you. You
feel the responsibility of life, the sweetness of life, and you
avoid bad habits.
If you never drink, never gamble, and marry early, there is no
limit to the useful and distinguished life you may live. You
will be the pride of your father’s heart, and the joy of your
mother’s.
I don’t know that there is any happiness on earth worth having
outside of the happiness of knowing that you have done your duty
and that you have tried to do good. You try to build up,—there
are always plenty others who will do all the tearing down that
is necessary. You try to live in the sunshine,—men who stay in
the shade always get mildewed.
I will not tell you how much I think of you or how proud I am of
you. We will let that develop gradually. There is only one thing
I am a little disappointed in. You don’t seem to care quite
enough about base-ball and other sports. Don’t make the mistake
of standing aloof from these things and trying to get old too
soon. Don’t underrate out-door athletic sports as an element of
American civilization and American journalism. I am afraid you
inherit this disposition from your father, who has never been
quite right on this subject, but who is getting better, and will
soon be all right, I think.
Well, I will quit. May God bless you, my boy, and keep you happy
and wholesome at heart, and in health. If He does this, we’ll
try and do the rest.
Your friend, H. W. GRADY.
Mr. Grady’s own boyishness led him to sympathize with everything that
appertains to boyhood. His love for his own children led him to take an
interest in other children. He wanted to see them enjoy themselves in a
boisterous, hearty, health-giving way. The sports that men forget or
forego possessed a freshness for him that he never tried to conceal. His
remarks, in the letter just quoted, in regard to out-door sports, are
thoroughly characteristic. In all contests of muscle, strength,
endurance and skill he took a continual and an absorbing interest. At
school he excelled in all athletic sports and out-door games. He had a
gymnasium of his own, which was thrown open to his school-mates, and
there he used to practice for hours at a time. His tastes in this
direction led a great many people, all his friends, to shake their heads
a little, especially as he was not greatly distinguished for
scholarship, either at school or college. They wondered, too, how, after
neglecting the text-books, he could stand so near the head of his
classes. He did not neglect his books. During the short time he devoted
to them each day, his prodigious memory and his wonderful powers of
assimilation enabled him to master their contents as thoroughly as boys
that had spent half the night in study. Even his family were astonished
at his standing in school, knowing how little time he devoted to his
text-books. He found time, however, in spite of his devotion to out-door
sports and athletic exercises, to read every book in Athens, and in
those days every family in town had a library of more or less value.
He had a large library of his own, and, by exchanging his books with
other boys and borrowing, he managed to get at the pith and marrow of
all the English literature to be found in the university town. Not
content with this, he became, during one of his vacation periods, a
clerk in the only bookstore in Athens. The only compensation that he
asked was the privilege of reading when there were no customers to be
waited on. This was during his eleventh year, and by the time he was
twelve he was by far the best-read boy that Athens had ever known. This
habit of reading he kept up to the day of his death. He read all the new
books as they came out, and nothing pleased him better than to discuss
them with some congenial friend. He had no need to re-read his old
favorites—the books he loved as boy and man—for these he could remember
almost chapter by chapter. He read with amazing rapidity; it might be
said that he literally absorbed whatever interested him, and his
sympathies were so wide and his taste so catholic that it was a poor
writer indeed in whom he could not find something to commend. He was
fond of light literature, but the average modern novel made no
impression on him. He enjoyed it to some extent, and was amazed as well
as amused at the immense amount of labor expended on the trivial affairs
of life by the writers who call themselves realists. He was somewhat
interested in Henry James’s “Portrait of a Lady,” mainly, I suspect,
because it so cleverly hits off the character of the modern female
newspaper correspondent in the person of Miss Henrietta Stackpole. Yet
there was much in the book that interested him—the dreariness of parts
of it was relieved by Mrs. Touchett. “Dear old Mrs. Touchett!” he used
to say. “Such immense cleverness as hers does credit to Mr. James. She
refuses to associate with any of the other characters in the book. I
should like to meet her, and shake hands with her, and talk the whole
matter over.”
When a school-boy, and while devouring all the stories that fell in his
way, young Grady was found one day reading Blackstone. His brother asked
him if he thought of studying law. “No,” was the reply, “but I think
everyone ought to read Blackstone. Besides, the book interests me.” With
the light and the humorous he always mixed the solids. He was fond of
history, and was intensely interested in all the social questions of the
day. He set great store by the new literary development that has been
going on in the South since the war, and sought to promote it by every
means in his power, through his newspaper and by his personal influence.
He looked forward to the time when the immense literary field, as yet
untouched in the South, would be as thoroughly worked and developed as
that of New England has been; and he thought that this development might
reasonably be expected to follow, if it did not accompany, the progress
of the South in other directions. This idea was much in his mind, and in
the daily conversations with the members of his editorial staff, he
recurred to it time and again. One view that he took of it was entirely
practical, as, indeed, most of his views were. He thought that the
literature of the South ought to be developed, not merely in the
interest of belles-lettres, but in the interest of American history. He
regarded it as in some sort a weapon of defense, and he used to refer in
terms of the warmest admiration to the oftentimes unconscious, but
terribly certain and effective manner in which New England had fortified
herself by means of the literary genius of her sons and daughters. He
perceived, too, that all the talk about a distinctive Southern
literature, which has been in vogue among the contributors of the Lady’s
Books and annuals, was silly in the extreme. He desired it to be
provincial in a large way, for, in this country, provinciality is only
another name for the patriotism that has taken root in the rural
regions, but his dearest wish was that it should be purely and truly
American in its aim and tendency. It was for this reason that he was
ready to welcome any effort of a Southern writer that showed a spark of
promise. For such he was always ready with words of praise.
He was fond, as I have said, of Dickens, but his favorite novel, above
all others, was Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables.” His own daring
imagination fitted somewhat into the colossal methods of Hugo, and his
sympathies enabled him to see in the character of Jean Valjean a type of
the pathetic struggle for life and justice that is going on around us
every day. Mr. Grady read between the lines and saw beneath the surface,
and he was profoundly impressed with the strong and vital purpose of
Hugo’s book. Its almost ferocious protest against injustice, and its
indignant arraignment of the inhumanity of society, stirred him deeply.
Not only the character of Jean Valjean, but the whole book appealed to
his sense of the picturesque and artistic. The large lines on which the
book is cast, the stupendous nature of the problem it presents, the
philanthropy, the tenderness—all these moved him as no other work of
fiction ever did. Mr. Grady’s pen was too busy to concern itself with
matters merely literary. He rarely undertook to write what might be
termed a literary essay; the affairs of life—the demands of the hour—the
pressure of events—precluded this; but all through his lectures and
occasional speeches (that were never reported), there are allusions to
Jean Valjean, and to Victor Hugo. I have before me the rough notes of
some of his lectures, and in these appear more than once picturesque
allusions to Hugo’s hero struggling against fate and circumstance.
V.
The home-life of Mr. Grady was peculiarly happy. He was blessed, in the
first place, with a good mother, and he never grew away from her
influence in the smallest particular. When his father was killed in the
war, his mother devoted herself the more assiduously to the training of
her children. She molded the mind and character of her brilliant son,
and started him forth on a career that has no parallel in our history.
To that mother his heart always turned most tenderly. She had made his
boyhood bright and happy, and he was never tired of bringing up
recollections of those wonderful days. On one occasion, the Christmas
before he died, he visited his mother at the old home in Athens. He
returned brimming over with happiness. To his associates in the
_Constitution_ office he told the story of his visit, and what he said
has been recorded by Mrs. Maude Andrews Ohl, a member of the editorial
staff.
“Well do I remember,” says Mrs. Ohl, “how he spent his last year’s
holiday season, and the little story he told me of it as I sat in his
office one morning after New Year’s.
“He had visited his mother in Athens Christmas week, and he said: ‘I
don’t think I ever felt happier than when I reached the little home of
my boyhood. I got there at night. She had saved supper for me and she
had remembered all the things I liked. She toasted me some cheese over
the fire. Why, I hadn’t tasted anything like it since I put off my round
jackets. And then she had some home-made candy, she knew I used to love
and bless her heart! I just felt sixteen again as we sat and talked, and
she told me how she prayed for me and thought of me always, and what a
brightness I had been to her life, and how she heard me coming home in
every boy that whistled along the street. When I went to bed she came
and tucked the covers all around me in the dear old way that none but a
mother’s hands know, and I felt so happy and so peaceful and so full of
tender love and tender memories that I cried happy, grateful tears until
I went to sleep.’
“When he finished his eyes were full of tears and so were mine. He
brushed his hands across his brow swiftly and said, laughingly: ‘Why,
what are you crying about? What do you know about all this sort of
feeling!’
“He never seemed brighter than on that day. He had received an ovation
of loving admiration from the friends of his boyhood at his old home,
and these honors from the hearts that loved him as a friend were dearer
than all others. It was for these friends, these countrymen of his own,
that his honors were won and his life was sacrificed.”
From the home-life of his boyhood he stepped into the fuller and richer
home-life that followed his marriage. He married the sweetheart of his
early youth, Miss Julia King, of Athens, and she remained his sweetheart
to the last. The first pseudonym that he used in his contributions to
the _Constitution_, “King Hans,” was a fanciful union of Miss King’s
name with his, and during his service in Florida, long after he was
married, he signed his telegrams “Jule.” In the office not a day passed
that he did not have something to say of his wife and children. They
were never out of his thoughts, no matter what business occupied his
mind. In his speeches there are constant allusions to his son, and in
his conversation the gentle-eyed maiden, his daughter, was always
tenderly figuring. His home-life was in all respects an ideal one; ideal
in its surroundings, in its influences, and in its purposes. I think
that the very fact of his own happiness gave him a certain restlessness
in behalf of the happiness of others. His writings, his speeches, his
lectures—his whole life, in fact—teem with references to home-happiness
and home-content. Over and over again he recurs to these things—always
with the same earnestness, always with the same enthusiasm. He never
meets a man on the street, but he wonders if he has a happy home—if he
is contented—if he has children that he loves. To him home was a shrine
to be worshiped at—a temple to be happy in, no matter how humble, or how
near to the brink of poverty.
One of his most successful lectures, and the one that he thought the
most of, was entitled “A Patchwork Palace: The story of a Home.” The
Patchwork Palace still exists in Atlanta, and the man who built it is
living in it to-day. Mr. Grady never wrote out the lecture, and all that
can be found of it is a few rough and faded notes scratched on little
sheets of paper. On one occasion, however, he condensed the opening of
his lecture for the purpose of making a newspaper sketch of the whole.
It is unfinished, but the following has something of the flavor of the
lecture. He called the builder of the Palace Mr. Mortimer Pitts, though
that is not his name:
Mr. Mortimer Pitts was a rag-picker. After a patient study of
the responsibility that the statement carries, I do not hesitate
to say that he was the poorest man that ever existed. He lived
literally from hand to mouth. His breakfast was a crust; his
dinner a question; his supper a regret. His earthly wealth,
beyond the rags that covered him, was—a cow that I believe gave
both butter-milk and sweet-milk—a dog that gave neither—and a
hand-cart in which he wheeled his wares about. His wife had a
wash-tub that she held in her own title, a wash-board similarly
possessed, and two chairs that came to her as a dowry.
In opposition to this poverty, my poor hero had—first, a name
(Mortimer Pitts, Esq.) which his parents, whose noses were in
the air when they christened him, had saddled upon him
aspiringly, but which followed him through life, his condition
being put in contrast with its rich syllables, as a sort of
standing sarcasm. Second, a multitude of tow-headed children
with shallow-blue eyes. The rag-picker never looked above the
tow-heads of his brats, nor beyond the faded blue eyes of his
wife. His world was very small. The cricket that chirped beneath
the hearthstone of the hovel in which he might chance to live,
and the sunshine that crept through the cracks, filled it with
music and light. Trouble only strengthened the bonds of love and
sympathy that held the little brood together, and whenever the
Wolf showed his gaunt form at the door, the white faces, and the
blue eyes, and the tow-heads only huddled the closer to each
other, until, in very shame, the intruder would take himself
off.
Mr. Pitts had no home. With the restlessness of an Arab he
flitted from one part of the city to another. He was famous for
frightening the early market-maids by pushing his white round
face, usually set in a circle of smaller white round faces,
through the windows of long-deserted hovels. Wherever there was
a miserable shell of a house that whistled when the wind blew,
and wept when the rain fell, there you might be sure of finding
Mr. Pitts at one time or another. I do not care to state how
many times my hero, with an uncertain step and a pitifully
wandering look—his fertile wife, in remote or imminent process
of fruitage—his wan and sedate brood of young ones—his cow, a
thoroughly conscientious creature, who passed her scanty diet to
milk to the woeful neglect of tissue—and his dog, too honest for
any foolish pride, ambling along in an unpretending,
bench-legged sort of way,—I do not care to state, I say, how
many times this pale and melancholy procession passed through
the streets, seeking for a shelter in which it might hide its
wretchedness and ward off the storms.
During these periods of transition, Mr. Pitts was wonderfully
low-spirited. “Even a bird has its nest; and the poorest animal
has some sort of a hole in the ground, or a roost where it can
go when it is a-weary,” he said to me once, when I caught him
fluttering aimlessly out of a house which, under the influence
of a storm, had spit out its western wall, and dropped its upper
jaw dangerously near to the back of the cow. And from that time
forth, I fancied I noticed my poor friend’s face growing whiter,
and the blue in his eye deepening, and his lips becoming more
tremulous and uncertain. The shuffling figure, begirt with the
rag-picker’s bells, and dragging the wobbling cart, gradually
bended forward, and the look of childish content was gone from
his brow, and a great dark wrinkle had knotted itself there.
And now let me tell you about the starting of the Palace.
One day in the springtime, when the uprising sap ran through
every fibre of the forest, and made the trees as drunk as
lords—when the birds were full-throated, and the air was woven
thick with their songs of love and praise—when the brooks kissed
their uttermost banks, and the earth gave birth to flowers, and
all nature was elastic and alert, and thrilled to the core with
the ecstasy of the sun’s new courtship—a divine passion fell
like a spark into Mr. Mortimer Pitts’s heart. How it ever broke
through the hideous crust of poverty that cased the man about, I
do not know, nor shall we ever know ought but that God put it
there in his own gentle way. But there it was. It dropped into
the cold, dead heart like a spark—and there it flared and
trembled, and grew into a blaze, and swept through his soul, and
fed upon its bitterness until the scales fell off and the eyes
flashed and sparkled, and the old man was illumined with a
splendid glow like that which hurries youth to its love, or a
soldier to the charge. You would not have believed he was the
same man. You would have laughed had you been told that the old
fellow, sweltering in the dust, harnessed like a dog to a cart,
and plying his pick into the garbage heaps like a man worn down
to the stupidity of a machine, was burning and bursting with a
great ambition—that a passion as pure and as strong as ever
kindled blue blood, or steeled gentle nerves was tugging at his
heart-strings. And yet, so it was. The rag-picker was filled
with a consuming fire—and as he worked, and toiled, and starved,
his soul sobbed, and laughed, and cursed, and prayed.
Mr. Pitts wanted a home. A man named Napoleon once wanted
universal empire. Mr. Pitts was vastly the more daring dreamer
of the two.
I do not think he had ever had a home. Possibly, away back
beyond the years a dim, sweet memory of a hearthstone and a
gable roof with the rain pattering on it, and a cupboard and a
clock, and a deep, still well, came to him like an echo or a
dream. Be this as it may, our hero, crushed into the very mud
by poverty—upon knees and hands beneath his burden—fighting
like a beast for his daily food—shut out inexorably from all
suggestions of home—embittered by starvation—with his
faculties chained down apparently to the dreary problem of
to-day—nevertheless did lift his eyes into the gray future,
and set his soul upon a home.
This is a mere fragment—a bare synopsis of the opening of what was one
of the most eloquent and pathetic lectures ever delivered from the
platform. It was a beautiful idyll of home—an appeal, a eulogy—a
glimpse, as it were, of the passionate devotion with which he regarded
his own home. Here is another fragment of the lecture that follows
closely after the foregoing:
After a month’s struggle, Mr. Pitts purchased the ground on
which his home was to be built. It was an indescribable
hillside, bordering on the precipitous. A friend of mine
remarked that “it was such an aggravating piece of profanity
that the owner gave Mr. Pitts five dollars to accept the land
and the deed to it.” This report I feel bound to correct. Mr.
Pitts purchased the land. He gave three dollars for it. The deed
having been properly recorded, Mr. Pitts went to work. He
borrowed a shovel, and, perching himself against his hillside,
began loosening the dirt in front of him, and spilling it out
between his legs, reminding me, as I passed daily, of a giant
dirt-dauber. At length (and not very long either, for his
remorseless desire made his arms fly like a madman’s) he
succeeded in scooping an apparently flat place out of the
hillside and was ready to lay the foundation of his house.
There was a lapse of a month, and I thought that my hero’s soul
had failed him—that the fire, with so little of hope to feed
upon, had faded and left his heart full of ashes. But at last
there was a pile of dirty second-hand lumber placed on the
ground. I learned on inquiry that it was the remains of a small
house of ignoble nature which had been left standing in a vacant
lot, and which had been given him by the owner. Shortly
afterwards there came some dry-goods boxes; then three or four
old sills; then a window-frame; then the wreck of another little
house; and then the planks of an abandoned show-bill board.
Finally the house began to grow. The sills were put together by
Mr. Pitts and his wife. A rafter shot up toward the sky and
stood there, like a lone sentinel, for some days, and then
another appeared, and then another, and then the fourth. Then
Mr. Pitts, with an agility born of desperation, swarmed up one
of them, and began to lay the cross-pieces. God must have
commissioned an angel especially to watch over the poor man and
save his bones, for nothing short of a miracle could have kept
him from falling while engaged in the perilous work. The frame
once up, he took the odds and ends of planks and began to fit
them. The house grew like a mosaic. No two planks were alike in
size, shape, or color. Here was a piece of a dry-goods box, with
its rich yellow color, and a mercantile legend still painted on
it, supplemented by a dozen pieces of plank; and there was an
old door nailed up bodily and fringed around with bits of board
picked up at random. It was a rare piece of patchwork, in which
none of the pieces were related to or even acquainted with each
other. A nose, an eye, an ear, a mouth, a chin picked up at
random from the ugliest people of a neighborhood, and put
together in a face, would not have been odder than was this
house. The window was ornamented with panes of three different
sizes, and some were left without any glass at all, as Mr. Pitts
afterwards remarked, “to see through.” The chimney was a piece
of old pipe that startled you by protruding unexpectedly through
the wall, and looked as if it were a wound. The entire absence
of smoke at the outer end of this chimney led to a suspicion,
justified by the facts, that there was no stove at the other
end. The roof, which Mrs. Pitts, with a recklessness beyond the
annals, mounted herself and attended to, was partially shingled
and partially planked, this diversity being in the nature of a
plan, as Mr. Pitts confidentially remarked, “to try which style
was the best.”
Such a pathetic travesty on house-building was never before
seen. It started a smile or a tear from every passer-by, as it
reared its homely head there, so patched, uncouth, and poor. And
yet the sun of Austerlitz never brought so much happiness to the
heart of Napoleon as came to Mr. Pitts, as he crept into this
hovel, and, having a blanket before the doorless door, dropped
on his knees and thanked God that at last he had found a home.
The house grew in a slow and tedious way. It ripened with the
seasons. It budded in the restless and rosy spring; unfolded and
developed in the long summer; took shape and fullness in the
brown autumn; and stood ready for the snows and frost when
winter had come. It represented a year of heroism, desperation,
and high resolve. It was the sum total of an ambition that,
planted in the breast of a king, would have shaken the world.
To say that Mr. Pitts enjoyed it would be to speak but a little
of the truth. I have a suspicion that the older children do not
appreciate it as they should. They have a way, when they see a
stranger examining their home with curious and inquiring eyes,
of dodging away from the door shamefacedly, and of reappearing
cautiously at the window. But Mr. Pitts is proud of it. There is
no foolishness about him. He sits on his front piazza, which, I
regret to say, is simply a plank resting on two barrels, and
smokes his pipe with the serenity of a king; and when a stroller
eyes his queer little home curiously, he puts on the air that
the Egyptian gentleman (now deceased) who built the pyramids
might have worn while exhibiting that stupendous work. I have
watched him hours at a time enjoying his house. I have seen him
walk around it slowly, tapping it critically with his knife, as
if to ascertain its state of ripeness, or pressing its corners
solemnly as if testing its muscular development.
Here ends this fragment—a delicious bit of description that only seems
to be exaggerated because the hovel was seen through the eyes of a
poet—of a poet who loved all his fellow men from the greatest to the
smallest, and who was as much interested in the home-making of Mr. Pitts
as he was in the making of Governors and Senators, a business in which
he afterwards became an adept. From the fragments of one of his
lectures, the title of which I am unable to give, I have pieced together
another story as characteristic of Mr. Grady as the Patchwork Palace. It
is curious to see how the idea of home and of home-happiness runs
through it all:
One of the happiest men that I ever knew—one whose serenity was
unassailable, whose cheerfulness was constant, and from whose
heart a perennial spring of sympathy and love bubbled up—was a
man against whom all the powers of misfortune were centered. He
belonged to the tailors—those cross-legged candidates for
consumption. He was miserably poor. Fly as fast as it could
through the endless pieces of broadcloth, his hand could not
always win crusts for his children. But he walked on and on; his
thin white fingers faltered bravely through their tasks as the
hours slipped away, and his serene white face bended forward
over the tedious cloth into which, stitch after stitch, he was
working his life—and, with once in a while a wistful look at the
gleaming sunshine and the floating clouds, he breathed heavily
and painfully of the poisoned air of his work-room, from which a
score of stronger lungs had sucked all the oxygen. And when, at
night, he would go home, and find that there were just crusts
enough for the little ones to eat, the capricious old fellow
would dream that he was not hungry; and when pressed to eat of
the scanty store by his sad and patient wife, would with an air
of smartness pretend a sacred lie—that he had dined with a
friend—and then, with a heart that swelled almost to bursting,
turn away to hide his glistening eyes. Hungry? Of course he was,
time and again. As weak as his body was, as faltering as was the
little fountain that sent the life-blood from his heart—as
meagre as were his necessities, I doubt if there was a time in
all the long years when he was not hungry.
Did you ever think of how many people have died out of this
world through starvation. Thousands! Not recorded in the books
as having died of starvation,—ah, no? Sometimes it is a thin and
watery sort of apoplexy—sometimes it is dyspepsia, and often
consumption. These terms read better. But there are thousands of
them, sensitive, shy gentlemen—too proud to beg and too honest
to steal—too straightforward to scheme or maneuver—too refined
to fill the public with their griefs—too heroic to whine—that
lock their sorrows up in their own hearts, and go on starving in
silence, weakening day after day from the lack of proper
food—the blood running slower and slower through their
veins—their pulse faltering as they pass through the various
stages of inanition, until at last, worn out, apathetic,
exhausted, they are struck by some casual illness, and lose
their hold upon life as easily and as naturally as the autumn
leaf, juiceless, withered and dry, parts from the bough to which
it has clung, and floats down the vast silence of the forest.
But my tailor was cheerful. Nothing could disturb his serenity.
His thin white face was always lit with a smile, and his eyes
shone with a peace that passed my understanding. Hour after hour
he would sing an asthmatic little song that came in wheezes from
his starved lungs—a song that was pitiful and cracked, but that
came from his heart so freighted with love and praise that it
found the ears of Him who softens all distress and sweetens all
harmonies. I wondered where all this happiness came from. How
gushed this abundant stream from this broken reed—how sprung
this luxuriant flower of peace from the scant soil of poverty?
From these hard conditions, how came this ever-fresh felicity?
After he had been turned out of his home, the tailor was taken
sick. His little song gave way to a hectic cough. His place at
the work-room was vacant, and a scanty bed in wretched lodgings
held his frail and fevered frame. The thin fingers clutched the
cover uneasily, as if they were restless of being idle while the
little ones were crying for bread. The tired man tossed to and
fro, racked by pain,—but still his face was full of content, and
no word of bitterness escaped him. And the little song, though
the poor lungs could not carry it to the lips, and the trembling
lips could not syllable its music, still lived in his heart and
shone through his happy eyes. “I will be happy soon,” he said in
a faltering way; “I will be better soon—strong enough to go to
work like a man again, for Bessie and the babies.” And he did
get better—better until his face had worn so thin that you could
count his heart-beats by the flush of blood that came and died
in his cheeks—better until his face had sharpened and his smiles
had worn their deep lines about his mouth—better until the poor
fingers lay helpless at his side, and his eyes had lost their
brightness. And one day, as his wife sat by his side, and the
sun streamed in the windows, and the air was full of the
fragrance of spring—he turned his face toward her and said: “I
am better now, my dear.” And, noting a rapturous smile playing
about his mouth, and a strange light kindling in his eyes, she
bended her head forward to lay her wifely kiss upon his face.
Ah! a last kiss, good wife, for thy husband! Thy kiss caught his
soul as it fluttered from his pale lips, and the flickering
pulse had died in his patient wrist, and the little song had
faded from his heart and gone to swell a divine chorus,—and at
last, after years of waiting, the old man was well!
There was nothing strained or artificial in the sentiment that led him
to dwell so constantly on the theme of home and home happiness. The
extracts I have given are merely the rough lecture notes which he wrote
down in order to confirm and congeal his ideas. On the platform, while
following the current of these notes, he injected into them the quality
of his rare and inimitable humor, the contrast serving to give greater
strength and coherence to the pathos that underlay it all. I do not know
that I have dwelt with sufficient emphasis on his humor. He could be
witty enough on occasion, but the sting of it seemed to leave a bad
taste in his mouth. The quality of his humor was not greatly different
from that of Charles Lamb. It was gentle and perennial—a perpetual
wonder and delight to his friends—irrepressible and unbounded—as antic
and as tricksy as that of a boy, as genial and as sweet as the smile of
a beautiful woman. Mr. Grady depended less on anecdote than any of our
great talkers and speakers, though the anecdote, apt, pat, and pointed,
was always ready at the proper moment. He depended rather on the
originality of his own point of view—on the results of his own
individuality. The charm of his personal presence was indescribable. In
every crowd and on every occasion he was a marked man. Quite
independently of his own intentions, he made his presence and his
influence felt. What he said, no matter how light and frivolous, no
matter how trivial, never failed to attract attention. He warmed the
hearts of the old and fired the minds of the young. He managed, in some
way, to impart something of the charm of his personality to his written
words, so that he carried light, and hope, and courage to many hearts,
and when he passed away, people who had never seen him fell to weeping
when they heard of his untimely death.
VI.
There are many features and incidents in Mr. Grady’s life that cannot be
properly treated in this hurriedly written and altogether inadequate
sketch. His versatility was such that it would be difficult, even in a
deliberately written biography, to deal with its manifestations and
results as they deserve to be dealt with. At the North, the cry is, who
shall take his place as a peacemaker? At the South, who shall take his
place as a leader, as an orator, and as a peacemaker? In Atlanta, who
shall take his place as all of these, and as a builder-up of our
interests, our enterprises, and our industries! Who is to make for us
the happy and timely suggestion? Who is to speak the right word at the
right time! The loss the country has sustained in Mr. Grady’s death can
only be measurably estimated when we examine one by one the manifold
relations he bore to the people.
I have spoken of the power of organization that he possessed. There is
hardly a public enterprise in Georgia or in Atlanta—begun and completed
since 1880—that does not bear witness to his ability, his energy, and
his unselfishness. His busy brain and prompt hand were behind the great
cotton exposition held in Atlanta in 1881. Late in the spring of 1887,
one of the editorial writers of the _Constitution_ remarked that the
next fair held in Atlanta should be called the Piedmont Exposition.
“That shall be its name,” said Mr. Grady, “and it will be held this
fall.” That was the origin of the Piedmont Exposition. Within a month
the exposition company had been organized, the land bought, and work on
the grounds begun. It seemed to be a hopeless undertaking—there was so
much to be done, and so little time to do it in. But Mr, Grady was equal
to the emergency. He so infused the town with his own energy and
enthusiasm that every citizen came to regard the exposition as a
personal matter, and the _Constitution_ hammered away at it with
characteristic iteration. There was not a detail of the great show from
beginning to end that was not of Mr. Grady’s suggestion. When it seemed
to him that he was taking too prominent a part in the management, he
would send for other members of the fair committee, pour his suggestions
into their ears, and thus evade the notoriety of introducing them
himself and prevent the possible friction that might be caused if he
made himself too prominent. He understood human nature perfectly, and
knew how to manage men.
The exposition was organized and the grounds made ready in an incredibly
short time, and the fair was the most successful in every respect that
has ever been held in the South. Its attractions, which were all
suggested by Mr. Grady, appealed either to the interest or the curiosity
of the people, and the result was something wonderful. It is to be very
much doubted whether any one in this country, in time of peace, has seen
an assemblage of such vast and overwhelming proportions as that which
gathered in Atlanta on the principal day of the fair. Two years later,
the Piedmont Exposition was reorganized, and Mr. Grady once more had
practical charge of all the details. The result was an exhibition quite
as attractive as the first, to which the people responded as promptly as
before. The Exposition Company cleared something over $20,000, a result
unprecedented in the history of Southern fairs.
In the interval of the two fairs, Mr. Grady organized the Piedmont
Chautauqua at a little station on the Georgia Pacific road, twenty miles
from Atlanta. Beautiful grounds were laid out and commodious buildings
put up. In all this work Mr. Grady took the most profound interest. The
intellectual and educational features of such an institution appealed
strongly to his tastes and sympathies, and to that active missionary
spirit which impelled him to be continually on the alert in behalf of
humanity. He expended a good deal of energy on the Chautauqua and on the
programme of exercises, but the people did not respond heartily, and the
session was not a financial success. And yet there never was a
Chautauqua assembly that had a richer and a more popular programme of
exercises. The conception was a success intellectually, and it will
finally grow into a success in other directions. Mr. Grady, with his
usual unselfishness, insisted on bearing the expenses of the lecturers
and others, though it crippled him financially to do so. He desired to
protect the capitalists who went into the enterprise on his account,
and, as is usual in such cases, the capitalists were perfectly willing
to be protected. Mr. Grady was of the opinion that his experience with
the Chautauqua business gave him a deeper and a richer knowledge of
human nature than he had ever had before.
One morning Mr. Grady saw in a New York newspaper that a gentleman from
Texas was in that city making a somewhat unsuccessful effort to raise
funds for a Confederate veterans’ home. The comments of the newspaper
were not wholly unfriendly, but something in their tone stirred Mr.
Grady’s blood. “I will show them,” he said, “what can be done in
Georgia,” and with that he turned to his stenographer and dictated a
double-leaded editorial that stirred the State from one end to the
other. He followed it up the next day, and immediately subscriptions
began to flow in. He never suffered interest in the project to flag
until sufficient funds for a comfortable home for the Confederate
veterans had been raised.
Previously, he had organized a movement for putting up a building for
the Young Men’s Christian Association, and that building now stands a
monument to his earnestness and unselfishness. Years ago, shortly after
he came to Atlanta, he took hold of the Young Men’s Library, which was
in a languishing condition, and put it on its feet. It was hard work,
for he was comparatively unknown then. Among other things, he organized
a lecture course for the benefit of the library, and he brought some
distinguished lecturers to Atlanta—among others the late S. S. Cox. Mr.
Cox telegraphed from New York that he would come to Atlanta, and also
the subject of the lecture, so that it could be properly advertised. The
telegram said that the title of the lecture was “Just Human,” and large
posters, bearing that title, were placed on the bill-boards and
distributed around town. As Mr. Grady said, “the town broke into a
profuse perspiration of placards bearing the strange device, while
wrinkles gathered on the brow of the public intellect and knotted
themselves hopelessly as it pondered over what might be the elucidation
of such a strangely-named subject. At last,” Mr. Grady goes on to say,
“the lecturer came, and a pleasant little gentleman he was, who beguiled
the walk to the hotel with the airiest of jokes and the brightest of
comment. At length, when he had registered his name in the untutored
chirography of the great, he took me to one side, and asked in an
undertone what those placards meant.”
“That,” I replied, looking at him in astonishment, “is the subject of
your lecture.”
“‘My lecture!’ he shrieked, ‘whose lecture? What lecture? My subject!
Whose subject? Why, sir,’ said he, trying to control himself, ‘my
subject is ‘Irish Humor,’ while this is ‘Just Human,’ and he put on his
spectacles and glared into space as if he were determined to wring from
that source some solution of this cruel joke.”
By an error of transmission, “Irish Humor” had become “Just Human.” Mr.
Grady does not relate the sequel, but what followed was as
characteristic of him as anything in his unique career.
“Well,” said he, turning to Mr. Cox, his bright eyes full of laughter,
“you stick to your subject, and I’ll take this ready-made one; you
lecture on ‘Irish Humor’ and I’ll lecture on ‘Just Human.’”
And he did. He took the telegraphic error for a subject, and delivered
in Atlanta one of the most beautiful lectures ever heard here. There was
humor in it and laughter, but he handled his theme with such grace and
tenderness that the vast audience that sat entranced under his magnetic
oratory went home in tears.
The lecture course that Mr. Grady instituted was never followed up,
although it was a successful one. It was his way, when he had organized
an enterprise and placed it on its feet, to turn his attention to
something else. Sometimes his successors were equal to the emergency,
and sometimes they were not. The Young Men’s Library has been in good
hands, and it is what may be termed a successful institution, but it is
not what it was when Mr. Grady was booming the town in its behalf. When
he put his hand to any enterprise or to any movement the effect seemed
to be magical. It was not his personal influence, for there were some
enterprises beyond the range of that, that responded promptly to his
touch. It was not his enthusiasm, for there have been thousands of men
quite as enthusiastic. Was it his methods? Perhaps the secret lies
hidden there; but I have often thought, while witnessing the results he
brought about, that he had at his command some new element, or quality,
or gift not vouchsafed to other men. Whatever it was, he employed it
only for the good of his city, his State, his section, and his country.
His patriotism was as prominent and as permanent as his unselfishness.
His public spirit was unbounded, and, above all things, restless and
eager.
I have mentioned only a few of the more important enterprises in Atlanta
that owe their success to Mr. Grady. He was identified with every public
movement that took shape in Atlanta, and the people were always sure
that his interest and his influence were on the side of honesty and
justice. But his energies took a wider range. He was the very embodiment
of the spirit that he aptly named “the New South,”—the New South that,
reverently remembering and emulating the virtues of the old, and
striving to forget the bitterness of the past, turns its face to the
future and seeks to adapt itself to the conditions with which an
unsuccessful struggle has environed it, and to turn them to its profit.
Of the New South Mr. Grady was the prophet, if not the pioneer. He was
never tired of preaching about the rehabilitation of his section. Much
of the marvelous development that has taken place in the South during
the past ten years has been due to his eager and persistent efforts to
call the attention of the world to her vast resources. In his newspaper,
in his speeches, in his contributions to Northern periodicals, this was
his theme. No industry was too small to command his attention and his
aid, and none were larger than his expectations. His was the pen that
first drew attention to the iron fields of Alabama, and to the wonderful
marble beds and mineral wealth of Georgia. Other writers had preceded
him, perhaps, but it is due to his unique methods of advertising that
the material resources of the two States are in their present stage of
development. He had no individual interest in the development of the
material wealth of the South. During the past ten years there was not a
day when he was alive that he could not have made thousands of dollars
by placing his pen at the disposal of men interested in speculative
schemes. He had hundreds of opportunities to write himself rich, but he
never fell below the high level of unselfishness that marked his career
as boy and man.
There was no limit to his interest in Southern development. The
development of the hidden wealth of the hills and valleys, while it
appealed strongly to an imagination that had its practical and
common-sense side, but not more strongly than the desperate struggle of
the farmers of the South in their efforts to recover from the disastrous
results of the war while facing new problems of labor and conditions
wholly strange. Mr. Grady gave them the encouragement of his voice and
pen, striving to teach them the lessons of hope and patience. He was
something more than an optimist. He was the embodiment, the very
essence, as it seemed—of that smiling faith in the future that brings
happiness and contentment, and he had the faculty of imparting his faith
to other people. For him the sun was always shining, and he tried to
make it shine for other men. At one period, when the farmers of Georgia
seemed to be in despair, and while there was a notable movement from
this State to Georgia, Mr. Grady caused the correspondents of the
_Constitution_ to make an investigation into the agricultural situation
in Georgia. The result was highly gratifying in every respect. The
correspondents did their work well, as, indeed, they could hardly fail
to do under the instructions of Mr. Grady. The farmers who had been
despondent took heart, and from that time to the present there has been
a steady improvement in the status of agriculture in Georgia.
It would be difficult to describe or to give an adequate idea of the
work—remarkable in its extent as well as in its character—that Mr. Grady
did for Georgia and for the South. It was his keen and hopeful eyes that
first saw the fortunes that were to be made in Florida oranges. He wrote
for the _Constitution_ in 1877 a series of glowing letters that were
full of predictions and figures based on them. The matter was so new at
that time, and Mr. Grady’s predictions and estimates seemed to be so
extravagant, that some of the editors, irritated by his optimism, as
well as by his success as a journalist, alluded to his figures as
“Grady’s facts,” and this expression had quite a vogue, even among those
who were not unfriendly.
Nevertheless there is not a prediction to be found in Mr. Grady’s
Florida letters that has not been fulfilled, and his figures appear to
be tame enough when compared with the real results that have been
brought about by the orange-growers. Long afterwards he alluded publicly
to “Grady’s facts,” accepted its application, and said he was proud that
his facts always turned out to be facts.
It would be impossible to enumerate the practical subjects with which
Mr. Grady dealt in the _Constitution_. In the editorial rooms he was
continually suggesting the exhaustive treatment of some matter of real
public interest, and in the majority of instances, after making the
suggestion to one of his writers, he would treat the subject himself in
his own inimitable style. His pleasure trips were often itineraries in
behalf of the section he was visiting. He went on a pleasure trip to
Southern Georgia on one occasion, and here are the headlines of a few of
the letters he sent back: “Berries and Politics,” “The Savings of the
Georgia Farmers,” “The Largest Strawberry Farm in the State,” “A
Wandering Bee, and How it Made the LeConte Pear,” “The Turpentine
Industries.” All these are suggestive. Each letter bore some definite
relation to the development of the resources of the State.
To Mr. Grady, more than to any other man, is due the development of the
truck gardens and watermelon farms of southern and southwest Georgia.
When he advised in the _Constitution_ the planting of watermelons for
shipment to the North, the proposition was hooted at by some of the
rival editors, but he “boomed” the business, as the phrase is, and
to-day the watermelon business is an established industry, and thousands
of farmers are making money during what would otherwise be a dull season
of the year. And so with hundreds of other things. His suggestions were
always practicable, though they were sometimes so unique as to invite
the criticism of the thoughtless, and they were always for the benefit
of others—for the benefit of the people. How few men, even though they
live to a ripe old age, leave behind them such a record of usefulness
and unselfish devotion as that of this man, who died before his prime!
VII.
Mr. Grady’s editorial methods were as unique as all his other methods.
They can be described, but they cannot be explained. He had an
instinctive knowledge of news in its embryonic state; he seemed to know
just where and when a sensation or a startling piece of information
would develop itself, and he was always ready for it. Sometimes it
seemed to grow and develop under his hands, and his insight and
information were such that what appeared to be an ordinary news item
would suddenly become, under his manipulation and interpretation, of the
first importance. It was this faculty that enabled him to make the
_Constitution_ one of the leading journals of the country in its method
of gathering and treating the news.
Mr. Grady was not as fond of the editorial page as might be supposed.
Editorials were very well in their way—capital in an emergency—admirable
when a nail was to be clinched, so to speak—but most important of all to
his mind was the news and the treatment of it. The whirl of events was
never too rapid for him. The most startling developments, the most
unexpected happenings, always found him ready to deal with them
instantly and in just the right way.
He magnified the office of reporting, and he had a great fancy for it
himself. There are hundreds of instances where he voluntarily assumed
the duties of a reporter after he became managing editor. A case in
point is the work he did on the occasion of the Charleston earthquake.
The morning after that catastrophe he was on his way to Charleston. He
took a reporter with him, but he preferred to do most of the work. His
graphic descriptions of the disaster in all its phases—his picturesque
grouping of all the details—were the perfection of reporting, and were
copied all over the country. The reporter who accompanied Mr. Grady had
a wonderful tale to tell on his return. To the people of that desolate
town, the young Georgian seemed to carry light and hope. Hundreds of
citizens were encamped on the streets. Mr. Grady visited these camps,
and his sympathetic humor brought a smile to many a sad face. He went
from house to house, and from encampment to encampment, wrote two or
three columns of telegraphic matter on his knee, went to his room in the
hotel in the early hours of morning, fell on the bed with his clothes
on, and in a moment was sound asleep. The reporter never knew the amount
of work Mr. Grady had done until he saw it spread out in the columns of
the _Constitution_. Working at high-pressure there was hardly a limit to
the amount of copy Mr. Grady could produce in a given time, and it
sometimes happened that he dictated an editorial to his stenographer
while writing a news article.
He did a good deal of his more leisurely newspaper work at home, with
his wife and children around him. He never wrote on a table or desk, but
used a lapboard or a pad, leaning back in his chair with his feet as
high as his head. His house was always a centre of attraction, and when
visitors came in Mrs. Grady used to tell them that they needn’t mind
Henry. The only thing that disturbed him on such occasions was when the
people in the room conversed in a tone so low that he failed to hear
what they were saying. When this happened he would look up from his
writing with a quick “What’s that?” This often happened in the editorial
rooms, and he would frequently write while taking part in a
conversation, never losing the thread of his article or of the talk.
As I have said, he reserved his editorials for occasions or emergencies,
and it was then that his luminous style showed at its best. He employed
always the apt phrase; he was, in fact a phrase-builder. His gift of
expression was something marvelous, and there was something melodious
and fluent about his more deliberate editorials that suggested the
movement of verse. I was reading awhile ago his editorial appealing to
the people of Atlanta on the cold Christmas morning which has already
been alluded to in this sketch. It is short—not longer than the pencil
with which he wrote it, but there is that about it calculated to stir
the blood, even now. Above any other man I have ever known Mr. Grady
possessed the faculty of imparting his personal magnetism to cold type;
and even such a statement as this is an inadequate explanation of the
swift and powerful effect that his writings had on the public mind.
He had a keen eye for what, in a general way, may be called climaxes.
Thus he was content to see the daily _Constitution_ run soberly and
sedately along during the week if it developed into a great paper on
Sunday. He did more editorial work for the Sunday paper than for any
other issue, and bent all his energies toward making an impression on
that day. There was nothing about the details of the paper that he did
not thoroughly understand. He knew more about the effects of type
combinations than the printers did; he knew as much about the business
department as the business manager; and he could secure more
advertisements in three hours than his advertising clerks could solicit
in a week. It used to be said of him that he lacked the business
faculty. I suppose the remark was based on the fact that, in the midst
of all the tremendous booms he stirred up, and the enterprises he
fostered, he remained comparatively poor. I think he purposely neglected
the opportunities for private gain that were offered him. There can be
no more doubt of his business qualification than there can be of the
fact that he neglected opportunities for private gain; but his business
faculties were given to the service of the public—witness his faultless
management of two of the greatest expositions ever held in the South.
Had he served his own interests one-half as earnestly as he served those
of the people, he would have been a millionaire. As it was, he died
comparatively poor.
Mr. Grady took great pride in the _Weekly Constitution_, and that paper
stands to-day a monument to his business faculty and to his wonderful
methods of management. When Mr. Grady took hold of the weekly edition,
it had about seven thousand subscribers, and his partners thought that
the field would be covered when the list reached ten thousand. To-day
the list of subscribers is not far below two hundred thousand, and is
larger than that of the weekly edition of any other American newspaper.
Just how this result has been brought about it is impossible to say. His
methods were not mysterious, perhaps, but they did not lie on the
surface. The weekly editions of newspapers that have reached large
circulations depend on some specialty—as, for instance, the Detroit
_Free Press_ with the popular sketches of M. Quad, and the Toledo
_Blade_, with the rancorous, but still popular, letters of Petroleum V.
Nasby. The _Weekly Constitution_ has never depended on such things. It
has had, and still has, the letters of Bill Arp, of Sarge Wier, and of
Betsey Hamilton, homely humorists all, but Mr. Grady took great pains
never to magnify these things into specialties. Contributions that his
assistants thought would do for the weekly, Mr. Grady would cut out
relentlessly.
It sometimes happened that subscribers would begin to fall off. Then Mr.
Grady would send for the manager of the weekly department, and proceed
to caucus with him, as the young men around the office termed the
conference. During the next few days there would be a great stir in the
weekly department, and in the course of a fortnight the list of
subscribers would begin to grow again. Once, when talking about the
weekly, Mr. Grady remarked in a jocular way that when subscriptions
began to flow in at the rate of two thousand a day, he wanted to die.
Singularly enough, when he was returning from Boston, having been seized
with the sickness that was so soon to carry him off, the business
manager telegraphed him that more than two thousand subscribers had been
received the day before.
In the midst of the manifold duties and responsibilities that he had
cheerfully taken on his shoulders, there came to Mr. Grady an ardent
desire to aid in the reconciliation of the North and South, and to bring
about a better understanding between them. This desire rapidly grew into
a fixed and solemn purpose. His first opportunity was an invitation to
the banquet of the New England Society, which he accepted with great
hesitation. The wonderful effect of his speech at that banquet, and the
tremendous response of applause and approval that came to him from all
parts of the country, assured him that he had touched the key-note of
the situation, and he knew then that his real mission was that of
Pacificator. There was a change in him from that time forth, though it
was a change visible only to friendly and watchful eyes. He put away
something of his boyishness, and became, as it seemed, a trifle more
thoughtful. His purpose developed into a mission, and grew in his mind,
and shone in his eyes, and remained with him day and night. He made many
speeches after that, frequently in little out-of-the-way country places,
but all of them had a national significance and national bearing. He was
preaching the sentiments of harmony, fraternity, and good will to the
South as well as to the North.
He prepared his Boston speech with great care, not merely to perfect its
form, but to make it worthy of the great cause he had at heart, and in
its preparation he departed widely from his usual methods of
composition. He sent his servants away, locked himself in Mrs. Grady’s
room, and would not tolerate interruptions from any source. His memory
was so prodigious that whatever he wrote was fixed in his mind, so that
when he had once written out a speech, he needed the manuscript no more.
Those who were with him say that he did not confine himself to the
printed text of the Boston speech, but made little excursions suggested
by his surroundings. Nevertheless, that speech, as it stands, reaches
the high-water mark of modern oratory. It was his last, as it was his
best, contribution to the higher politics of the country—the politics
that are above partisanry and self-seeking.
VIII.
From Boston Mr. Grady came home to die. It was known that he was
critically ill, but his own life had been so hopeful and so bright, that
when the announcement of his death was made the people of Atlanta were
paralyzed, and the whole country shocked. It was a catastrophe so sudden
and so far-reaching that even sorrow stood dumb for a while. The effects
of such a calamity were greater than sorrow could conceive or affection
contemplate. Men who had only a passing acquaintance with him wept when
they heard of his death. Laboring men spoke of him with trembling lips
and tearful eyes, and working-women went to their tasks in the morning
crying bitterly. Never again will there come to Atlanta a calamity that
shall so profoundly touch the hearts of the people—that shall so
encompass the town with the spirit of mourning.
I feel that I have been unable, in this hastily written sketch, to do
justice to the memory of this remarkable man. I have found it impossible
to describe his marvelous gifts, his wonderful versatility, or the
genius that set him apart from other men. The new generations that arise
will bring with them men who will be fitted to meet the emergencies that
may arise, men fitted to rule and capable of touching the popular heart;
but no generation will ever produce a genius so versatile, a nature so
rare and so sweet, a character so perfect and beautiful, a heart so
unselfish, and a mind of such power and vigor, as those that combined to
form the unique personality of Henry W. Grady. Never again, it is to be
feared, will the South have such a wise and devoted leader, or sectional
unity so brilliant a champion, or the country so ardent a lover, or
humanity so unselfish a friend, or the cause of the people so eloquent
an advocate.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
MEMORIAL OF HENRY W. GRADY.
-------
PREPARED BY MARION J. VERDERY, AT THE REQUEST OF THE NEW YORK SOUTHERN
SOCIETY.
-------
HENRY WOODFIN GRADY was born in Athens, Georgia, May 17, 1851, and died
in Atlanta, Georgia, December 23, 1889.
His father, William S. Grady, was a native of North Carolina, and lived
in that State until about the year 1846, when he moved to Athens,
Georgia. He was a man of vigorous energy, sterling integrity, and great
independence of character. He was not literary by profession, but
devoted himself to mercantile pursuits, and accumulated what was in
those days considered a handsome fortune. Soon after moving to Georgia
to live, he married Miss Gartrell, a woman of rare strength of character
and deep religious nature. Their married life was sanctified by love of
God, and made happy by a consistent devotion to each other.
They had three children, Henry Woodfin, William S., Jr., and Martha.
Henry Grady’s father was an early volunteer in the Confederate Army. He
organized and equipped a company, of which he was unanimously elected
captain, and went at once to Virginia, where he continued in active
service until he lost his life in one of the battles before Petersburg.
During his career as a soldier he bore himself with such conspicuous
valor, that he was accorded the rare distinction of promotion on the
field for gallantry.
He fought in defense of his convictions, and fell “a martyr for
conscience’ sake.”
His widow, bereft of her helpmate, faced alone the grave responsibility
of rearing her three young children.
She led them in the ways of righteousness and truth, and always
sweetened their lives with the tenderness of indulgence, and the beauty
of devotion. Two of them still live to call her blessed.
If memorials were meant only for the day and generation in which they
are written, who would venture upon the task of preparing one to Henry
W. Grady? His death occasioned such wide grief, and induced such
unprecedented demonstrations of sorrow, that nothing can be commensurate
with those impressive evidences of the unrivaled place he held in the
homage of his countrymen.
No written memorial can indicate the strong hold he had upon the
Southern people, nor portray that peerless personality which gave him
his marvelous power among men. He had a matchless grace of soul that
made him an unfailing winner of hearts. His translucent mind pulsated
with the light of truth and beautified all thought. He grew flowers in
the garden of his heart and sweetened the world with the perfume of his
spirit. His endowments were so superior, and his purposes so unselfish,
that he seemed to combine all the best elements of genius, and live
under the influence of Divine inspiration.
As both a writer and a speaker, he was phenomenally gifted. There was no
limit, either to the power or witchery of his pen. In his masterful
hand, it was as he chose, either the mighty instrument which Richelieu
described, or the light wand of a poet striking off the melody of song,
though not to the music of rhyme. In writing a political editorial, or
an article on the industrial development of the South, or anything else
to which he was moved by an inspiring sense of patriotism or conviction
of duty, he was logical, aggressive, and unanswerable. When building an
air-castle over the framework of his fancy, or when pouring out his soul
in some romantic dream, or when sounding the depth of human feeling by
an appeal for Charity’s sake, his command of language was as boundless
as the realm of thought, his ideas as beautiful as pictures in the sky,
and his pathos as deep as the well of tears. As an orator, he had no
equal in the South. He literally mastered his audience regardless of
their character, chaining them to the train of his thought and carrying
them captive to conviction. He moved upon their souls like the Divine
Spirit upon the waters, either lashing them into storms of enthusiasm,
or stilling them into the restful quiet of sympathy. He was like no
other man—he was a veritable magician. He could invest the most trifling
thing with proportions of importance not at all its own. He could
transform a homely thought into an expression of beauty beneath his
wondrous touch. From earliest childhood he possessed that indefinable
quality which compels hero-worship.
In the untimely ending of his brilliant and useful career—an ending too
sudden to be called less than tragic—there came an affliction as broad
as the land he loved, and a grief well-nigh universal. Atlanta lamented
her foremost citizen; Georgia mourned her peerless son; the New South
agonized over the fall of her intrepid leader; and the heart of the
nation was athrob with sorrow when the announcement went forth—“Henry W.
Grady is dead.”
The power of his personality, the vital force of his energy, and the
scope of his genius, had always precluded the thought that death could
touch him, and hence, when he fell a victim to the dread destroyer,
there was a terrible shock felt, and sorrow rolled like a tempest over
the souls of the Southern people.
The swift race he ran, and the lofty heights he attained, harmonized
well with God’s munificent endowment of him. In every field that he
labored, his achievements were so wonderful, that a faithful account of
his career sounds more like the extravagance of eulogy, than like a
record of truth. Of his very early boyhood no account is essential to
the purposes of this sketch. It is unnecessary to give any details of
him prior to the time when he was a student in the University of
Georgia, at Athens. From that institution he was graduated in 1868.
During his college days, he was a boy of bounding spirit, who, by an
inexplicable power over his associates, made for himself an unchallenged
leadership in all things with which he concerned himself. He was not a
close student. He never studied his text-books more than was necessary
to guarantee his rising from class to class, and to finally secure his
diploma. He had no fondness for any department of learning except
belles-lettres. In that branch of study he stood well, simply because it
was to his liking. The sciences, especially mathematics, were really
distasteful to him. He was an omnivorous reader. Every character of
Dickens was as familiar to him as a personal friend. That great novelist
was his favorite author. He read widely of history, and had a great
memory for dates and events. He reveled in poetry as a pastime, but
never found anything that delighted him more than “Lucile.” He learned
that love-song literally by heart.
While at college his best intellectual efforts were made in his literary
and debating society. He aspired to be anniversarian of his society, and
his election seemed a foregone conclusion. He was, however,
over-confident of success in the last days of the canvass, and when the
election came off was beaten by one vote. This was his first
disappointment, and went hard with him. He could not bring himself to
understand how anything toward the accomplishment of which he had bent
his energy could fail. His defeat proved a blessing in disguise, for the
following year a place of higher honor, namely that of “commencement
orator” was instituted at the University, and to that he was elected by
acclamation. This was the year of his graduation, and the speech he made
was the sensation of commencement. His subject was “Castles in Air,” and
in the treatment of his poetic theme he reveled in that wonderful power
of word painting for which he afterwards became so famous. Even in those
early days, he wrote and spoke with a fluency of expression, and
brilliancy of fancy, that were incomparable.
In all the relations of college life he was universally popular. He had
a real genius for putting himself _en rapport_ with all sorts and
conditions of men. His sympathy was quick-flowing and kind. Any sight or
story of suffering would touch his heart and make the tears come. His
generosity, like a great river, ran in ceaseless flow and broadening
course toward the wide ocean of humanity. He lived in the realization of
its being “more blessed to give than to receive.” He never stopped to
consider the worthiness of an object, but insisted that a man was
entitled to some form of selfishness, and said his was the
self-indulgence which he experienced in giving.
There was an old woman in Athens, who was a typical professional beggar.
She wore out everybody’s charity except Grady’s. He never tired helping
her. One day he said, just after giving her some money, “I do hope old
Jane will not die as long as I live in Athens. If she does, my most
unfailing privilege of charity will be cut off.” A princely liberality
marked everything he did. His name never reduced the average of a
subscription list, but eight times out of ten it was down for the
largest amount.
By his marked individuality of character, and evidences of genius, even
as a boy he impressed himself upon all those with whom he came in
contact.
Immediately after his graduation at Athens, he went to the University of
Virginia, not so much with a determination to broaden his scholastic
attainments, as with the idea that in that famous institution he would
be inspired to a higher cultivation of his inborn eloquence. From the
day he entered the University of Virginia, he had only one ambition, and
that was to be “society orator.” He made such a profound impression in
the Washington Society that his right to the honor he craved was
scarcely disputed. In the public debates, he swept all competitors
before him. About two weeks before the Society’s election of its orator,
he had routed every other aspirant from the field, and it seemed he
would be unanimously chosen. However, when election day came, that same
over-confidence which cost him defeat at Athens lost him victory at
Charlottesville. This disappointment nearly broke his heart. He came
back home crestfallen and dispirited, and but for the wonderful buoyancy
of his nature, he might have succumbed permanently to the severe blow
which had been struck at his youthful aspirations and hopes.
It was not long after his return to Georgia before he determined to make
journalism his life-work. At once he began writing newspaper letters on
all sorts of subjects, trusting to his genius to give interest to purely
fanciful topics, which had not the slightest flavor of news. Having thus
felt his way out into the field of his adoption, he soon went regularly
into newspaper business.
Just about this time, and before he had attained his majority, he
married Miss Julia King, of Athens. She was the first sweetheart of his
boyhood, and kept that hallowed place always. Her beauty and grace of
person, united to her charms of character, made her the queen of his
life and the idol of his love. She, with two children (a boy and girl),
survive him.
In his domestic life he was tender and indulgent to his family, and
generously hospitable to his friends. The very best side of him was
always turned toward his hearthstone, and there he dispensed the richest
treasures of his soul. His home was his castle, and in it his friends
were always made happy by the benediction of his welcome.
Soon after marriage he moved to Rome, Georgia, and established himself
in the joint ownership, and editorial management of the Rome
_Commercial_, which paper, instead of prospering, was soon enveloped in
bankruptcy, costing Mr. Grady many thousands of dollars. Shortly after
this he moved to Atlanta, and formed a partnership with Col. Robert
Alliston in founding the Atlanta _Herald_. The conduct of that paper was
a revelation in Georgia journalism. Grady and Alliston combined probably
more genius than any two men who have ever owned a paper together in
that State. They made the columns of the _Herald_ luminous. They also
put into it more push and enterprise than had ever been known in that
section. They sacrificed everything to daily triumph, regardless of cost
or consequences. They went so far as to charter an engine in order that
they might put their morning edition in Macon, Georgia, by breakfast
time. This was a feat never before dreamed of in Georgia. They
accomplished the unprecedented undertaking, but in doing that, and other
things of unwarranted extravagance, it was not long before the Atlanta
_Herald_ went “lock, stock and barrel,” into the wide-open arms of the
Sheriff. In this venture Mr. Grady not only sunk all of his personal
fortune which remained after the Rome wreck, but involved himself
considerably in debt. Thus at twenty-three years of age, he was a victim
to disappointment in the only two pronounced ambitions he had ever had,
and was depressed by the utter failure of the only two business
enterprises in which he had ever engaged.
He made another effort, and started a weekly paper called the _Atlanta
Capital_. This, however, soon went the sorrowing way of his other hopes.
While those failures and disappointments seemed cruel set-backs in that
day, looked at now they may be counted to have been no more than
healthful discipline to him. They served to stir his spirit the deeper,
and fill him with nobler resolve. Bravely he trampled misfortune under
his feet, and climbed to the high place of honor and usefulness for
which he was destined.
In the day of his extreme poverty, instead of despairing he took on new
strength and courage that equipped him well for future triumphs. When it
is remembered that his vast accomplishments and national reputation were
compassed within the next fourteen years, the record is simply amazing.
Fourteen years ago, Henry W. Grady stood in Atlanta, Georgia, bankrupt
and almost broken-hearted. Everything behind him was blotted by failure,
and nothing ahead of him was lighted with promise. In that trying day he
borrowed fifty dollars, and giving twenty of it to his faithful wife,
took the balance and determined to invest it in traveling as far as it
would carry him from the scene of his discouragements. He had one offer
then open to him, namely, the editorial management of the Wilmington
(North Carolina) _Star_, at a salary of twelve hundred dollars a year.
It was the only thing that seemed a guarantee against actual want, and
he had about determined to accept it, when yielding to the influence of
pure presentiment, instead of buying a ticket to Wilmington with his
thirty dollars, he bought one to New York City.
He landed here with three dollars and seventy-five cents, and registered
at the Astor House in order to be in easy reach of Newspaper Row.
He used to tell the story of his experience on that occasion in this
way: “After forcing down my unrelished breakfast on the morning of my
arrival in New York, I went out on the sidewalk in front of the Astor
House, and gave a bootblack twenty-five cents, one-fifth of which was to
pay for shining my shoes, and the balance was a fee for the privilege of
talking to him. I felt that I would die if I did not talk to somebody.
Having stimulated myself at that doubtful fountain of sympathy, I went
across to the _Herald_ office, and the managing editor was good enough
to admit me to his sanctum. It happened that just at that time several
of the Southern States were holding constitutional conventions. The
_Herald_ manager asked me if I knew anything about politics, I replied
that I knew very little about anything else. ‘Well,’ said he, ‘sit at
this desk and write me an article on State conventions in the South.’
With these words he tossed me a pad and left me alone in the room. When
my task-master returned, I had finished the article and was leaning back
in the chair with my feet up on the desk. ‘Why, Mr. Grady, what is the
matter?’ asked the managing editor. ‘Nothing,’ I replied, ‘except that I
am through.’ ‘Very well, leave your copy on the desk, and if it amounts
to anything I will let you hear from me. Where are you stopping?’ ‘I am
at the Astor House.’ Early the next morning before getting out of bed, I
rang for a hall-boy and ordered the _Herald_. I actually had not
strength to get up and dress myself, until I could see whether or not my
article had been used. I opened the _Herald_ with a trembling hand, and
when I saw that ‘State Conventions in the South’ was on the editorial
page, I fell back on the bed, buried my face in the pillow, and cried
like a child. When I went back to the _Herald_ office that day the
managing editor received me cordially and said, ‘You can go back to
Georgia, Mr. Grady, and consider yourself in the employ of the
_Herald_.’”
Almost immediately after his return to Atlanta, he was tendered, and
gladly accepted, a position on the editorial staff of the Atlanta
_Constitution_. He worked vigorously for the New York _Herald_ for five
years as its Southern correspondent, and in that time did some of the
most brilliant work that has ever been done for that excellent journal.
Notable among his achievements were the graphic reports he made of the
South Carolina riots in 1876. But the special work which gave him
greatest fame was his exposure of the election frauds in Florida that
same year. He secured the memorable confession of Dennis and his
associates, and _his_ report of it to the _Herald_ was exclusive. For
that piece of work alone, Mr. Bennett paid him a thousand dollars. His
attachment to the editorial staff of the Atlanta _Constitution_ gave him
an opportunity to impress himself upon the people of Georgia, which he
did with great rapidity and power.
In 1879, he came to New York, partly for recreation and partly for the
purpose of writing a series of topical letters from Gotham. While here
he was introduced by Governor John B. Gordon to Cyrus W. Field. Mr.
Field was instantly impressed by him, and liked him so much that he
loaned him twenty thousand dollars with which to buy one-fourth interest
in the Atlanta _Constitution_. He made the purchase promptly, and that
for which he paid twenty thousand dollars in 1880, was at the time of
his death in 1889 worth at least one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
The enormous increase in the value of the _Constitution_ during his
identification with it shows nothing more plainly than the value of his
marvelous work in its service.
Securing an interest in the Atlanta _Constitution_ may be said to have
fixed his noble destiny. It emancipated his genius from the bondage of
poverty, quickened his sensitive spirit with a new consciousness of
power for good, and inspired him to untiring service in the widest
fields of usefulness. He saw the hand of God in the favor that had
blessed him, and in acknowledgment of the Divine providence dedicated
his life to the cause of truth, and the uplifting of humanity. Atlanta
was his home altar, and there he poured out the best libations of his
heart. That thriving city to-day has no municipal advantage, no public
improvement, no educational institution, no industrial enterprise which
does not either owe its beginning to his readiness of suggestion, or its
mature development to his sustaining influence. Its streets are paved
with his energy and devotion, its houses are built in the comeliness and
fashion that he inspired, and its vast business interests are
established in the prosperity and strength that he foretold.
Georgia was the pride of his life, and for the increase of her peace and
prosperity, the deepening brotherhood of her people, the development of
her vast mineral resources, and the enrichment of her varied harvests,
he wrote, and talked, and prayed.
The whole South was to him sacred ground, made so both by the heroic
death of his father and the precious birth of his children. By the
former, he felt all the memories and traditions of the Old South to have
been sanctified, and by the latter he felt all the hopes and aspirations
of the New South to have been beautified. And thus with a personality
altogether unique, and a genius thoroughly rare, he stood like a magical
link between the past and the future. Turning toward the days that were
gone, he sealed them with a holy kiss; and then looking toward the time
that had not yet come, he conjured it with a voice of prophecy.
In politics he was an undeniable leader, and yet never held office. High
places were pressed for his acceptance times without number, but he
always resolutely put them away from him, insisting that office had no
charm for him. He could have gone to Congress, as representative from
the State at large, if he would only have consented to serve. His name
was repeatedly suggested for the governorship of Georgia, but he
invariably suppressed the idea promptly, urging his friends to leave him
at peace in his private station.
In spite of his indifference to all political preferment, it is
universally believed in Georgia, that had he lived, he would have soon
been sent to the United States Senate. Although he had no love of office
for himself, he was the incomparable Warwick of his day. He was almost
an absolute dictator in Georgia politics. No man cared to stand for
election to any place, high or low, unless he felt Grady was with him.
He certainly was the most powerful factor in the election of two
Governors, and practically gave more than one United States Senator his
seat. His power extended all over the State.
Such a man could not be held within the narrow limits of local
reputation. It mattered not how far he traveled from home, he made
himself quickly known by the power of his impressive individuality, or
by some splendid exhibition of his genius.
By two speeches, one made at a banquet of the New England Society in New
York City, and the other at a State fair at Dallas, Texas, he achieved
for himself a reputation which spanned the continent. The most
magnificent effort of eloquence which he ever made was the soul-stirring
speech delivered in Boston on “The Race Problem,” just ten days before
he died. These three speeches were enough to confirm and perpetuate his
fame as a surpassing orator.
It is impossible to give any adequate idea of Henry Grady’s largeness of
heart, nobility of soul, and brilliancy of mind. Those three elements
combined in royal abundance to make his princely nature.
When Georgia’s great triumvirate died, their spirits seemed to linger on
earth in the being of Henry W. Grady. While he lived he perpetuated the
political sagacity of Alexander H. Stephens, the consummate genius of
Robert Toombs, and the impassioned eloquence of Benjamin H. Hill.
True greatness is immortal. Real patriotic purposes are never swallowed
up in death. Good works well begun live long after their praiseworthy
originators have ascended in glory. If there is any truth in these
reflections, they are precious and priceless to all who mourn the
untimely taking off of Henry Woodfin Grady.
His sudden death struck grief to all true-hearted American citizens. In
him was combined such breadth of usefulness and brilliancy of genius,
that he illumined the critical period of American history in which he
lived, and set the firmament of our national glory with many a new and
shining star of promise. This century, though old in its last quarter,
has given birth to but one Henry Woodfin Grady, and it will close its
eyes long before his second self is seen.
A hundred years hence, when sweet charity is stemming the tides of
suffering in the world, if truth is not dumb, she will say: This blessed
work is an echo from Henry Grady’s life on earth. A hundred years hence,
when friendship is building high her altars of self-sacrifice in the
name of love and loyalty, if truth is not dumb, she will say: This
beautiful service is going on as a perpetual memorial to Henry Grady’s
life on earth. A hundred years hence, when all the South shall have been
enriched by the development of her vast natural resources, if truth is
not dumb, she will say: This is the legitimate fruit of Henry Grady’s
labor of love while he lived on earth. A hundred years hence, when
patriotism shall have beaten down all sectional and partisan prejudice,
and the burning problems that press upon our national heart to-day shall
have been “solved in patience and fairness,” if truth is not dumb, she
will say: This is the glorious verification of Henry Grady’s prophetic
utterances while on earth. And when in God’s own appointed time this
nation shall lead all other nations of the earth in the triumphal march
of prosperous peoples under perfect governments, if truth is not dumb,
she will say: This is the free, full and complete answer to Henry
Grady’s impassioned prayer while on earth.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SPEECHES.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE NEW SOUTH.
-------
ON THE 21ST OF DECEMBER, 1886, MR. GRADY, IN RESPONSE TO AN URGENT
INVITATION, DELIVERED THE FOLLOWING ADDRESS AT THE BANQUET OF THE
NEW ENGLAND CLUB, NEW YORK:
“There was a South of slavery and secession—that South is dead. There is
a South of union and freedom—that South, thank God, is living,
breathing, growing every hour.” These words, delivered from the immortal
lips of Benjamin H. Hill, at Tammany Hall, in 1866, true then and truer
now, I shall make my text to-night.
Mr. President and Gentlemen: Let me express to you my appreciation of
the kindness by which I am permitted to address you. I make this abrupt
acknowledgment advisedly, for I feel that if, when I raise my provincial
voice in this ancient and august presence, I could find courage for no
more than the opening sentence, it would be well if in that sentence I
had met in a rough sense my obligation as a guest, and had perished, so
to speak, with courtesy on my lips and grace in my heart. Permitted,
through your kindness, to catch my second wind, let me say that I
appreciate the significance of being the first Southerner to speak at
this board, which bears the substance, if it surpasses the semblance, of
original New England hospitality—and honors the sentiment that in turn
honors you, but in which my personality is lost, and the compliment to
my people made plain.
I bespeak the utmost stretch of your courtesy to-night. I am not
troubled about those from whom I come. You remember the man whose wife
sent him to a neighbor with a pitcher of milk, and who, tripping on the
top step, fell with such casual interruptions as the landings afforded
into the basement, and, while picking himself up, had the pleasure of
hearing his wife call out: “John, did you break the pitcher?”
“No, I didn’t,” said John, “but I’ll be dinged if I don’t.”
So, while those who call me from behind may inspire me with energy, if
not with courage, I ask an indulgent hearing from you. I beg that you
will bring your full faith in American fairness and frankness to
judgment upon what I shall say. There was an old preacher once who told
some boys of the Bible lesson he was going to read in the morning. The
boys, finding the place, glued together the connecting pages. The next
morning he read on the bottom of one page, “When Noah was one hundred
and twenty years old he took unto himself a wife, who was”—then turning
the page—“140 cubits long—40 cubits wide, built of gopher wood—and
covered with pitch inside and out.” He was naturally puzzled at this. He
read it again, verified it, and then said: “My friends, this is the
first time I ever met this in the Bible, but I accept this as an
evidence of the assertion that we are fearfully and wonderfully made.”
If I could get you to hold such faith to-night I could proceed
cheerfully to the task I otherwise approach with a sense of
consecration.
Pardon me one word, Mr. President, spoken for the sole purpose of
getting into the volumes that go out annually freighted with the rich
eloquence of your speakers—the fact that the Cavalier as well as the
Puritan was on the continent in its early days, and that he was “up and
able to be about.” I have read your books carefully and I find no
mention of that fact, which seems to me an important one for preserving
a sort of historical equilibrium if for nothing else.
Let me remind you that the Virginia Cavalier first challenged France on
the continent—that Cavalier, John Smith, gave New England its very name,
and was so pleased with the job that he has been handing his own name
around ever since—and that while Myles Standish was cutting off men’s
ears for courting a girl without her parents’ consent, and forbade men
to kiss their wives on Sunday, the Cavalier was courting everything in
sight, and that the Almighty had vouchsafed great increase to the
Cavalier colonies, the huts in the wilderness being as full as the nests
in the woods.
But having incorporated the Cavalier as a fact in your charming little
books, I shall let him work out his own salvation, as he has always
done, with engaging gallantry, and we will hold no controversy as to his
merits. Why should we? Neither Puritan nor Cavalier long survived as
such. The virtues and good traditions of both happily still live for the
inspiration of their sons and the saving of the old fashion. But both
Puritan and Cavalier were lost in the storm of the first Revolution, and
the American citizen, supplanting both and stronger than either, took
possession of the republic bought by their common blood and fashioned to
wisdom, and charged himself with teaching men government and
establishing the voice of the people as the voice of God.
My friends, Dr. Talmage has told you that the typical American has yet
to come. Let me tell you that he has already come. Great types, like
valuable plants, are slow to flower and fruit. But from the union of
these colonists, Puritans and Cavaliers, from the straightening of their
purposes and the crossing of their blood, slow perfecting through a
century, came he who stands as the first typical American, the first who
comprehended within himself all the strength and gentleness, all the
majesty and grace of this republic—Abraham Lincoln. He was the sum of
Puritan and Cavalier, for in his ardent nature were fused the virtues of
both, and in the depths of his great soul the faults of both were lost.
He was greater than Puritan, greater than Cavalier, in that he was
American, and that in his honest form were first gathered the vast and
thrilling forces of his ideal government—charging it with such
tremendous meaning and elevating it above human suffering that
martyrdom, though infamously aimed, came as a fitting crown to a life
consecrated from the cradle to human liberty. Let us, each cherishing
the traditions and honoring his fathers, build with reverent hands to
the type of this simple but sublime life, in which all types are
honored, and in our common glory as Americans there will be plenty and
to spare for your forefathers and for mine.
Dr. Talmage has drawn for you, with a master’s hand, the picture of your
returning armies. He has told you how, in the pomp and circumstance of
war, they came back to you, marching with proud and victorious tread,
reading their glory in a nation’s eyes! Will you bear with me while I
tell you of another army that sought its home at the close of the late
war—an army that marched home in defeat and not in victory—in pathos and
not in splendor, but in glory that equaled yours, and to hearts as
loving as ever welcomed heroes home! Let me picture to you the footsore
Confederate soldier, as buttoning up in his faded gray jacket the parole
which was to bear testimony to his children of his fidelity and faith,
he turned his face southward from Appomattox in April, 1865. Think of
him as ragged, half-starved, heavy-hearted, enfeebled by want and
wounds, having fought to exhaustion, he surrenders his gun, wrings the
hands of his comrades in silence, and lifting his tear-stained and
pallid face for the last time to the graves that dot old Virginia hills,
pulls his gray cap over his brow and begins the slow and painful
journey. What does he find—let me ask you who went to your homes eager
to find, in the welcome you had justly earned, full payment for four
years’ sacrifice—what does he find when, having followed the
battle-stained cross against overwhelming odds, dreading death not half
so much as surrender, he reaches the home he left so prosperous and
beautiful? He finds his house in ruins, his farm devastated, his slaves
free, his stock killed, his barns empty, his trade destroyed, his money
worthless, his social system, feudal in its magnificence, swept away;
his people without law or legal status; his comrades slain, and the
burdens of others heavy on his shoulders. Crushed by defeat, his very
traditions are gone. Without money, credit, employment, material, or
training; and beside all this, confronted with the gravest problem that
ever met human intelligence—the establishing of a status for the vast
body of his liberated slaves.
What does he do—this hero in gray with a heart of gold? Does he sit down
in sullenness and despair? Not for a day. Surely God, who had stripped
him of his prosperity, inspired him in his adversity. As ruin was never
before so overwhelming, never was restoration swifter. The soldier
stepped from the trenches into the furrow; horses that had charged
Federal guns marched before the plow, and fields that ran red with human
blood in April were green with the harvest in June; women reared in
luxury cut up their dresses and made breeches for their husbands, and,
with a patience and heroism that fit women always as a garment, gave
their hands to work. There was little bitterness in all this.
Cheerfulness and frankness prevailed. “Bill Arp” struck the key-note
when he said: “Well, I killed as many of them as they did of me, and now
I’m going to work.” Of the soldier returning home after defeat and
roasting some corn on the roadside, who made the remark to his comrades:
“You may leave the South if you want to, but I am going to Sandersville,
kiss my wife and raise a crop, and if the Yankees fool with me any more,
I’ll whip ’em again.” I want to say to General Sherman, who is
considered an able man in our parts, though some people think he is a
kind of careless man about fire, that from the ashes he left us in 1864
we have raised a brave and beautiful city; that somehow or other we have
caught the sunshine in the bricks and mortar of our homes, and have
builded therein not one ignoble prejudice or memory.
But what is the sum of our work? We have found out that in the summing
up the free negro counts more than he did as a slave. We have planted
the schoolhouse on the hilltop and made it free to white and black. We
have sowed towns and cities in the place of theories, and put business
above politics. We have challenged your spinners in Massachusetts and
your iron-makers in Pennsylvania. We have learned that the $400,000,000
annually received from our cotton crop will make us rich when the
supplies that make it are home-raised. We have reduced the commercial
rate of interest from 24 to 6 per cent., and are floating 4 per cent.
bonds. We have learned that one northern immigrant is worth fifty
foreigners; and have smoothed the path to southward, wiped out the place
where Mason and Dixon’s line used to be, and hung out latchstring to you
and yours. We have reached the point that marks perfect harmony in every
household, when the husband confesses that the pies which his wife cooks
are as good as those his mother used to bake; and we admit that the sun
shines as brightly and the moon as softly as it did before the war. We
have established thrift in city and country. We have fallen in love with
work. We have restored comfort to homes from which culture and elegance
never departed. We have let economy take root and spread among us as
rank as the crabgrass which sprung from Sherman’s cavalry camps, until
we are ready to lay odds on the Georgia Yankee as he manufactures relics
of the battle-field in a one-story shanty and squeezes pure olive oil
out of his cotton seed, against any down-easter that ever swapped wooden
nutmegs for flannel sausage in the valleys of Vermont. Above all, we
know that we have achieved in these “piping times of peace” a fuller
independence for the South than that which our fathers sought to win in
the forum by their eloquence or compel in the field by their swords.
It is a rare privilege, sir, to have had part, however humble, in this
work. Never was nobler duty confided to human hands than the uplifting
and upbuilding of the prostrate and bleeding South—misguided, perhaps,
but beautiful in her suffering, and honest, brave and generous always.
In the record of her social, industrial and political illustration we
await with confidence the verdict of the world.
But what of the negro? Have we solved the problem he presents or
progressed in honor and equity toward solution? Let the record speak to
the point. No section shows a more prosperous laboring population than
the negroes of the South, none in fuller sympathy with the employing and
land-owning class. He shares our school fund, has the fullest protection
of our laws and the friendship of our people. Self-interest, as well as
honor, demand that he should have this. Our future, our very existence
depend upon our working out this problem in full and exact justice. We
understand that when Lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation, your
victory was assured, for he then committed you to the cause of human
liberty, against which the arms of man cannot prevail—while those of our
statesmen who trusted to make slavery the corner-stone of the
Confederacy doomed us to defeat as far as they could, committing us to a
cause that reason could not defend or the sword maintain in sight of
advancing civilization.
Had Mr. Toombs said, which he did not say, “that he would call the roll
of his slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill,” he would have been foolish,
for he might have known that whenever slavery became entangled in war it
must perish, and that the chattel in human flesh ended forever in New
England when your fathers—not to be blamed for parting with what didn’t
pay—sold their slaves to our fathers—not to be praised for knowing a
paying thing when they saw it. The relations of the southern people with
the negro are close and cordial. We remember with what fidelity for four
years he guarded our defenseless women and children, whose husbands and
fathers were fighting against his freedom. To his eternal credit be it
said that whenever he struck a blow for his own liberty he fought in
open battle, and when at last he raised his black and humble hands that
the shackles might be struck off, those hands were innocent of wrong
against his helpless charges, and worthy to be taken in loving grasp by
every man who honors loyalty and devotion. Ruffians have maltreated him,
rascals have misled him, philanthropists established a bank for him, but
the South, with the North, protests against injustice to this simple and
sincere people. To liberty and enfranchisement is as far as law can
carry the negro. The rest must be left to conscience and common sense.
It must be left to those among whom his lot is cast, with whom he is
indissolubly connected, and whose prosperity depends upon their
possessing his intelligent sympathy and confidence. Faith has been kept
with him, in spite of calumnious assertions to the contrary by those who
assume to speak for us or by frank opponents. Faith will be kept with
him in the future, if the South holds her reason and integrity.
But have we kept faith with you? In the fullest sense, yes. When Lee
surrendered—I don’t say when Johnson surrendered, because I understand
he still alludes to the time when he met General Sherman last as the
time when he determined to abandon any further prosecution of the
struggle—when Lee surrendered, I say, and Johnson quit, the South
became, and has since been, loyal to this Union. We fought hard enough
to know that we were whipped, and in perfect frankness accept as final
the arbitrament of the sword to which we had appealed. The South found
her jewel in the toad’s head of defeat. The shackles that had held her
in narrow limitations fell forever when the shackles of the negro slave
were broken. Under the old régime the negroes were slaves to the South;
the South was a slave to the system. The old plantation, with its simple
police regulations and feudal habit, was the only type possible under
slavery. Thus was gathered in the hands of a splendid and chivalric
oligarchy the substance that should have been diffused among the people,
as the rich blood, under certain artificial conditions, is gathered at
the heart, filling that with affluent rapture but leaving the body chill
and colorless.
The old South rested everything on slavery and agriculture, unconscious
that these could neither give nor maintain healthy growth. The new South
presents a perfect democracy, the oligarchs leading in the popular
movement—a social system compact and closely knitted, less splendid on
the surface, but stronger at the core—a hundred farms for every
plantation, fifty homes for every palace—and a diversified industry that
meets the complex need of this complex age.
The new South is enamored of her new work. Her soul is stirred with the
breath of a new life. The light of a grander day is falling fair on her
face. She is thrilling with the consciousness of growing power and
prosperity. As she stands upright, full-statured and equal among the
people of the earth, breathing the keen air and looking out upon the
expanded horizon, she understands that her emancipation came because
through the inscrutable wisdom of God her honest purpose was crossed,
and her brave armies were beaten.
This is said in no spirit of time-serving or apology. The South has
nothing for which to apologize. She believes that the late struggle
between the States was war and not rebellion; revolution and not
conspiracy, and that her convictions were as honest as yours. I should
be unjust to the dauntless spirit of the South and to my own convictions
if I did not make this plain in this presence. The South has nothing to
take back. In my native town of Athens is a monument that crowns its
central hill—a plain, white shaft. Deep cut into its shining side is a
name dear to me above the names of men—that of a brave and simple man
who died in brave and simple faith. Not for all the glories of New
England, from Plymouth Rock all the way, would I exchange the heritage
he left me in his soldier’s death. To the foot of that I shall send my
children’s children to reverence him who ennobled their name with his
heroic blood. But, sir, speaking from the shadow of that memory which I
honor as I do nothing else on earth, I say that the cause in which he
suffered and for which he gave his life was adjudged by higher and
fuller wisdom than his or mine, and I am glad that the omniscient God
held the balance of battle in His Almighty hand and that human slavery
was swept forever from American soil, the American Union was saved from
the wreck of war.
This message, Mr. President, comes to you from consecrated ground. Every
foot of soil about the city in which I live is as sacred as a
battle-ground of the republic. Every hill that invests it is hallowed to
you by the blood of your brothers who died for your victory, and doubly
hallowed to us by the blow of those who died hopeless, but undaunted, in
defeat—sacred soil to all of us—rich with memories that make us purer
and stronger and better—silent but staunch witnesses in its red
desolation of the matchless valor of American hearts and the deathless
glory of American arms—speaking an eloquent witness in its white peace
and prosperity to the indissoluble union of American States and the
imperishable brotherhood of the American people.
Now, what answer has New England to this message? Will she permit the
prejudice of war to remain in the hearts of the conquerors, when it has
died in the hearts of the conquered? Will she transmit this prejudice to
the next generation, that in their hearts which never felt the generous
ardor of conflict it may perpetuate itself? Will she withhold, save in
strained courtesy, the hand which straight from his soldier’s heart
Grant offered to Lee at Appomattox? Will she make the vision of a
restored and happy people, which gathered above the couch of your dying
captain, filling his heart with grace; touching his lips with praise,
and glorifying his path to the grave—will she make this vision on which
the last sigh of his expiring soul breathed a benediction, a cheat and
delusion? If she does, the South, never abject in asking for
comradeship, must accept with dignity its refusal; but if she does not
refuse to accept in frankness and sincerity this message of good will
and friendship, then will the prophecy of Webster, delivered in this
very society forty years ago amid tremendous applause, become true, be
verified in its fullest sense, when he said: “Standing hand to hand and
clasping hands, we should remain united as we have been for sixty years,
citizens of the same country, members of the same government, united,
all united now and united forever.” There have been difficulties,
contentions, and controversies, but I tell you that in my judgment,
“Those opened eyes,
Which like the meteors of a troubled heaven,
All of one nature, of one substance bred,
Did lately meet in th’ intestine shock,
Shall now, in mutual well beseeming ranks,
March all one way.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS.
-------
AT THE DALLAS, TEXAS, STATE FAIR, ON THE 26TH OF OCTOBER, 1887, MR.
GRADY WAS THE ORATOR OF THE DAY. HE SAID:
“Who saves his country, saves all things, and all things saved
will bless him. Who lets his country die, lets all things die,
and all things dying curse him.”
These words are graven on the statue of Benjamin H. Hill in the city of
Atlanta, and in their spirit I shall speak to you to-day.
Mr. President and Fellow-Citizens: I salute the first city of the
grandest State of the greatest government on this earth. In paying
earnest compliment to this thriving city, and this generous multitude, I
need not cumber speech with argument or statistics. It is enough to say
that my friends and myself make obeisance this morning to the chief
metropolis of the State of Texas. If it but holds this pre-eminence—and
who can doubt in this auspicious presence that it will—the uprising
tides of Texas’s prosperity will carry it to glories unspeakable. For I
say in soberness, the future of this marvelous and amazing empire, that
gives broader and deeper significance to statehood by accepting its
modest naming, the mind of man can neither measure nor comprehend.
I shall be pardoned for resisting the inspiration of this presence and
adhering to-day to blunt and rigorous speech—for there are times when
fine words are paltry, and this seems to me to be such a time. So I
shall turn away from the thunders of the political battle upon which
every American hangs intent, and repress the ardor that at this time
rises in every American heart—for there are issues that strike deeper
than any political theory has reached, and conditions of which
partisanry has taken, and can take, but little account. Let me,
therefore, with studied plainness, and with such precision as is
possible—in a spirit of fraternity that is broader than party
limitations, and deeper than political motive—discuss with you certain
problems upon the wise and prompt solution of which depends the glory
and prosperity of the South.
But why—for let us make our way slowly—why “the South.” In an
indivisible union—in a republic against the integrity of which sword
shall never be drawn or mortal hand uplifted, and in which the rich
blood gathering at the common heart is sent throbbing into every part of
the body politic—why is one section held separated from the rest in
alien consideration? We can understand why this should be so in a city
that has a community of local interests; or in a State still clothed in
that sovereignty of which the debates of peace and the storm of war has
not stripped her. But why should a number of States, stretching from
Richmond to Galveston, bound together by no local interests, held in no
autonomy, be thus combined and drawn to a common center? That man would
be absurd who declaimed in Buffalo against the wrongs of the Middle
States, or who demanded in Chicago a convention for the West to consider
the needs of that section. If then it be provincialism that holds the
South together, let us outgrow it; if it be sectionalism, let us root it
out of our hearts; but if it be something deeper than these and
essential to our system, let us declare it with frankness, consider it
with respect, defend it with firmness, and in dignity abide its
consequence. What is it that holds the southern States—though true in
thought and deed to the Union—so closely bound in sympathy to-day? For a
century these States championed a governmental theory—but that, having
triumphed in every forum, fell at last by the sword. They maintained an
institution—but that, having been administered in the fullest wisdom of
man, fell at last in the higher wisdom of God. They fought a war—but the
prejudices of that war have died, its sympathies have broadened, and its
memories are already the priceless treasure of the republic that is
cemented forever with its blood. They looked out together upon the ashes
of their homes and the desolation of their fields—but out of pitiful
resource they have fashioned their homes anew, and plenty rides on the
springing harvests. In all the past there is nothing to draw them into
essential or lasting alliance—nothing in all that heroic record that
cannot be rendered unfearing from provincial hands into the keeping of
American history.
But the future holds a problem, in solving which the South must stand
alone; in dealing with which, she must come closer together than
ambition or despair have driven her, and on the outcome of which her
very existence depends. This problem is to carry within her body politic
two separate races, and nearly equal in numbers. She must carry these
races in peace—for discord means ruin. She must carry them
separately—for assimilation means debasement. She must carry them in
equal justice—for to this she is pledged in honor and in gratitude. She
must carry them even unto the end, for in human probability she will
never be quit of either.
This burden no other people bears to-day—on none hath it ever rested.
Without precedent or companionship, the South must bear this problem,
the awful responsibility of which should win the sympathy of all human
kind, and the protecting watchfulness of God—alone, even unto the end.
Set by this problem apart from all other peoples of the earth, and her
unique position emphasized rather than relieved, as I shall show
hereafter, by her material conditions, it is not only fit but it is
essential that she should hold her brotherhood unimpaired, quicken her
sympathies, and in the light or in the shadows of this surpassing
problem work out her own salvation in the fear of God—but of God alone.
What shall the South do to be saved? Through what paths shall she reach
the end? Through what travail, or what splendors, shall she give to the
Union this section, its wealth garnered, its resources utilized, and its
rehabilitation complete—and restore to the world this problem solved in
such justice as the finite mind can measure, or finite hands administer?
In dealing with this I shall dwell on two points.
First, the duty of the South in its relation to the race problem.
Second, the duty of the South in relation to its no less unique and
important industrial problem.
I approach this discussion with a sense of consecration. I beg your
patient and cordial sympathy. And I invoke the Almighty God, that having
showered on this people His fullest riches has put their hands to this
task, that He will draw near unto us, as He drew near to troubled
Israel, and lead us in the ways of honor and uprightness, even through a
pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night.
What of the negro? This of him. I want no better friend than the black
boy who was raised by my side, and who is now trudging patiently with
downcast eyes and shambling figure through his lowly way in life. I want
no sweeter music than the crooning of my old “mammy,” now dead and gone
to rest, as I heard it when she held me in her loving arms, and bending
her old black face above me stole the cares from my brain, and led me
smiling into sleep. I want no truer soul than that which moved the
trusty slave, who for four years while my father fought with the armies
that barred his freedom, slept every night at my mother’s chamber door,
holding her and her children as safe as if her husband stood guard, and
ready to lay down his humble life on her threshold. History has no
parallel to the faith kept by the negro in the South during the war.
Often five hundred negroes to a single white man, and yet through these
dusky throngs the women and children walked in safety, and the
unprotected homes rested in peace. Unmarshaled, the black battalions
moved patiently to the fields in the morning to feed the armies their
idleness would have starved, and at night gathered anxiously at the big
house to “hear the news from marster,” though conscious that his victory
made their chains enduring. Everywhere humble and kindly; the bodyguard
of the helpless; the rough companion of the little ones; the observant
friend; the silent sentry in his lowly cabin; the shrewd counselor. And
when the dead came home, a mourner at the open grave. A thousand torches
would have disbanded every Southern army, but not one was lighted. When
the master going to a war in which slavery was involved said to his
slave, “I leave my home and loved ones in your charge,” the tenderness
between man and master stood disclosed. And when the slave held that
charge sacred through storm and temptation, he gave new meaning to faith
and loyalty. I rejoice that when freedom came to him after years of
waiting, it was all the sweeter because the black hands from which the
shackles fell were stainless of a single crime against the helpless ones
confided to his care.
From this root, imbedded in a century of kind and constant
companionship, has sprung some foliage. As no race had ever lived in
such unresisting bondage, none was ever hurried with such swiftness
through freedom into power. Into hands still trembling from the blow
that broke the shackles, was thrust the ballot. In less than twelve
months from the day he walked down the furrow a slave, the negro
dictated in legislative halls from which Davis and Calhoun had gone
forth, the policy of twelve commonwealths. When his late master
protested against his misrule, the federal drum-beat rolled around his
strong-holds, and from a hedge of federal bayonets he grinned in
good-natured insolence. From the proven incapacity of that day has he
far advanced? Simple, credulous, impulsive—easily led and too often
easily bought, is he a safer, more intelligent citizen now than then? Is
this mass of votes, loosed from old restraints, inviting alliance or
awaiting opportunity, less menacing than when its purpose was plain and
its way direct?
My countrymen, right here the South must make a decision on which very
much depends. Many wise men hold that the white vote of the South should
divide, the color line be beaten down, and the southern States ranged on
economic or moral questions as interest or belief demands. I am
compelled to dissent from this view. The worst thing in my opinion that
could happen is that the white people of the South should stand in
opposing factions, with the vast mass of ignorant or purchasable negro
votes between. Consider such a status. If the negroes were skillfully
led,—and leaders would not be lacking,—it would give them the balance of
power—a thing not to be considered. If their vote was not compacted, it
would invite the debauching bid of factions, and drift surely to that
which was the most corrupt and cunning. With the shiftless habit and
irresolution of slavery days still possessing him, the negro voter will
not in this generation, adrift from war issues, become a steadfast
partisan through conscience or conviction. In every community there are
colored men who redeem their race from this reproach, and who vote under
reason. Perhaps in time the bulk of this race may thus adjust itself.
But, through what long and monstrous periods of political debauchery
this status would be reached, no tongue can tell.
The clear and unmistakable domination of the white race, dominating not
through violence, not through party alliance, but through the integrity
of its own vote and the largeness of its sympathy and justice through
which it shall compel the support of the better classes of the colored
race,—that is the hope and assurance of the South. Otherwise, the negro
would be bandied from one faction to another. His credulity would be
played upon, his cupidity tempted, his impulses misdirected, his
passions inflamed. He would be forever in alliance with that faction
which was most desperate and unscrupulous. Such a state would be worse
than reconstruction, for then intelligence was banded, and its speedy
triumph assured. But with intelligence and property divided—bidding and
overbidding for place and patronage—irritation increasing with each
conflict—the bitterness and desperation seizing every heart—political
debauchery deepening, as each faction staked its all in the miserable
game—there would be no end to this, until our suffrage was hopelessly
sullied, our people forever divided, and our most sacred rights
surrendered.
One thing further should be said in perfect frankness. Up to this point
we have dealt with ignorance and corruption—but beyond this point a
deeper issue confronts us. Ignorance may struggle to enlightenment, out
of corruption may come the incorruptible. God speed the day when,—every
true man will work and pray for its coming,—the negro must be led to
know and through sympathy to confess that his interests and the
interests of the people of the South are identical. The men who, from
afar off, view this subject through the cold eye of speculation or see
it distorted through partisan glasses, insist that, directly or
indirectly, the negro race shall be in control of the affairs of the
South. We have no fears of this; already we are attaching to us the best
elements of that race, and as we proceed our alliance will broaden;
external pressure but irritates and impedes. Those who would put the
negro race in supremacy would work against infallible decree, for the
white race can never submit to its domination, because the white race is
the superior race. But the supremacy of the white race of the South must
be maintained forever, and the domination of the negro race resisted at
all points and at all hazards—because the white race is the superior
race. This is the declaration of no new truth. It has abided forever in
the marrow of our bones, and shall run forever with the blood that feeds
Anglo-Saxon hearts.
In political compliance the South has evaded the truth, and men have
drifted from their convictions. But we cannot escape this issue. It
faces us wherever we turn. It is an issue that has been, and will be.
The races and tribes of earth are of Divine origin. Behind the laws of
man and the decrees of war, stands the law of God. What God hath
separated let no man join together. The Indian, the Malay, the Negro,
the Caucasian, these types stand as markers of God’s will. Let not man
tinker with the work of the Almighty. Unity of civilization, no more
than unity of faith, will never be witnessed on earth. No race has
risen, or will rise, above its ordained place. Here is the pivotal fact
of this great matter—two races are made equal in law, and in political
rights, between whom the caste of race has set an impassable gulf. This
gulf is bridged by a statute, and the races are urged to cross thereon.
This cannot be. The fiat of the Almighty has gone forth, and in eighteen
centuries of history it is written. We would escape this issue if we
could. From the depths of its soul the South invokes from heaven “peace
on earth, and good will to man.” She would not, if she could, cast this
race back into the condition from which it was righteously raised. She
would not deny its smallest or abridge its fullest privilege. Not to
lift this burden forever from her people, would she do the least of
these things. She must walk through the valley of the shadow, for God
has so ordained. But he has ordained that she shall walk in that
integrity of race, that created in His wisdom has been perpetuated in
His strength. Standing in the presence of this multitude, sobered with
the responsibility of the message I deliver to the young men of the
South, I declare that the truth above all others to be worn unsullied
and sacred in your hearts, to be surrendered to no force, sold for no
price, compromised in no necessity, but cherished and defended as the
covenant of your prosperity, and the pledge of peace to your children,
is that the white race must dominate forever in the South, because it is
the white race, and superior to that race by which its supremacy is
threatened.
It is a race issue. Let us come to this point, and stand here. Here the
air is pure and the light is clear, and here honor and peace abide.
Juggling and evasion deceives not a man. Compromise and subservience has
carried not a point. There is not a white man North or South who does
not feel it stir in the gray matter of his brain and throb in his heart.
Not a negro who does not feel its power. It is not a sectional issue. It
speaks in Ohio, and in Georgia. It speaks wherever the Anglo-Saxon
touches an alien race. It has just spoken in universally approved
legislation in excluding the Chinaman from our gates, not for his
ignorance, vice or corruption, but because he sought to establish an
inferior race in a republic fashioned in the wisdom and defended by the
blood of a homogeneous people.
The Anglo-Saxon blood has dominated always and everywhere. It fed Alfred
when he wrote the charter of English liberty; it gathered about Hampden
as he stood beneath the oak; it thundered in Cromwell’s veins as he
fought his king; it humbled Napoleon at Waterloo; it has touched the
desert and jungle with undying glory; it carried the drumbeat of England
around the world and spread on every continent the gospel of liberty and
of God: it established this republic, carved it from the wilderness,
conquered it from the Indians, wrested it from England, and at last,
stilling its own tumult, consecrated it forever as the home of the
Anglo-Saxon, and the theater of his transcending achievement. Never one
foot of it can be surrendered while that blood lives in American veins,
and feeds American hearts, to the domination of an alien and inferior
race.
And yet that is just what is proposed. Not in twenty years have we seen
a day so pregnant with fate to this section as the sixth of next
November. If President Cleveland is then defeated, which God forbid, I
believe these States will be led through sorrows compared to which the
woes of reconstruction will be as the fading dews of morning to the
roaring flood. To dominate these States through the colored vote, with
such aid as federal patronage may debauch or federal power deter, and
thus through its chosen instruments perpetuate its rule, is in my
opinion the settled purpose of the Republican party. I am appalled when
I measure the passion in which this negro problem is judged by the
leaders of the party. Fifteen years ago Vice-President Wilson said—and I
honor his memory as that of a courageous man: “We shall not have
finished with the South until we force its people to change their
thought, and think as we think.” I repeat these words, for I heard them
when a boy, and they fell on my ears as the knell of my people’s
rights—“to change their thought, and make them think as we think.” Not
enough to have conquered our armies—to have decimated our ranks, to have
desolated our fields and reduced us to poverty, to have struck the
ballot from our hands and enfranchised our slaves—to have held us
prostrate under bayonets while the insolent mocked and thieves
plundered—but their very souls must be rifled of their faiths, their
sacred traditions cudgeled from memory, and their immortal minds beaten
into subjection until thought had lost its integrity, and we were forced
“to think as they think.” And just now General Sherman has said, and I
honor him as a soldier:
“The negro must be allowed to vote, and his vote must be
counted; otherwise, so sure as there is a God in heaven, you
will have another war, more cruel than the last, when the torch
and dagger will take the place of the muskets of well-ordered
battalions. Should the negro strike that blow, in seeming
justice, there will be millions to assist them.”
And this General took Johnston’s sword in surrender! He looked upon the
thin and ragged battalions in gray, that for four years had held his
teeming and heroic legions at bay. Facing them, he read their courage in
their depleted ranks, and gave them a soldier’s parole. When he found it
in his heart to taunt these heroes with this threat, why—careless as he
was twenty years ago with fire, he is even more careless now with his
words. If we could hope that this problem would be settled within our
lives I would appeal from neither madness nor unmanliness. But when I
know that, strive as I may, I must at last render this awful heritage
into the untried hands of my son, already dearer to me than my life, and
that he must in turn bequeath it unsolved to his children, I cry out
against the inhumanity that deepens its difficulties with this
incendiary threat, and beclouds its real issue with inflaming passion.
This problem is not only enduring, but it is widening. The exclusion of
the Chinese is the first step in the revolution that shall save liberty
and law and religion to this land, and in peace and order, not enforced
on the gallows or at the bayonet’s end, but proceeding from the heart of
an harmonious people, shall secure in the enjoyment of these rights, and
the control of this republic, the homogeneous people that established
and has maintained it. The next step will be taken when some brave
statesman, looking Demagogy in the face, shall move to call to the
stranger at our gates, “Who comes here?” admitting every man who seeks a
home, or honors our institutions, and whose habit and blood will run
with the native current; but excluding all who seek to plant anarchy or
to establish alien men or measures on our soil; and will then demand
that the standard of our citizenship be lifted and the right of
acquiring our suffrage be abridged. When that day comes, and God speed
its coming, the position of the South will be fully understood, and
everywhere approved. Until then, let us—giving the negro every right,
civil and political, measured in that fullness the strong should always
accord the weak—holding him in closer friendship and sympathy than he is
held by those who would crucify us for his sake—realizing that on his
prosperity ours depends—let us resolve that never by external pressure,
or internal division, shall he establish domination, directly or
indirectly, over that race that everywhere has maintained its supremacy.
Let this resolution be cast on the lines of equity and justice. Let it
be the pledge of honest, safe and impartial administration, and we shall
command the support of the colored race itself, more dependent than any
other on the bounty and protection of government. Let us be wise and
patient, and we shall secure through its acquiescence what otherwise we
should win through conflict, and hold in insecurity.
All this is no unkindness to the negro—but rather that he may be led in
equal rights and in peace to his uttermost good. Not in sectionalism—for
my heart beats true to the Union, to the glory of which your life and
heart is pledged. Not in disregard of the world’s opinion—for to render
back this problem in the world’s approval is the sum of my ambition, and
the height of human achievement. Not in reactionary spirit—but rather to
make clear that new and grander way up which the South is marching to
higher destiny, and on which I would not halt her for all the spoils
that have been gathered unto parties since Catiline conspired, and Cæsar
fought. Not in passion, my countrymen, but in reason—not in narrowness,
but in breadth—that we may solve this problem in calmness and in truth,
and lifting its shadows let perpetual sunshine pour down on two races,
walking together in peace and contentment. Then shall this problem have
proved our blessing, and the race that threatened our ruin work our
salvation as it fills our fields with the best peasantry the world has
ever seen. Then the South—putting behind her all the achievements of her
past—and in war and in peace they beggar eulogy—may stand upright among
the nations and challenge the judgment of man and the approval of God,
in having worked out in their sympathy, and in His guidance, this last
and surpassing miracle of human government.
What of the South’s industrial problem? When we remember that amazement
followed the payment by thirty-seven million Frenchmen of a billion
dollars indemnity to Germany, that the five million whites of the South
rendered to the torch and sword three billions of property—that thirty
million dollars a year, or six hundred million dollars in twenty years,
has been given willingly of our poverty as pensions for Northern
soldiers, the wonder is that we are here at all. There is a figure with
which history has dealt lightly, but that, standing pathetic and heroic
in the genesis of our new growth, has interested me greatly—our
soldier-farmer of ’65. What chance had he for the future as he wandered
amid his empty barns, his stock, labor, and implements gone—gathered up
the fragments of his wreck—urging kindly his borrowed mule—paying sixty
per cent. for all that he bought, and buying all on credit—his crop
mortgaged before it was planted—his children in want, his neighborhood
in chaos—working under new conditions and retrieving every error by a
costly year—plodding all day down the furrow, hopeless and adrift, save
when at night he went back to his broken home, where his wife, cheerful
even then, renewed his courage, while she ministered to him in loving
tenderness. Who would have thought as during those lonely and terrible
days he walked behind the plow, locking the sunshine in the glory of his
harvest, and spreading the showers and the verdure of his field—no
friend near save nature that smiled at his earnest touch, and God that
sent him the message of good cheer through the passing breeze and the
whispering leaves—that he would in twenty years, having carried these
burdens uncomplaining, make a crop of $800,000,000. Yet this he has
done, and from his bounty the South has rebuilded her cities, and
recouped her losses. While we exult in his splendid achievement, let us
take account of his standing.
Whence this enormous growth? For ten years the world has been at peace.
The pioneer has now replaced the soldier. Commerce has whitened new
seas, and the merchant has occupied new areas. Steam has made of the
earth a chess-board, on which men play for markets. Our western
wheat-grower competes in London with the Russian and the East Indian.
The Ohio wool grower watches the Australian shepherd, and the bleat of
the now historic sheep of Vermont is answered from the steppes of Asia.
The herds that emerge from the dust of your amazing prairies might hear
in their pauses the hoof-beats of antipodean herds marching to meet
them. Under Holland’s dykes, the cheese and butter makers fight American
dairies. The hen cackles around the world. California challenges
vine-clad France. The dark continent is disclosed through meshes of
light. There is competition everywhere. The husbandman, driven from his
market, balances price against starvation, and undercuts his rival. This
conflict often runs to panic, and profit vanishes. The Iowa farmer
burning his corn for fuel is not an unusual type.
Amid this universal conflict, where stands the South? While the producer
of everything we eat or wear, in every land, is fighting through glutted
markets for bare existence, what of the southern farmer? In his
industrial as in his political problem he is set apart—not in doubt, but
in assured independence. Cotton makes him king. Not the fleeces that
Jason sought can rival the richness of this plant, as it unfurls its
banners in our fields. It is gold from the instant it puts forth its
tiny shoot. The shower that whispers to it is heard around the world.
The trespass of a worm on its green leaf means more to England than the
advance of the Russians on her Asiatic outposts. When its fibre, current
in every bank, is marketed, it renders back to the South $350,000,000
every year. Its seed will yield $60,000,000 worth of oil to the press
and $40,000,000 in food for soil and beast, making the stupendous total
of $450,000,000 annual income from this crop. And now, under the
Tompkins patent, from its stalk—news paper is to be made at two cents
per pound. Edward Atkinson once said: “If New England could grow the
cotton plant, without lint, it would make her richest crop; if she held
monopoly of cotton lint and seed she would control the commerce of the
world.”
But is our monopoly, threatened from Egypt, India and Brazil, sure and
permanent? Let the record answer. In ’72 the American supply of cotton
was 3,241,000 bales,—foreign supply 3,036,000. We led our rivals by less
than 200,000 bales. This year the American supply is 8,000,000
bales—from foreign sources, 2,100,000, expressed in bales of four
hundred pounds each. In spite of new areas elsewhere, of fuller
experience, of better transportation, and unlimited money spent in
experiment, the supply of foreign cotton has decreased since ’72 nearly
1,000,000 bales, while that of the South has increased nearly 5,000,000.
Further than this: Since 1872, population in Europe has increased 13 per
cent., and cotton consumption in Europe has increased 50 per cent. Still
further: Since 1880 cotton consumption in Europe has increased 28 per
cent., wool only 4 per cent., and flax has decreased 11 per cent. As for
new areas, the uttermost missionary woos the heathen with a cotton shirt
in one hand and the Bible in the other, and no savage I believe has ever
been converted to one, without adopting the other. To summarize: Our
American fibre has increased its product nearly three-fold, while it has
seen the product of its rival decrease one-third. It has enlarged its
dominion in the old centers of population, supplanting flax and wool,
and it peeps from the satchel of every business and religious evangelist
that trots the globe. In three years the American crop has increased
1,400,000 bales, and yet there is less cotton in the world to-day than
at any time for twenty years. The dominion of our king is established;
this princely revenue assured, not for a year, but for all time. It is
the heritage that God gave us when he arched our skies, established our
mountains, girt us about with the ocean, tempered the sunshine, and
measured the rain—ours and our children’s forever.
Not alone in cotton, but in iron, does the South excel. The Hon. Mr.
Norton, who honors this platform with his presence, once said to me: “An
Englishman of the highest character predicted that the Atlantic will be
whitened within our lives with sails carrying American iron and coal to
England.” When he made that prediction the English miners were
exhausting the coal in long tunnels above which the ocean thundered.
Having ores and coal stored in exhaustless quantity, in such richness,
and in such adjustment, that iron can be made and manufacturing done
cheaper than elsewhere on this continent, is to now command, and at last
control, the world’s market for iron. The South now sells iron, through
Pittsburg, in New York. She has driven Scotch iron first from the
interior, and finally from American ports. Within our lives she will
cross the Atlantic, and fulfill the Englishman’s prophecy. In 1880 the
South made 212,000 tons of iron. In 1887, 845,000 tons. She is now
actually building, or has finished this year, furnaces that will produce
more than her entire product of last year. Birmingham alone will produce
more iron in 1889 than the entire South produced in 1887. Our coal
supply is exhaustless, Texas alone having 6000 square miles. In marble
and granite we have no rivals, as to quantity or quality. In lumber our
riches are even vaster. More than fifty per cent. of our entire area is
in forests, making the South the best timbered region of the world. We
have enough merchantable yellow pine to bring, in money,
$2,500,000,000—a sum the vastness of which can only be understood when I
say it nearly equaled the assessed value of the entire South, including
cities, forests, farms, mines, factories and personal property of every
description whatsoever. Back of this our forests of hard woods, and
measureless swamps of cypress and gum. Think of it. In cotton a
monopoly. In iron and coal establishing swift mastery. In granite and
marble developing equal advantage and resource. In yellow pine and hard
woods the world’s treasury. Surely the basis of the South’s wealth and
power is laid by the hand of the Almighty God, and its prosperity has
been established by divine law which work in eternal justice and not by
taxes levied on its neighbors through human statutes. Paying tribute for
fifty years that under artificial conditions other sections might reach
a prosperity impossible under natural laws, it has grown apace—and its
growth shall endure if its people are ruled by two maxims, that reach
deeper than legislative enactment, and the operation of which cannot be
limited by artificial restraint, and but little hastened by artificial
stimulus.
First. No one crop will make a people prosperous. If cotton held its
monopoly under conditions that made other crops impossible—or under
allurements that made other crops exceptional—its dominion would be
despotism.
Whenever the greed for a money crop unbalances the wisdom of husbandry,
the money crop is a curse. When it stimulates the general economy of the
farm, it is the profiting of farming. In an unprosperous strip of
Carolina, when asked the cause of their poverty, the people say,
“Tobacco—for it is our only crop.” In Lancaster, Pa., the richest
American county by the census, when asked the cause of their prosperity,
they say, “Tobacco—for it is the golden crown of a diversified
agriculture.” The soil that produces cotton invites the grains and
grasses, the orchard and the vine. Clover, corn, cotton, wheat, and
barley thrive in the same inclosure; the peach, the apple, the apricot,
and the Siberian crab in the same orchard. Herds and flocks graze ten
months every year in the meadows over which winter is but a passing
breath, and in which spring and autumn meet in summer’s heart.
Sugar-cane and oats, rice and potatoes, are extremes that come together
under our skies. To raise cotton and send its princely revenues to the
west for supplies, and to the east for usury, would be misfortune if
soil and climate forced such a curse. When both invite independence, to
remain in slavery is a crime. To mortgage our farms in Boston for money
with which to buy meat and bread from western cribs and smokehouses, is
folly unspeakable. I rejoice that Texas is less open to this charge than
others of the cotton States. With her eighty million bushels of grain,
and her sixteen million head of stock, she is rapidly learning that
diversified agriculture means prosperity. Indeed, the South is rapidly
learning the same lesson; and learned through years of debt and
dependence it will never be forgotten. The best thing Georgia has done
in twenty years was to raise her oat crop in one season from two million
to nine million bushels, without losing a bale of her cotton. It is more
for the South that she has increased her crop of corn—that best of
grains, of which Samuel J. Tilden said, “It will be the staple food of
the future, and men will be stronger and better when that day comes”—by
forty-three million bushels this year, than to have won a pivotal battle
in the late war. In this one item she keeps at home this year a sum
equal to the entire cotton crop of my State that last year went to the
west.
This is the road to prosperity. It is the way to manliness and
sturdiness of character. When every farmer in the South shall eat bread
from his own fields and meat from his own pastures, and disturbed by no
creditor, and enslaved by no debt, shall sit amid his teeming gardens,
and orchards, and vineyards, and dairies, and barnyards, pitching his
crops in his own wisdom, and growing them in independence, making cotton
his clean surplus, and selling it in his own time, and in his chosen
market, and not at a master’s bidding—getting his pay in cash and not in
a receipted mortgage that discharges his debt, but does not restore his
freedom—then shall be breaking the fullness of our day. Great is King
Cotton! But to lie at his feet while the usurer and grain-raiser bind us
in subjection, is to invite the contempt of man and the reproach of God.
But to stand up before him and amid the crops and smokehouses wrest from
him the magna charta of our independence, and to establish in his name
an ample and diversified agriculture, that shall honor him while it
enriches us—this is to carry us as far in the way of happiness and
independence as the farmer, working in the fullest wisdom, and in the
richest field, can carry any people.
But agriculture alone—no matter how rich or varied its resources—cannot
establish or maintain a people’s prosperity. There is a lesson in this
that Texas may learn with profit. No commonwealth ever came to greatness
by producing raw material. Less can this be possible in the future than
in the past. The Comstock lode is the richest spot on earth. And yet the
miners, gasping for breath fifteen hundred feet below the earth’s
surface, get bare existence out of the splendor they dig from the earth.
It goes to carry the commerce and uphold the industry of distant lands,
of which the men who produce it get but dim report. Hardly more is the
South profited when, stripping the harvest of her cotton fields, or
striking her teeming hills, or leveling her superb forests, she sends
the raw material to augment the wealth and power of distant communities.
Texas produces a million and a half bales of cotton, which yield her
$60,000,000. That cotton, woven into common goods, would add $75,000,000
to Texas’s income from this crop, and employ 220,000 operatives, who
would spend within her borders more than $30,000,000 in wages.
Massachusetts manufactures 575,000 bales of cotton, for which she pays
$31,000,000, and sells for $72,000,000, adding a value nearly equal to
Texas’s gross revenue from cotton, and yet Texas has a clean advantage
for manufacturing this cotton of one per cent a pound over
Massachusetts. The little village of Grand Rapids began manufacturing
furniture simply because it was set in a timber district. It is now a
great city and sells $10,000,000 worth of furniture every year, in
making which 125,000 men are employed, and a population of 40,000 people
supported. The best pine districts of the world are in eastern Texas.
With less competition and wider markets than Grand Rapids has, will she
ship her forests at prices that barely support the wood-chopper and
sawyer, to be returned in the making of which great cities are built or
maintained? When her farmers and herdsmen draw from her cities
$126,000,000 as the price of their annual produce, shall this enormous
wealth be scattered through distant shops and factories, leaving in the
hands of Texas no more than the sustenance, support, and the narrow
brokerage between buyer and seller? As one-crop farming cannot support
the country, neither can a resource of commercial exchange support a
city. Texas wants immigrants—she needs them—for if every human being in
Texas were placed at equi-distant points through the State no Texan
could hear the sound of a human voice in your broad areas.
So how can you best attract immigration? By furnishing work for the
artisan and mechanic if you meet the demand of your population for
cheaper and essential manufactured articles. One-half million workers
would be needed for this, and with their families would double the
population of your State. In these mechanics and their dependents
farmers would find a market for not only their staple crops but for the
truck that they now despise to raise or sell, but is at least the cream
of the farm. Worcester county, Mass., takes $720,000,000 of our material
and turns out $87,000,000 of products every year, paying $20,000,000 in
wages. The most prosperous section of this world is that known as the
Middle States of this republic. With agriculture and manufacturers in
the balance, and their shops and factories set amid rich and ample
acres, the result is such deep and diffuse prosperity as no other
section can show. Suppose those States had a monopoly of cotton and coal
so disposed as to command the world’s markets and the treasury of the
world’s timber, I suppose the mind is staggered in contemplating the
majesty of the wealth and power they would attain. What have they that
the South lacks?—and to her these things were added, and climate, ampler
acres and rich soil. It is a curious fact that three-fourths of the
population and manufacturing wealth of this country is comprised in a
narrow strip between Iowa and Massachusetts, comprising less than
one-sixth of our territory, and that this strip is distant from the
source of raw materials on which its growth is based, of hard climate
and in a large part of sterile soil. Much of this forced and unnatural
development is due to slavery, which for a century fenced enterprise and
capital out of the South. Mr. Thomas, who in the Lehigh Valley owned a
furnace in 1845 that set that pattern for iron-making in America, had at
that time bought mines and forest where Birmingham now stands. Slavery
forced him away. He settled in Pennsylvania. I have wondered what would
have happened if that one man had opened his iron mines in Alabama and
set his furnaces there at that time. I know what is going to happen
since he has been forced to come to Birmingham and put up two furnaces
nearly forty years after his survey.
Another cause that has prospered New England and the Middle States while
the South languished, is the system of tariff taxes levied on the
unmixed agriculture of these States for the protection of industries to
our neighbors to the North, a system on which the Hon. Roger Q.
Mills—that lion of the tribe of Judah—has at last laid his mighty paw
and under the indignant touch of which it trembles to its center. That
system is to be revised and its duties reduced, as we all agree it
should be, though I should say in perfect frankness I do not agree with
Mr. Mills in it. Let us hope this will be done with care and industrious
patience. Whether it stands or falls, the South has entered the
industrial list to partake of his bounty if it stands, and if it falls
to rely on the favor with which nature has endowed her, and from this
immutable advantage to fill her own markets and then have a talk with
the world at large.
With amazing rapidity she has moved away from the one-crop idea that was
once her curse. In 1880 she was esteemed prosperous. Since that time she
has added 393,000,000 bushels to her grain crops, and 182,000,000 head
to her live stock. This has not lost one bale of her cotton crop, which,
on the contrary, has increased nearly 200,000 bales. With equal
swiftness has she moved away from the folly of shipping out her ore at
$2 a ton and buying it back in implements from $20 to $100 per ton; her
cotton at 10 cents a pound and buying it back in cloth at 20 to 80 cents
per pound; her timber at $8 per thousand and buying it back in furniture
at ten to twenty times as much. In the past eight years $250,000,000
have been invested in new shops and factories in her States; 225,000
artisans are now working that eight years ago were idle or worked
elsewhere, and these added $227,000,000 to the value of her raw
material—more than half the value of her cotton. Add to this the value
of her increased grain crops and stock, and in the past eight years she
has grown in her fields or created in her shops manufactures more than
the value of her cotton crop. The incoming tide has begun to rise. Every
train brings manufacturers from the East and West seeking to establish
themselves or their sons near the raw material and in this growing
market. Let the fullness of the tide roll in.
It will not exhaust our materials, nor shall we glut our markets. When
the growing demand of our southern market, feeding on its own growth, is
met, we shall find new markets for the South. Under our new condition
many indirect laws of commerce shall be straightened. We buy from Brazil
$50,000,000 worth of goods, and sell her $8,500,000. England buys only
$29,000,000, and sells her $35,000,000. Of $65,000,000 in cotton goods
bought by Central and South America, over $50,000,000 went to England.
Of $331,000,000 sent abroad by the southern half of our hemisphere,
England secures over half, although we buy from that section nearly
twice as much as England. Our neighbors to the south need nearly every
article we make; we need nearly everything they produce. Less than 2,500
miles of road must be built to bind by rail the two American continents.
When this is done, and even before, we shall find exhaustless markets to
the South. Texas shall command, as she stands in the van of this new
movement, its richest rewards.
The South, under the rapid diversification of crops and diversification
of industries, is thrilling with new life. As this new prosperity comes
to us, it will bring no sweeter thought to me, and to you, my
countrymen, I am sure, than that it adds not only to the comfort and
happiness of our neighbors, but that it makes broader the glory and
deeper the majesty, and more enduring the strength, of the Union which
reigns supreme in our hearts. In this republic of ours is lodged the
hope of free government on earth. Here God has rested the ark of his
covenant with the sons of men. Let us—once estranged and thereby closer
bound,—let us soar above all provincial pride and find our deeper
inspirations in gathering the fullest sheaves into the harvest and
standing the staunchest and most devoted of its sons as it lights the
path and makes clear the way through which all the people of this earth
shall come in God’s appointed time.
A few words for the young men of Texas. I am glad that I can speak to
them at all. Men, especially young men, look back for their inspiration
to what is best in their traditions. Thermopylæ cast Spartan sentiments
in heroic mould and sustained Spartan arms for more than a century.
Thermopylæ had survivors to tell the story of its defeat. The Alamo had
none. Though voiceless it shall speak from its dumb walls. Liberty cried
out to Texas, as God called from the clouds unto Moses. Bowie and
Fanning, though dead still live. Their voices rang above the din of
Goliad and the glory of San Jacinto, and they marched with the Texas
veterans who rejoiced at the birth of Texas independence. It is the
spirit of the Alamo that moved above the Texas soldiers as they charged
like demigods through a thousand battle-fields, and it is the spirit of
the Alamo that whispers from their graves held in every State of the
Union, ennobling their dust, their soil, that was crimsoned with their
blood.
In this spirit of this inspiration and in the thrill of the amazing
growth that surrounds you, my young friends, it will be strange if the
young men of Texas do not carry the lone star into the heart of the
struggle. The South needs her sons to-day more than when she summoned
them to the forum to maintain her political supremacy, more than when
the bugle called them to the field to defend issues put to the
arbitrament of the sword. Her old body is instinct with appeal calling
on us to come and give her fuller independence than she has ever sought
in field or forum. It is ours to show that as she prospered with slaves
she shall prosper still more with freemen; ours to see that from the
lists she entered in poverty she shall emerge in prosperity; ours to
carry the transcending traditions of the old South from which none of us
can in honor or in reverence depart, unstained and unbroken into the
new. Shall we fail? Shall the blood of the old South—the best strain
that ever uplifted human endeavor—that ran like water at duty’s call and
never stained where it touched—shall this blood that pours into our
veins through a century luminous with achievement, for the first time
falter and be driven back from irresolute heat, when the old South, that
left us a better heritage in manliness and courage than in broad and
rich acres, calls us to settle problems? A soldier lay wounded on a
hard-fought field, the roar of the battle had died away, and he rested
in the deadly stillness of its aftermath. Not a sound was heard as he
lay there, sorely smitten and speechless, but the shriek of wounded and
the sigh of the dying soul, as it escaped from the tumult of earth into
the unspeakable peace of the stars. Off over the field flickered the
lanterns of the surgeons with the litter bearers, searching that they
might take away those whose lives could be saved and leave in sorrow
those who were doomed to die with pleading eyes through the darkness.
This poor soldier watched, unable to turn or speak as the lanterns grew
near. At last the light flashed in his face, and the surgeon, with
kindly face, bent over him, hesitated a moment, shook his head, and was
gone, leaving the poor fellow alone with death. He watched in patient
agony as they went on from one part of the field to another. As they
came back the surgeon bent over him again. “I believe if this poor
fellow lives to sundown to-morrow he will get well.” And again leaving
him, not to death but with hope; all night long these words fell into
his heart as the dews fell from the stars upon his lips, “if he but
lives till sundown, he will get well.” He turned his weary head to the
east and watched for the coming sun. At last the stars went out, the
east trembled with radiance, and the sun, slowly lifting above the
horizon, tinged his pallid face with flame. He watched it inch by inch
as it climbed slowly up the heavens. He thought of life, its hopes and
ambitions, its sweetness and its raptures, and he fortified his soul
against despair until the sun had reached high noon. It sloped down its
slow descent, and his life was ebbing away and his heart was faltering,
and he needed stronger stimulants to make him stand the struggle until
the end of the day had come. He thought of his far-off home, the blessed
house resting in tranquil peace with the roses climbing to its door, and
the trees whispering to its windows, and dozing in the sunshine, the
orchard and the little brook running like a silver thread through the
forest.
“If I live till sundown I will see it again. I will walk down the shady
lane: I will open the battered gate, and the mocking-bird shall call to
me from the orchard, and I will drink again at the old mossy spring.”
And he thought of the wife who had come from the neighboring farmhouse
and put her hand shyly in his, and brought sweetness to his life and
light to his home.
“If I live till sundown I shall look once more into her deep and loving
eyes and press her brown head once more to my aching breast.”
And he thought of the old father, patient in prayer, bending lower and
lower every day under his load of sorrow and old age.
“If I but live till sundown I shall see him again and wind my strong arm
about his feeble body, and his hands shall rest upon my head while the
unspeakable healing of his blessing falls into my heart.”
And he thought of the little children that clambered on his knees and
tangled their little hands into his heart-strings, making to him such
music as the world shall not equal or heaven surpass.
“If I live till sundown they shall again find my parched lips with their
warm mouths, and their little fingers shall run once more over my face.”
And he then thought of his old mother, who gathered these children about
her and breathed her old heart afresh in their brightness and attuned
her old lips anew to their prattle, that she might live till her big boy
came home.
“If I live till sundown I will see her again, and I will rest my head at
my old place on her knees, and weep away all memory of this desolate
night.” And the Son of God, who had died for men, bending from the
stars, put the hand that had been nailed to the cross on ebbing life and
held on the staunch until the sun went down and the stars came out, and
shone down in the brave man’s heart and blurred in his glistening eyes,
and the lanterns of the surgeons came and he was taken from death to
life.
The world is a battle-field strewn with the wrecks of government and
institutions, of theories and of faiths that have gone down in the
ravage of years. On this field lies the South, sown with her problems.
Upon the field swings the lanterns of God. Amid the carnage walks the
Great Physician. Over the South he bends. “If ye but live until
to-morrow’s sundown ye shall endure, my countrymen.” Let us for her sake
turn our faces to the east and watch as the soldier watched for the
coming sun. Let us staunch her wounds and hold steadfast. The sun mounts
the skies. As it descends to us, minister to her and stand constant at
her side for the sake of our children, and of generations unborn that
shall suffer if she fails. And when the sun has gone down and the day of
her probation has ended, and the stars have rallied her heart, the
lanterns shall be swung over the field and the Great Physician shall
lead her up, from trouble into content, from suffering into peace, from
death to life. Let every man here pledge himself in this high and ardent
hour, as I pledge myself and the boy that shall follow me; every man
himself and his son, hand to hand and heart to heart, that in death and
earnest loyalty, in patient painstaking and care, he shall watch her
interest, advance her fortune, defend her fame and guard her honor as
long as life shall last. Every man in the sound of my voice, under the
deeper consecration he offers to the Union, will consecrate himself to
the South. Have no ambition but to be first at her feet and last at her
service. No hope but, after a long life of devotion, to sink to sleep in
her bosom, and as a little child sleeps at his mother’s breast and rests
untroubled in the light of her smile.
With such consecrated service, what could we not accomplish; what riches
we should gather for her; what glory and prosperity we should render to
the Union; what blessings we should gather unto the universal harvest of
humanity. As I think of it, a vision of surpassing beauty unfolds to my
eyes. I see a South, the home of fifty millions of people, who rise up
every day to call from blessed cities, vast hives of industry and of
thrift; her country-sides the treasures from which their resources are
drawn; her streams vocal with whirring spindles; her valleys tranquil in
the white and gold of the harvest; her mountains showering down the
music of bells, as her slow-moving flocks and herds go forth from their
folds; her rulers honest and her people loving, and her homes happy and
their hearthstones bright, and their waters still, and their pastures
green, and her conscience clear; her wealth diffused and poor-houses
empty, her churches earnest and all creeds lost in the gospel. Peace and
sobriety walking hand in hand through her borders; honor in her homes;
uprightness in her midst; plenty in her fields; straight and simple
faith in the hearts of her sons and daughters; her two races walking
together in peace and contentment; sunshine everywhere and all the time,
and night falling on her generally as from the wings of the unseen dove.
All this, my country, and more can we do for you. As I look the vision
grows, the splendor deepens, the horizon falls back, the skies open
their everlasting gates, and the glory of the Almighty God streams
through as He looks down on His people who have given themselves unto
Him and leads them from one triumph to another until they have reached a
glory unspeaking, and the whirling stars, as in their courses through
Arcturus they run to the milky way, shall not look down on a better
people or happier land.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
AT THE AUGUSTA EXPOSITION.
-------
IN NOVEMBER, 1887, AT THE AUGUSTA EXPOSITION, MR. GRADY DELIVERED THE
FOLLOWING ADDRESS:
“When my eyes for the last time behold the sun in the heavens,
may they rest upon the glorious ensign of this republic, still
full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in original
lustre, not a star obscured or a stripe effaced, but everywhere
blazing in characters of living light all over its ample folds
as they wave over land and sea, and in every wind under heaven,
that sentiment dear to every American heart, liberty and union
now and forever, one and inseparable!”
These words of Daniel Webster, whose brain was the temple of wisdom and
whose soul the temple of liberty, inspire my heart as I speak to you
to-day.
Ladies and gentlemen: This day is auspicious. Set apart by governor and
president for universal thanksgiving, our grateful hearts confirm the
consecration. Though we have not been permitted to parade our democratic
roosters in jubilant print, we may now lead them from their innocuous
desuetude, and making them the basis of this day’s feast, gather about
them a company that in cordial grace shall be excelled by none—not even
that which invests the republican turkey, whose steaming thighs shall be
slipped to-day in Indianapolis, and attacking them with an appetite that
comes from abounding health, consign them to that digestion that waits
on a conscience void of offense.
We give thanks to-day that the Lord God Almighty, having led us from
desolation into plenty, from poverty into substance, from passion into
reason, and from estrangement into love—having brought the harvests from
the ashes, and raised us homes from our ruins, and touched our scarred
land all over with beauty and with peace—permits us to assemble here
to-day and rejoice amid the garnered heaps of our treasure. Your
visitors give thanks because, coming to a city that from deep disaster
has risen with energy and courage unequaled, and witnessing an
exposition that in the sweep of its mighty arms and the splendor of its
gathered riches surpasses all we have attempted, they find all sense of
rivalry blotted out in wondering admiration, and from hearts that know
not envy or criticism, bid you God-speed to even higher achievement, and
to full and swift harvesting of the prosperity to gain which you have
builded so bravely and so wisely.
I am thankful, if you will pardon this personal digression, because I
now meet face to face, and can render service to a people whose generous
words on a late occasion touched my heart more deeply than I shall
attempt here to express. I simply say to you now, and I would that my
voice could reach every man in Georgia to whom I am in like indebted,
that your kindness left no room for resentment or regret; but a heart
filled with gratitude and love steadier in its resolution to deserve the
approval you so unstintingly gave, and more deeply consecrated to the
service of the people, that in giving me their love have given all that
I have dared to hope for, and more than I had dared to ask. I know not
what the future may hold for the life that recent events have jostled
from its accustomed path. It would be affectation to say that I am
careless—for, in touching it with your loving confidence, you have
kindled inspirations that cherished without guile, may be confessed in
frankness. But if it be given to man to read the human heart, and plumb
the quicksands of human ambition, I know that I speak the truth when I
say that if ever I hold in my grasp any honor, in the winning or wearing
of which my State is disadvantaged, and my hand refuses to surrender it,
I pray God that in remembrance of this hour He will strike it from me
forever; and if my ambitious heart rebels, that He will lead it, even
through sorrow and humiliation, to know that unworthy laurels will fade
on the brow, and that no honor can ennoble, no triumph advance, and no
victory satisfy that is not won and worn in the weal of the people and
the prosperity of the State.
It gives us pleasure to meet to-day our neighbors from Carolina, and by
the banks of this river, more bond than boundary, give them cordial
welcome to Georgia. The people of these States, sir, are ancient and
honorable friends. When the infant colony that settled Georgia landed
from its long voyage it was the hands of Carolinians that helped them
ashore, and Carolina’s hospitality that gave them food and shelter. A
banquet was served at Beaufort, the details of which proved our
ancestors to have been doughty trenchermen, and at which we are not
surprised to learn a goodly quantity of most excellent wine was served,
nor to learn—for scribes extenuated then as now—that, though the affair
was conducted in the most agreeable manner, no one became intoxicated.
When the Georgians took up their march to Savannah they carried with
them herds from the Carolinians’ folds, and food from their granaries,
and an offer from Mr. Whitaker—blessed be his memory!—of a silver spoon
for the first male child born on Georgia soil, the first instance, I
believe, of a bounty offered or protection guaranteed to an infant
industry on this continent. When they settled, it was Carolina gentlemen
with their servants that builded the huts and sheltered them, and
Carolina captains with their picket men that guarded them from the
Indians. As from your slender and pitiful store you gave then
bountifully to us, we invite you to-day to share with us our plenty and
rejoice with us that what you planted in neighborly kindness hath grown
into such greatness.
I am stirred with the profoundest emotion when I reflect upon what the
peoples of these two States have endured together. Shoulder to shoulder
they have fought through two revolutions. Side by side they have fallen
on the field of battle, and, brothers even in death, have rested in
common graves. Hand clasped in hand, they enjoyed victory together, and
together reaped in honor and dignity the fruits of their triumph. Heart
locked in heart, they have stood undaunted in the desolation of defeat
and, fortified by unfailing comradeship, have wrought gladness and peace
from the tumult and bitterness of despair. Of them it may be truly said,
they have known no rivalry save that emulation which inspires each, and
embitters neither. If we match your Calhoun, one of that trinity that
hath most been and shall not be equaled in political record, with our
Stephens, who was as acute in expounding, and as devoted in defending
the constitution as he; your Hayne, who maintained himself valiantly
against the great mastodon in American politics, with our Hill (would
that he might be given back to us to-day), who took the ablest debater
of the age by the throat and shook him until his eager tongue was
stilled and the lips that had slandered the South were livid in shame
and confusion; if against McDuffie, eloquent and immortal tribune, we
put our Toombs, the Mirabeau of his day, surpassing the Frenchman in
eloquence, and stainless of his crimes; if against Legare, both scholar
and statesman, we put our Wilde, not surpassed as either; if we proffer
Lanier, Barick and Harris, when the praises of Sims, and Hayne, and
Timrod are sung, it is only because we rejoice in the strength of each
which has honored both, and glorified our great republic. Let the glory
of our past history incite us to the future; let the trials we have
endured nerve us for trials yet to come, and let Georgia and Carolina,
that in prosperity united, in adversity have not been divided, strike
hands here to-day in a new compact that shall hold them bound together
in comradeship and love as long as the Savannah, laying its lips on the
cheeks of either, runs down to the sea.
The South is now confronted by two dangers.
First, that by remaining solid it will force a permanent sectional
alignment, under which being in minority it has nothing to gain, and
everything to lose.
Second, that by dividing it will debauch its political system, destroy
the defenses of its social integrity, and put the balance of power in
the hands of an ignorant and dangerous class.
Let us discuss these dangers for a moment.
As to the first. I do not doubt that every day the South remains solid,
the drift toward a solid North is deepening. The South is solid now in a
sense not dreamed of in ante-bellum days. Then we divided on every
question save one, that of preserving equal representation in the
Senate. Clay championed the protective tariff. Jackson flew at Calhoun’s
throat when Carolina threatened to nullify. Polk, of Tennessee, was made
president over Clay, of Kentucky. In 1852, Pierce received the vote of
twenty-seven States out of thirty-one, though this period marked the
height of slavery disturbance. The South was solid then on one thing
alone. On all other questions national suffrage knew no sectional lines.
To-day the South is a mass of States merged into one; every issue fused
in the ardor of one great question, and our 153 electoral votes hurled
as a rifle-ball into the electoral college. The tendency of this must be
to solidify the North. Indeed, this is already being done. Seymour and
Blair, in 1868, on a platform declaring the amendments null and void,
were beaten in the North by Grant, the hero of the war, by less than
100,000 votes. Mr. Harrison, twenty years later, beat Cleveland with a
flawless record and a careful platform, over 450,000 votes in the
northern States. The solid South invites the solid North. From this
status the South has little to hope. The North is already in the
majority. More than five million immigrants have poured into her States
in the past ten years, and will be declared in the next census. Four new
States will give her eight new senators and twelve electoral votes. In
the South but one State has kept pace with the West—and that one, Texas,
has largely gained at the expense of the Atlantic States. The South had
thirty-eight per cent. of the electoral vote in 1880. It is doubtful if
she will have over twenty-five per cent. in 1890. To remain solid,
therefore, is to incur the danger of being placed in perpetual minority,
and practically shut out from participation in the government, into
which Georgia and Massachusetts came as equals—that was fashioned in
their common wisdom, defended in their common blood, and bought of their
common treasure.
But what of the other danger? Can we risk that to avoid the first? I am
sure we cannot. The very worst thing that could happen to the South is
to have her white vote divided into factions, and each faction bidding
for the negro who holds the balance of power. What is this negro vote?
In every southern State it is considerable, and I fear it is increasing.
It is alien, being separated by racial differences that are deep and
permanent. It is ignorant—easily deluded or betrayed. It is
impulsive—lashed by a word into violence. It is purchasable, having the
incentive of poverty and cupidity, and the restraint of neither pride
nor conviction. It can never be merged through logical or orderly
currents into either of two parties, if two should present themselves.
We cannot be rid of it. There it is, a vast mass of impulsive, ignorant
and purchasable votes. With no factions between which to swing it has no
play or dislocation; but thrown from one faction to another it is the
loosed cannon on the storm-tossed ship. There is no community that would
deliberately tempt this danger; no social or political fabric that could
stand its strain. The Tweed ring, backed by a similar and less
irresponsible following than a shrewd clique could rally and control in
every southern State, and daring less of plunder and insolence than that
following would sanction or support, blotted out party lines in New
York, and made its intelligence and integrity as solid as the South ever
was. Party lines were promptly recast because New York had to deal with
the vicious, who once punished may be trusted to sulk in quiet while
their wounds heal. We deal with the ignorant, that scourged from power
to-day, may be deluded to-morrow into assaulting the very position from
which they have been lashed. Never did robbers find followers more to
their mind than the emancipated slaves of reconstruction days. Ignorant
and confiding, they could be committed to any excess, led to any
outrage. Deep as was the degradation to which these sovereign States
were carried, and heavy as is the burden they left on this impoverished
people, it was only when the white race, rallying from the graves of its
dead and the ashes of its homes, closed its decimated ranks, and
fronting federal bayonets, and defying federal power, stood like a stone
wall before the uttermost temples of its liberty and credit, and the
hideous drama closed, that the miserable assault was checked.
Shall those ranks be broken while the danger still threatens?
Let the whites divide, what happens? Here is this dangerous and alien
influence that holds the balance of power. It cannot be won by argument,
for it is without information, understanding or traditions—hence without
convictions. It must be bought by race privileges granted as such, or by
money paid outright. Let us follow this in its twofold aspect. One
faction gives the negro certain privileges and wins. The other offers
more. The first bids under, and so the sickening work goes on until the
barriers that now protect the social integrity and peace of both races
are swept away. The negro gains nothing, for he secures these spoils and
privileges not by deserving them, or qualifying himself for them, but as
the plunder of an irritating struggle in which he loses that largeness
of sympathy and tolerance that is at last essential to his well-being
and advancement. The other aspect is as bad. One side puts up five
thousand dollars for the purchase of the negro vote and wins. The other,
declining at first to corrupt the suffrage, but realizing at last that
the administration on which his life and property depends is at stake,
doubles this, and so the debauching deepens until at last such enormous
sums are spent that they must be recouped from the public treasuries.
Good men disgusted go to the rear. The shrewd and unscrupulous are put
to the front, and the negro, carrying with him the balance of power,
falls at last into the grasp of the faction which is most cunning and
conscienceless. National parties, finding here their cheapest market and
widest field, will pour millions into the South, adding to the
corruption funds of municipal and State factions until the ballot-box
will be hopelessly debauched, all the approaches thereto corrupt, and
all the results therefrom tainted.
I understand perfectly that this is not the largest view of this
question to take. The larger interests of this section and of the Union
do not rest here. I deplore this fact. I would that the South, fettered
by no circumstances and embarrassed by no problem, could take her place
by the side of her sister States, making alliance as her interest or
patriotism suggested.
Let me say here that I yield to no man in my love for this Union. I was
taught from my cradle to love it, and my father, loving it to the last,
nevertheless gave his life for Georgia when she asked it at his hands.
Loving the Union as he did, yet would I do unto Georgia even as he did.
I said once in New York, and I repeat it here, honoring his memory as I
do nothing on this earth, I still thank God that the American conflict
was adjudged by higher wisdom than his or mine, that the honest purposes
of the South were crossed, her brave armies beaten, and the American
Union saved from the storm of war. I love this Union because I am an
American citizen. I love it because it stands in the light while other
nations are groping in the dark. I love it because here, in this
republic of a homogeneous people, must be worked out the great problems
that perplex the world and established the axioms that must uplift and
regenerate humanity. I love it because it is my country, and my State
stood by when its flag was once unfurled, and uplifted her stainless
sword, and pledged “her life, her property and her sacred honor,” and
when the last star glittered from the silken folds, and with her
precious blood wrote her loyalty in its crimson bars. I love it, because
I know that its flag, fluttering from the misty heights of the future,
followed by a devoted people once estranged and thereby closer bound,
shall blaze out the way, and make clear the path up which all the
nations of the earth shall come in God’s appointed time.
I know the ideal status is that every State should vote without regard
to sectional lines. The reconciliation of the people will never be
complete until Iowa and Georgia, Texas and Massachusetts may stand side
by side without surprise. I would to God that status could be reached!
If any man can define a path on which the whites of the South, though
divided, can walk in honor and peace, I shall take that path, though I
walk down it alone—for at the end of that path, and nowhere else, lies
the full emancipation of my section and the full restoration of this
Union.
But it cannot be. When the negro was enfranchised, the South was
condemned to solidity as surely as self-preservation is the first law of
nature. A State here or there may drift away, but it will come back
assuredly—and come through such travail, and bearing such burden, as
neither war nor pestilence can bring. This problem is not of our
seeking. It was thrust upon us not in the orderly unfolding of a
preordained plan, but in hot impulse and passion, against the judgment
of the world and the lessons of history, and to the peril of popular
government, which rests at last on a pure and unsullied suffrage as a
building rests on its cornerstone. If it be urged that it was the
inexorable result of our course in 1860, we reply that we took that
course in deliberation, maintained it in sincerity, sealed it with the
blood of our best and bravest—and we accept without complaint, and abide
in dignity, its direct and ultimate results, and shall hold it to be, in
spite of defeat, forever honorable and sacred. This much I add. No king
that ever sat on a throne, though backed by autocratic power, would have
dared to subject his kingdom to the strain, and his people to the burden
that the North put on the prostrate, impoverished, and helpless South
when it enfranchised the body of our late slaves. We would not undo this
if we could. We know that this step, though taken in haste, shall never
be retraced. Posterity will judge of the wisdom and patriotism in which
it was ordered, and the order and equity in which it was worked out.
To that judgment we appeal with confidence. From that judgment Mr.
Blaine has already appealed by shrewdly urging in his written history,
that the North did not intend to enfranchise the negro, but was forced
to do it by the stubborn attitude of the South. Be that as it may, it is
our problem now, and with resolute hands and unfailing hearts we must
carry it to the end. It dominates, and will dominate, all other issues
with us. Political spoils are not to be considered. The administration
of our affairs is secondary, and patronage is less. Economic issues are
as naught, and even great moral reforms must wait on the settlement of
this question. To quarrel over other issues while this is impending is
to imitate the mother quail that thrums the leaves afar from her nest,
or recall the finesse of the Spartan boy who smiled in his mother’s face
while he hid the fox that was gnawing at his vitals.
What then is the duty of the South? Simply this. To maintain the
political as well as the social integrity of her white race, and to
appeal to the world for patience and justice. Let us show that it is not
sectional prejudice, but a sectional problem that keeps us compacted;
that it is not the hope of dominion or power, but an abiding
necessity—not spoils or patronage, but plain self-preservation that
holds the white race together in the South. Let us make this so plain
that a community anywhere, searching its own heart, would say: “The
necessity that binds our brothers in the South would bind us as closely
were the necessity here.” Let us invite immigrants and meet them with
such cordial welcome that they will abide with us in brotherhood, and so
enlarge the body of intelligence and integrity, that divided it may
carry the burden of ignorance without danger. Let us be loyal to the
Union, and not only loyal but loving. Let the republic know that in
peace it hath nowhere better citizens, nor in war braver soldiers, than
in these States. Though set apart by this problem which God permits to
rest upon us, and which therefore is right, let us garner our sheaves
gladly into the harvest of the Union, and find joy in our work and
progress, because it makes broader the glory and deeper the majesty of
this republic that is cemented with our blood. Let us love the flag that
waved over Marion and Jasper, that waves over us, and which when we are
gathered to our fathers shall be a guarantee of liberty and prosperity
to our children, and our children’s children, and know that what we do
in honor shall deepen, and what we do in dishonor shall dim, the luster
of its fixed and glittering stars.
As for the negro, let us impress upon him what he already knows, that
his best friends are the people among whom he lives, whose interests are
one with his, and whose prosperity depends on his perfect contentment.
Let us give him his uttermost rights, and measure out justice to him in
that fullness the strong should always give to the weak. Let us educate
him that he may be a better, a broader, and more enlightened man. Let us
lead him in steadfast ways of citizenship, that he may not longer be the
sport of the thoughtless, and the prey of the unscrupulous. Let us
inspire him to follow the example of the worthy and upright of his race,
who may be found in every community, and who increase steadily in
numbers and influence. Let us strike hands with him as friends—and as in
slavery we led him to heights which his race in Africa had never
reached, so in freedom let us lead him to a prosperity of which his
friends in the North have not dreamed. Let us make him know that he,
depending more than any other on the protection and bounty of
government, shall find in alliance with the best elements of the whites
the pledge of safe and impartial administration. And let us remember
this—that whatever wrong we put on him shall return to punish us.
Whatever we take from him in violence, that is unworthy and shall not
endure. What we steal from him in fraud, that is worse. But what we win
from him in sympathy and affection, what we gain in his confiding
alliance and confirm in his awakening judgment, that is precious and
shall endure—and out of it shall come healing and peace.
What is the attitude of the North on this issue? Two propositions appear
to be universally declared by the Republicans. First, that the negro
vote of the South is suppressed by violence, or miscounted by fraud.
Second, that it shall be freely cast and fairly counted. While
Republicans agree on these declarations, there are those who hold them
sincerely, but would be glad to see the first disapproved, and the
second thereby wiped out—and those who hold them in malignity, and who
will maintain the first that they may justify the storm that lies hid in
the second.
Let us send to-day a few words to the fair-minded Republicans of the
North. Here is a fundamental assertion—the negroes of the South can
never be kept in antagonism with their white neighbors—for the intimacy
and friendliness of the relation forbids. This friendliness, the most
important factor of the problem—the saving factor now as always—the
North has never, and it appears will never, take account of. It explains
that otherwise inexplicable thing—the fidelity and loyalty of the negro
during the war to the women and children left in his care. Had Uncle
Tom’s Cabin portrayed the habit rather than the exception of slavery,
the return of the Confederate armies could not have stayed the horrors
of arson and murder their departure would have invited. Instead of that,
witness the miracle of the slave in loyalty closing the fetters about
his own limbs—maintaining the families of those who fought against his
freedom—and at night on the far-off battle-field searching among the
carnage for his young master, that he might lift the dying head to his
humble breast and with rough hands wipe the blood away, and bend his
tender ear to catch the last words for the old ones at home, wrestling
meanwhile in agony and love, that in vicarious sacrifice he would have
laid down his life in his master’s stead. This friendliness, thank God,
has survived the lapse of years, the interruption of factions, and the
violence of campaigns, in which the bayonet fortified, and the drum-beat
inspired. Though unsuspected in slavery, it explains the miracle of
’64—though not yet confessed, it must explain the miracle of 1888.
Can a Northern man dealing with casual servants, querulous, sensitive,
and lodged for a day in a sphere they resent, understand the close
relations of the races of the South? Can he comprehend the open-hearted,
sympathetic negro, contented in his place, full of gossip and
comradeship, the companion of the hunt, the frolic, the furrow, and the
home, standing in kindly dependence that is the habit of his blood, and
lifting not his eyes beyond the narrow horizon that shuts him in with
his neighbors? This relation may be interrupted, but permanent
estrangement can never come between these two races. It is upon this
that the South depends. By fair dealing and by sympathy to deepen this
friendship and add thereto the moral effect of the better elements
compacted, with the wealth and intelligence and influence lodged
therein—it is this upon which the South has relied for years, and upon
which she will rest in future.
Against this no outside power can prevail. That there has been violence
is admitted. There has also been brutality in the North. But I do not
believe there was a negro voter in the South kept away from the polls by
fear of violence in the late election. I believe there were fewer votes
miscounted in the South than in the North. Even in those localities
where violence once occurred, wiser counsels have prevailed, and
reliance is placed on those higher and legitimate and inexorable methods
by which the superior race always dominates, and by which intelligence
and integrity always resist the domination of ignorance and corruption.
If the honest Republicans of the North permit a scheme of federal
supervision, based on the assumption of intimidated voters and a false
count, they will blunder from the start, for, beginning in error, they
will end in worse. This whole matter should be left now with the people,
with whom it must be left at last—that people most interested in its
honorable settlement. External pressure but irritates and delays. The
South has voluntarily laid down the certainty of power which dividing
her States would bring, that she might solve this problem in the
deliberation and the calmness it demands. She turns away from spoils,
knowing that to struggle for them would bring irritation to endanger
greater things. She postpones reforms and surrenders economic
convictions, that unembarrassed she may deal with this great issue. And
she pledges her sacred honor—by all that she has won, and all that she
has suffered—that she will settle this problem in such full and exact
justice as the finite mind can measure, or finite hands administer. On
this pledge she asks the patience and waiting judgment of the world, and
especially of the people—her brothers and her kindred—that in passion
forced this problem into the keeping of her helpless hands.
Shall she have it?
Let us see. Was there a pistol shot through the South on election day?
Was there a riot? Was there anything to equal the disturbance and
arrests in President Harrison’s own city? If so, diligent search has not
found it. Where then was the vote suppressed through violence? In the
12,000 election precincts of the South, where was a ballot-box rifled,
or a registry list altered? Thirteen Republican congressmen were
elected, many of them by majorities so slender that the vote of a single
precinct would have changed the result. In West Virginia, with its wild
and lawless districts, the governorship hangs on less than three hundred
votes, and this very day the governor of Tennessee and his cabinet are
passing on a legal question in the casting of twenty-three votes that
elects or defeats a congressman. In West Virginia and in Tennessee the
law will be applied as impartially and the official vote held as sacred
as in New York or Ohio. Where, then, is the wholesale fraud of which
complaint is made?
In the face of this showing, let me quote from an editorial in the
_Chicago Tribune_, one of the most powerful and a usually conservative
journal, charging that the negro vote is suppressed and miscounted. It
says:
“The trouble is, the blacks will not fight for themselves. White
men, or Indians, situated as the negroes, would have made the
rivers of the South run red with blood before they would submit
to the usurpations and wrongs with which the black passively
endure. Oppressed by generations of slavery, the negroes are
non-combatants. They will not shoot and burn for their rights.”
Mark the unspeakable infamy of this suggestion. The “trouble” is that
the negroes will not rise and shoot and burn. Not the “mercy” is that
they do not—but the “mercy” is that they will not massacre and begin the
strife that would repeat the horrors of Hayti in the various States of
this Republic. Burn and shoot for what? That they may vote in Georgia,
where in front of me in the line stood a negro, whose place was as
sacred as mine, and whose vote as safely counted? That they may vote in
the thirteen districts in which they have elected their congressmen?—in
the 320 counties in which they have elected their representatives, and
in old Virginia, where they came within 1400 votes of carrying the
State?
As the 60,000 Virginia negroes who did vote did so in admitted peace and
safety, where was the violence that prevented the needed 1400 from
leaving their fields, coming to the ballot-box, and giving the State to
the Republicans? And yet slavery itself, in which the selling of a child
from its mother’s arms and a wife from her husband was permitted, never
brought into reputable print so villainous a suggestion as this, leveled
by a knave at a political condition which he views from afar, and which
it is proved does not exist. To pass by the man who wrote these words,
how shall we judge the temper of a community in which they are
applauded? Are these men blood of our blood that they permit such things
to go unchallenged? Better that they had refused us parole at Appomattox
and had confiscated the ruins of our homes, than twenty years later to
bring us under the dominion of such passion as this. Hear another
witness, General Sherman, not in hot speech but in cold print:
“The negro must be allowed to vote, and his vote must be
counted, otherwise, so sure as there is a God in heaven, you
will have another war, more cruel than the last, when the torch
and dagger will take the place of the muskets of well-ordered
battalions. Should the negro strike that blow, in seeming
justice, there will be millions to assist them.”
And this is the greatest living soldier of the Union army. He covered
the desolation he sowed in city and country through these States with
the maxim that “cruelty in war, is mercy”—and no one lifted the cloak.
But when he insults the men he conquered, and endangers the renewing
growth of the country he wasted, with this unmanly threat, he puts a
stain on his name the maxims of philosophy and fable from Socrates all
the way cannot cover, and the glory of Marlborough, were it added to his
own, could not efface.
No answer can be made in passion to these men. If the temper of the
North is expressed in their words, the South can do nothing but rally
her sons for their last defense and await in silence what the future may
bring forth. This much should be said: The negro can never be
established in dominion over the white race of the South. The sword of
Grant and the bayonets of his army could not maintain them in the
supremacy they had won from the helplessness of our people. No sword
drawn by mortal man, no army martialed by mortal hand, can replace them
in the supremacy from which they were cast down by our people, for the
Lord God Almighty decreed otherwise when he created these races, and the
flaming sword of his archangel will enforce his decree and work out his
plan of unchangeable wisdom.
I do not believe the people of the North will be committed to a violent
policy. I believe in the good faith and fair play of the American
people. These noisy insects of the hour will perish with the heat that
warmed them into life, and when their pestilent cries have ceased, the
great clock of the Republic will strike the slow-moving and tranquil
hours, and the watchmen from the streets will cry, “All’s well—all’s
well!” I thank God that through the mists of passion that already cloud
our northern horizon comes the clear, strong voice of President Harrison
declaring that the South shall not suffer, but shall prosper, in his
election. Happy will it be for us—happy for this country, and happy for
his name and fame, if he has the courage to withstand the demagogues who
clamor for our crucifixion, and the wisdom to establish a path in which
voters of all parties and of all sections may walk together in peace and
prosperity.
Should the President yield to the demands of the pestilent, the country
will appeal from his decision. In Indiana and New York more than two
million votes were cast. By less than 16,000 majority these States were
given to Harrison, and his election thereby secured. A change of less
than ten thousand in this enormous poll would restore the Democratic
party to power. If President Harrison permits this unrighteous crusade
on the peace of the South, and the prosperity of the people, this change
and more will be made, and the Democratic party restored to power.
In her industrial growth the South is daily making new friends. Every
dollar of Northern money invested in the South gives us a new friend in
that section. Every settler among us raises up new witnesses to our
fairness, sincerity and loyalty. We shall secure from the North more
friendliness and sympathy, more champions and friends, through the
influence of our industrial growth, than through political aspiration or
achievement. Few men can comprehend—would that I had the time to dwell
on this point to-day—how vast has been the development, how swift the
growth, and how deep and enduring is laid the basis of even greater
growth in the future. Companies of immigrants sent down from the sturdy
settlers of the North will solve the Southern problem, and bring this
section into full and harmonious relations with the North quicker than
all the battalions that could be armed and martialed could do.
The tide of immigration is already springing this way. Let us encourage
it. But let us see that these immigrants come in well-ordered
procession, and not pell-mell. That they come as friends and
neighbors—to mingle their blood with ours, to build their homes on our
fields, to plant their Christian faith on these red hills, and not
seeking to plant strange heresies of government and faith, but, honoring
our constitution and reverencing our God, to confirm, and not estrange,
the simple faith in which we have been reared, and which we should
transmit unsullied to our children.
It may be that the last hope of saving the old-fashioned on this
continent will be lodged in the South. Strange admixtures have brought
strange results in the North. The anarchist and atheist walk abroad in
the cities, and, defying government, deny God. Culture has refined for
itself new and strange religions from the strong old creeds.
The old-time South is fading from observance, and the mellow
church-bells that called the people to the temples of God are being
tabooed and silenced. Let us, my countrymen, here to-day—yet a
homogeneous and God-fearing people—let us highly resolve that we will
carry untainted the straight and simple faith—that we will give
ourselves to the saving of the old-fashioned, that we will wear in our
hearts the prayers we learned at our mother’s knee, and seek no better
faith than that which fortified her life through adversity, and led her
serene and smiling through the valley of the shadow.
Let us keep sacred the Sabbath of God in its purity, and have no city so
great, or village so small, that every Sunday morning shall not stream
forth over towns and meadows the golden benediction of the bells, as
they summon the people to the churches of their fathers, and ring out in
praise of God and the power of His might. Though other people are led
into the bitterness of unbelief, or into the stagnation of apathy and
neglect—let us keep these two States in the current of the sweet
old-fashioned, that the sweet rushing waters may lap their sides, and
everywhere from their soil grow the tree, the leaf whereof shall not
fade and the fruit whereof shall not die, but the fruit whereof shall be
meat, and the leaf whereof shall be healing.
In working out our civil, political, and religious salvation, everything
depends on the union of our people. The man who seeks to divide them now
in the hour of their trial, that man puts ambition before patriotism. A
distinguished gentleman said that “certain upstarts and speculators were
seeking to create a new South to the derision and disparagement of the
old,” and rebukes them for so doing. These are cruel and unjust words.
It was Ben Hill—the music of whose voice hath not deepened, though now
attuned to the symphonies of the skies—who said: “There was a South of
secession and slavery—that South is dead; there is a South of union and
freedom—that South, thank God, is living, growing, every hour.”
It was he who named the New South. One of the “upstarts” said in a
speech in New York: “In answering the toast to the New South, I accept
that name in no disparagement to the Old South. Dear to me, sir, is the
home of my childhood and the traditions of my people, and not for the
glories of New England history from Plymouth Rock all the way, would I
surrender the least of these. Never shall I do, or say, aught to dim the
luster of the glory of my ancestors, won in peace and war.”
Where is the young man in the South who has spoken one word in
disparagement of our past, or has worn lightly the sacred traditions of
our fathers? The world has not equaled the unquestioning reverence and
undying loyalty of the young man of the South to the memory of our
fathers. History has not equaled the cheerfulness and heroism with which
they bestirred themselves amid the poverty that was their legacy, and
holding the inspiration of their past to be better than rich acres and
garnered wealth, went out to do their part in rebuilding the fallen
fortunes of the South and restoring her fields to their pristine beauty.
Wherever they have driven—in marketplace, putting youth against
experience, poverty against capital—in the shop earning in the light of
their forges and the sweat of their faces the bread and meat for those
dependent upon them—in the forum, eloquent by instinct, able though
unlettered—on the farm, locking the sunshine in their harvests and
spreading the showers on their fields—everywhere my heart has been with
them, and I thank God that they are comrades and countrymen of mine. I
have stood with them shoulder to shoulder as they met new conditions
without surrendering old faiths—and I have been content to feel the
grasp of their hands and the throb of their hearts, and hear the music
of their quick step as they marched unfearing into new and untried ways.
If I should attempt to prostitute the generous enthusiasm of these my
comrades to my own ambition, I should be unworthy. If any man enwrapping
himself in the sacred memories of the Old South, should prostitute them
to the hiding of his weakness, or the strengthening of his failing
fortunes, that man would be unworthy. If any man for his own advantage
should seek to divide the old South from the new, or the new from the
old—to separate these that in love hath been joined together—to estrange
the son from his father’s grave and turn our children from the monuments
of our dead, to embitter the closing days of our veterans with suspicion
of the sons who shall follow them—this man’s words are unworthy and are
spoken to the injury of his people.
Some one has said in derision that the old men of the South, sitting
down amid their ruins, reminded him “of the Spanish hidalgos sitting in
the porches of the Alhambra, and looking out to sea for the return of
the lost Armada.” There is pathos but no derision in this picture to me.
These men were our fathers. Their lives were stainless. Their hands were
daintily cast, and the civilization they builded in tender and engaging
grace hath not been equaled. The scenes amid which they moved, as
princes among men, have vanished forever. A grosser and material day has
come, in which their gentle hands could garner but scantily, and their
guileless hearts fend but feebly. Let them sit, therefore, in the
dismantled porches of their homes, into which dishonor hath never
entered, to which discourtesy is a stranger—and gaze out to the sea,
beyond the horizon of which their armada has drifted forever. And though
the sea shall not render back for them the Arguses that went down in
their ship, let us build for them in the land they love so well a
stately and enduring temple—its pillars founded in justice, its arches
springing to the skies, its treasuries filled with substance; liberty
walking in its corridors; art adorning its walls; religion filling its
aisles with incense,—and here let them rest in honorable peace and
tranquillity until God shall call them hence to “a house not made with
hands, eternal in the heavens.”
There are other things I wish to say to you to-day, my countrymen, but
my voice forbids. I thank you for your courteous and patient attention.
And I pray to God—who hath led us through sorrow and travail—that on
this day of universal thanksgiving, when every Christian heart in this
audience is uplifted in praise, that He will open the gates of His glory
and bend down above us in mercy and love! And that these people who have
given themselves unto Him, and who wear His faith in their hearts, that
He will lead them even as little children are led—that He will deepen
their wisdom with the ambition of His words—that He will turn them from
error with the touch of His almighty hand—that he will crown all their
triumphs with the light of His approving smile, and into the heart of
their troubles, whether of people or state, that He will pour the
healing of His mercy and His grace.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
AGAINST CENTRALIZATION.
-------
ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE SOCIETIES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA,
JUNE 25, 1889.
MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: In thanking you for this
cordial—this Virginia—welcome, let me say that it satisfies my heart to
be with you to-day. This is my alma mater. Kind, in the tolerant
patience with which she winnowed the chaff of idle days and idler nights
that she might find for me the grain of knowledge and of truth, and in
the charity with which she sealed in sorrow rather than in anger my
brief but stormy career within these walls. Kinder yet, that her old
heart has turned lovingly after the lapse of twenty years to her
scapegrace son in a distant State, and recalling him with this honorable
commission, has summoned him to her old place at her knees. Here at her
feet, with the glory of her presence breaking all about me, let me
testify that the years have but deepened my reverence and my love, and
my heart has owned the magical tenderness of the emotions first kindled
amid these sacred scenes. That which was unworthy has faded—that which
was good has abided. Faded the memory of the tempestuous dyke and the
riotous kalathump—dimmed the memory of that society, now happily
extinct, but then famous as “The Nippers from Peru”—forgotten even the
glad exultation of those days when the neighboring mountaineer in the
pride of his breezy heights brought down the bandaged bear to give
battle to the urban dog. Forgotten all these follies, and let us hope
forgiven. But, enduring in heart and in brain, the exhaustless splendor
of those golden days—the deep and pure inspiration of these academic
shades—the kindly admonition and wisdom of the masters—the generous
ardor of our mimic contests—and that loving comradeship that laughed at
separation and has lived beyond the grave. Enduring and hallowed,
blessed be God, the strange and wild ambitions that startled my boyish
heart as amid these dim corridors, oh! my mother, the stirring of unseen
wings in thy mighty past caught my careless ear, and the dazzling ideals
of thy future were revealed to my wondering sight.
Gentlemen of the literary societies—I have no studied oration for you
to-day. A life busy beyond its capacities has given scanty time for
preparation. But from a loving heart I shall speak to you this morning
in comradely sympathy of that which concerns us nearly.
Will you allow me to say that the anxiety that always possesses me when
I address my young countrymen is to-day quickened to the point of
consecration. For the first time in man’s responsibility I speak in
Virginia to Virginia. Beyond its ancient glories that made it matchless
among States, its later martyrdom has made it the Mecca of my people. It
was on these hills that our fathers gave new and deeper meaning to
heroism, and advanced the world in honor! It is in these valleys that
our dead lie sleeping. Out there is Appomattox, where on every ragged
gray cap the Lord God Almighty laid the sword of His imperishable
knighthood. Beyond is Petersburg, where he whose name I bear, and who
was prince to me among men, dropped his stainless sword and yielded up
his stainless life. Dear to me, sir, are the people among whom my father
died—sacred to me, sir, the soil that drank his precious blood. From a
heart stirred by these emotions and sobered by these memories, let me
speak to you to-day, my countrymen—and God give me wisdom to speak
aright and the words wherewithal to challenge and hold your attention.
We are standing in the daybreak of the second century of this Republic.
The fixed stars are fading from the sky, and we grope in uncertain
light. Strange shapes have come with the night. Established ways are
lost—new roads perplex, and widening fields stretch beyond the sight.
The unrest of dawn impels us to and fro—but Doubt stalks amid the
confusion, and even on the beaten paths the shifting crowds are halted,
and from the shadows the sentries cry: “Who comes there?” In the
obscurity of the morning tremendous forces are at work. Nothing is
steadfast or approved. The miracles of the present belie the simple
truths of the past. The church is besieged from without and betrayed
from within. Behind the courts smoulders the rioter’s torch and looms
the gibbet of the anarchists. Government is the contention of partisans
and the prey of spoilsmen. Trade is restless in the grasp of monopoly,
and commerce shackled with limitation. The cities are swollen and the
fields are stripped. Splendor streams from the castle, and squalor
crouches in the home. The universal brotherhood is dissolving, and the
people are huddling into classes. The hiss of the Nihilist disturbs the
covert, and the roar of the mob murmurs along the highway. Amid it all
beats the great American heart undismayed, and standing fast by the
challenge of his conscience, the citizen of the Republic, tranquil and
resolute, notes the drifting of the spectral currents, and calmly awaits
the full disclosures of the day.
Who shall be the heralds of this coming day? Who shall thread the way of
honor and safety through these besetting problems? Who shall rally the
people to the defense of their liberties and stir them until they shall
cry aloud to be led against the enemies of the Republic? You, my
countrymen, you! The university is the training camp of the future. The
scholar the champion of the coming years. Napoleon over-ran Europe with
drum-tap and bivouac—the next Napoleon shall form his battalions at the
tap of the schoolhouse bell and his captains shall come with cap and
gown. Waterloo was won at Oxford—Sedan at Berlin. So Germany plants her
colleges in the shadow of the French forts, and the professor smiles
amid his students as he notes the sentinel stalking against the sky. The
farmer has learned that brains mix better with his soil than the waste
of seabirds, and the professor walks by his side as he spreads the
showers in the verdure of his field, and locks the sunshine in the glory
of his harvest. A button is pressed by a child’s finger and the work of
a million men is done. The hand is nothing—the brain everything.
Physical prowess has had its day and the age of reason has come. The
lion-hearted Richard challenging Saladin to single combat is absurd, for
even Gog and Magog shall wage the Armageddon from their closets and look
not upon the blood that runs to the bridle-bit. Science is everything!
She butchers a hog in Chicago, draws Boston within three hours of New
York, renews the famished soil, routs her viewless bondsmen from the
electric center of the earth, and then turns to watch the new Icarus as
mounting in his flight to the sun he darkens the burnished ceiling of
the sky with the shadow of his wing.
Learning is supreme and you are its prophets. Here the Olympic games of
the Republic—and you its chosen athletes. It is yours then to grapple
with these problems, to confront and master these dangers. Yours to
decide whether the tremendous forces of this Republic shall be kept in
balance, or whether unbalanced they shall bring chaos; whether
60,000,000 men are capable of self-government, or whether liberty shall
be lost to them who would give their lives to maintain it. Your
responsibility is appalling. You stand in the pass behind which the
world’s liberties are guarded. This government carries the hopes of the
human race. Blot out the beacon that lights the portals of this Republic
and the world is adrift again. But save the Republic; establish the
light of its beacon over the troubled waters, and one by one the nations
of the earth shall drop anchor and be at rest in the harbor of universal
liberty. Let one who loves this Republic as he loves his life, and whose
heart is thrilled with the majesty of its mission, speak to you now of
the dangers that threaten its peace and prosperity, and the means by
which they may be honorably averted.
The unmistakable danger that threatens free government in America, is
the increasing tendency to concentrate in the Federal government powers
and privileges that should be left with the States, and to create powers
that neither the State nor Federal government should have. Let it be
understood at once that in discussing this question I seek to revive no
dead issue. We know precisely what was put to the issue of the sword,
and what was settled thereby. The right of a State to leave this Union
was denied and the denial made good forever. But the sovereignty of the
States in the Union was never involved, and the Republic that survived
the storm was, in the words of the Supreme Court, “an indissoluble Union
of indestructible States.” Let us stand on this decree and turn our
faces to the future!
It is not strange that there should be a tendency to centralization in
our government. This disposition was the legacy of the war. Steam and
electricity have emphasized it by bringing the people closer together.
The splendor of a central government dazzles the unthinking—its opulence
tempts the poor and the avaricious—its strength assures the rich and the
timid—its patronage incites the spoilsmen and its powers inflame the
partisan.
And so we have paternalism run mad. The merchant asks the government to
control the arteries of trade—the manufacturer asks that his product be
protected—the rich asks for an army, and the unfortunate for help—this
man for schools and that for subsidy. The partisan proclaims, amid the
clamor, that the source of largess must be the seat of power, and
demands that the ballot-boxes of the States be hedged by Federal
bayonets. The centrifugal force of our system is weakened, the
centripetal force is increased, and the revolving spheres are veering
inward from their orbits. There are strong men who rejoice in this
unbalancing and deliberately contend that the center is the true
repository of power and source of privilege—men who, were they charged
with the solar system, would shred the planets into the sun, and,
exulting in the sudden splendor, little reck that they had kindled the
conflagration that presages universal nights! Thus the States are
dwarfed and the nation magnified—and to govern a people, who can best
govern themselves, the central authority is made stronger and more
splendid!
Concurrent with this political drift is another movement, less formal
perhaps, but not less dangerous—the consolidation of capital. I hesitate
to discuss this phase of the subject, for of all men I despise most
cordially the demagogue who panders to the prejudice of the poor by
abuse of the rich. But no man can note the encroachment in this country
of what may be called “the money power” on the rights of the individual,
without feeling that the time is approaching when the issue between
plutocracy and the people will be forced to trial. The world has not
seen, nor has the mind of man conceived of such miraculous
wealth-gathering as are every-day tales to us. Aladdin’s lamp is dimmed,
and Monte Cristo becomes commonplace when compared to our magicians of
finance and trade. The seeds of a luxury that even now surpasses that of
Rome or Corinth, and has only yet put forth its first flowers, are sown
in this simple republic. What shall the full fruitage be? I do not
denounce the newly rich. For most part their money came under forms of
law. The irresponsibilities of sudden wealth is in many cases steadied
by that resolute good sense which seems to be an American heritage, and
under-run by careless prodigality or by constant charity. Our great
wealth has brought us profit and splendor. But the status itself is a
menace. A home that costs $3,000,000 and a breakfast that cost $5000 are
disquieting facts to the millions who live in a hut and dine on a crust.
The fact that a man ten years from poverty has an income of
$20,000,000—and his two associates nearly as much—from the control and
arbitrary pricing of an article of universal use, falls strangely on the
ears of those who hear it, as they sit empty-handed, while children cry
for bread. The tendency deepens the dangers suggested by the status.
What is to be the end of this swift piling up of wealth? Twenty years
ago but few cities had their millionaires. To-day almost every town has
its dozen. Twenty men can be named who can each buy a sovereign State at
its tax-book value. The youngest nation, America, is vastly the richest,
and in twenty years, in spite of war, has nearly trebled her wealth.
Millions are made on the turn of a trade, and the toppling mass grows
and grows, while in its shadow starvation and despair stalk among the
people, and swarm with increasing legions against the citadels of human
life.
But the abuse of this amazing power of consolidated wealth is its
bitterest result and its pressing danger. When the agent of a dozen men,
who have captured and control an article of prime necessity, meets the
representatives of a million farmers from whom they have forced
$3,000,000 the year before, with no more moral right than is behind the
highwayman who halts the traveler at his pistol’s point, and insolently
gives them the measure of this year’s rapacity, and tells them—men who
live in the sweat of their brows, and stand between God and Nature—that
they must submit to the infamy because they are helpless, then the first
fruits of this system are gathered and have turned to ashes on the lips.
When a dozen men get together in the morning and fix the price of a
dozen articles of common use—with no standard but their arbitrary will,
and no limit but their greed or daring—and then notify the sovereign
people of this free Republic how much, in the mercy of their masters,
they shall pay for the necessaries of life—then the point of intolerable
shame has been reached.
We have read of the robber barons of the Rhine who from their castles
sent a shot across the bow of every passing craft, and descending as
hawks from the crags, tore and robbed and plundered the voyagers until
their greed was glutted, or the strength of their victims spent. Shall
this shame of Europe against which the world revolted, shall it be
repeated in this free country? And yet, when a syndicate or a trust can
arbitrarily add twenty-five per cent. to the cost of a single article of
common use, and safely gather forced tribute from the people, until from
its surplus it could buy every castle on the Rhine, or requite every
baron’s debauchery from its kitchen account—where is the difference—save
that the castle is changed to a broker’s office, and the picturesque
river to the teeming streets and the broad fields of this government “of
the people, by the people, and for the people”? I do not overstate the
case. Economists have held that wheat, grown everywhere, could never be
cornered by capital. And yet one man in Chicago tied the wheat crop in
his handkerchief, and held it until a sewing-woman in my city, working
for ninety cents a week, had to pay him twenty cents tax on the sack of
flour she bore home in her famished hands. Three men held the cotton
crop until the English spindles were stopped and the lights went out in
3,000,000 English homes. Last summer one man cornered pork until he had
levied a tax of $3 per barrel on every consumer, and pocketed a profit
of millions. The Czar of Russia would not have dared to do these things.
And yet they are no secrets in this free government of ours! They are
known of all men, and, my countrymen, no argument can follow them, and
no plea excuse them, when they fall on the men who toiling, yet
suffer—who hunger at their work—and who cannot find food for their wives
with which to feed the infants that hang famishing at their breasts. Mr.
Jefferson foresaw this danger and he sought to avert it. When Virginia
ceded the vast Northwest to the government—before the Constitution was
written—Mr. Jefferson in the second clause of the articles of cession
prohibited forever the right of primogeniture. Virginia then nobly said,
and Georgia in the cession of her territory repeated: “In granting this
domain to the government and dedicating it to freedom, we prescribe that
there shall be no classes in the family—no child set up at the expense
of the others, no feudal estates established—but what a man hath shall
be divided equally among his children.”
We see this feudal tendency, swept away by Mr. Jefferson, revived by the
conditions of our time, aided by the government with its grant of
enormous powers and its amazing class legislation. It has given the
corporation more power than Mr. Jefferson stripped from the individual,
and has set up a creature without soul or conscience or limit of human
life to establish an oligarchy, unrelieved by human charity and
unsteadied by human responsibility. The syndicate, the trust, the
corporation—these are the eldest sons of the Republic for whom the
feudal right of primogeniture is revived, and who inherit its estate to
the impoverishment of their brothers. Let it be noted that the alliance
between those who would centralize the government and the consolidated
money power is not only close but essential. The one is the necessity of
the other. Establish the money power and there is universal clamor for
strong government. The weak will demand it for protection against the
people restless under oppression—the patriotic for protection against
the plutocracy that scourges and robs—the corrupt hoping to buy of one
central body distant from local influences what they could not buy from
the legislatures of the States sitting at their homes—the oligarchs will
demand it—as the privileged few have always demanded it—for the
protection of their privileges and the perpetuity of their bounty. Thus,
hand in hand, will walk—as they have always walked—the federalist and
the capitalist, the centralist and the monopolist—the strong government
protecting the money power, and the money power the political standing
army of the government. Hand in hand, compact and organized, one
creating the necessity, the other meeting it; consolidated wealth and
centralizing government; stripping the many of their rights and
aggrandizing the few; distrusting the people but in touch with the
plutocrats; striking down local self-government and dwarfing the
citizens—and at last confronting the people in the market, in the
courts, at the ballot box—everywhere—with the infamous challenge: “What
are you going to do about it?” And so the government protects and the
barons oppress, and the people suffer and grow strong. And when the
battle for liberty is joined—the centralist and the plutocrat,
entrenched behind the deepening powers of the government, and the
countless ramparts of money bags, oppose to the vague but earnest onset
of the people the power of the trained phalanx and the conscienceless
strength of the mercenary.
Against this tendency who shall protest? Those who believe that a
central government means a strong government, and a strong government
means repression—those who believe that this vast Republic, with its
diverse interests and its local needs, can better be governed by liberty
and enlightenment diffused among the people than by powers and
privileges congested at the center—those who believe that the States
should do nothing that the people can do themselves and the government
nothing that the States and the people can do—those who believe that the
wealth of the central government is a crime rather than a virtue, and
that every dollar not needed for its economical administration should be
left with the people of the States—those who believe that the
hearthstone of the home is the true altar of liberty and the enlightened
conscience of the citizen the best guarantee of government! Those of you
who note the farmer sending his sons to the city that they may escape
the unequal burdens under which he has labored, thus diminishing the
rural population whose leisure, integrity and deliberation have
corrected the passion and impulse and corruption of the cities—who note
that while the rich are growing richer, and the poor poorer, we are
lessening that great middle class that, ever since it met the returning
crusaders in England with the demand that the hut of the humble should
be as sacred as the castle of the great, has been the bulwark and glory
of every English-speaking community—who know that this Republic, which
we shall live to see with 150,000,000 people, stretching from ocean to
ocean, and almost from the arctic to the torrid zone, cannot be governed
by any laws that a central despotism could devise or controlled by any
armies it could marshal—you who know these things protest with all the
earnestness of your souls against the policy and the methods that make
them possible.
What is the remedy? To exalt the hearthstone—to strengthen the home—to
build up the individual—to magnify and defend the principle of local
self-government. Not in deprecation of the Federal government, but to
its glory—not to weaken the Republic, but to strengthen it—not to check
the rich blood that flows to its heart, but to send it full and
wholesome from healthy members rather than from withered and diseased
extremities.
The man who kindles the fire on the hearthstone of an honest and
righteous home burns the best incense to liberty. He does not love
mankind less who loves his neighbor most. George Eliot has said:
“A human life should be well rooted in some spot of a native
land where it may get the love of tender kinship for the face of
the earth, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, a spot
where the definiteness of early memories may be inwrought with
affection, and spread, not by sentimental effort and reflection,
but as a sweet habit of the blest.”
The germ of the best patriotism is in the love that a man has for the
home he inhabits, for the soil he tills, for the trees that gives him
shade, and the hills that stand in his pathway. I teach my son to love
Georgia—to love the soil that he stands on—the body of my old mother—the
mountains that are her springing breasts, the broad acres that hold her
substance, the dimpling valleys in which her beauty rests, the forests
that sing her songs of lullaby and of praise, and the brooks that run
with her rippling laughter. The love of home—deep rooted and
abiding—that blurs the eyes of the dying soldier with the vision of an
old homestead amid green fields and clustering trees—that follows the
busy man through the clamoring world, persistent though put aside, and
at last draws his tired feet from the highway and leads him through
shady lanes and well-remembered paths until, amid the scenes of his
boyhood, he gathers up the broken threads of his life and owns the soil
his conqueror—this—this lodged in the heart of the citizen is the saving
principle of our government. We note the barracks of our standing army
with its rolling drum and its fluttering flag as points of strength and
protection. But the citizen standing in the doorway of his
home—contented on his threshold—his family gathered about his
hearthstone—while the evening of a well-spent day closes in scenes and
sounds that are dearest—he shall save the Republic when the drum tap is
futile and the barracks are exhausted.
This love shall not be pent up or provincial. The home should be
consecrated to humanity, and from its roof-tree should fly the flag of
the Republic. Every simple fruit gathered there—every sacrifice endured,
and every victory won, should bring better joy and inspiration in the
knowledge that it will deepen the glory of our Republic and widen the
harvest of humanity! Be not like the peasant of France who hates the
Paris he cannot comprehend—but emulate the example of your fathers in
the South, who, holding to the sovereignty of the States, yet gave to
the Republic its chief glory of statesmanship, and under Jackson at New
Orleans, and Taylor and Scott in Mexico, saved it twice from the storm
of war. Inherit without fear or shame the principle of local
self-government by which your fathers stood! For though entangled with
an institution foreign to this soil, which, thank God, not planted by
their hands, is now swept away, and with a theory bravely defended but
now happily adjusted—that principle holds the imperishable truth that
shall yet save this Republic. The integrity of the State, its rights and
its powers—these, maintained with firmness, but in loyalty—these shall
yet, by lodging the option of local affairs in each locality, meet the
needs of this vast and complex government, and check the headlong rush
to that despotism that reason could not defend, nor the armies of the
Czar maintain, among a free and enlightened people. This issue is
squarely made! It is centralized government and the money power on the
one hand—against the integrity of the States and rights of the people on
the other. At all hazard, stand with the people and the threatened
States. The choice may not be easily made. Wise men may hesitate and
patriotic men divide. The culture, the strength, the mightiness of the
rich and strong government—these will tempt and dazzle. But be not
misled. Beneath this splendor is the canker of a disturbed and oppressed
people. It was from the golden age of Augustus that the Roman empire
staggered to its fall. The integrity of the States and the rights of the
people! Stand there—there is safety—there is the broad and enduring
brotherhood—there, less of glory, but more of honor! Put patriotism
above partisanship—and wherever the principle that protects the States
against the centralists, and the people against the plutocrats, may
lead, follow without fear or faltering—for there the way of duty and of
wisdom lies!
Exalt the citizen. As the State is the unit of government he is the unit
of the State. Teach him that his home is his castle, and his sovereignty
rests beneath his hat. Make himself self-respecting, self-reliant and
responsible. Let him lean on the State for nothing that his own arm can
do, and on the government for nothing that his State can do. Let him
cultivate independence to the point of sacrifice, and learn that humble
things with unbartered liberty are better than splendors bought with its
price. Let him neither surrender his individuality to government, nor
merge it with the mob. Let him stand upright and fearless—a freeman born
of freemen—sturdy in his own strength—dowering his family in the sweat
of his brow—loving to his State—loyal to his Republic—earnest in his
allegiance wherever it rests, but building his altar in the midst of his
household gods and shrining in his own heart the uttermost temple of its
liberty.
Go out, determined to magnify the community in which your lot is cast.
Cultivate its small economies. Stand by its young industries. Commercial
dependence is a chain that galls every day. A factory built at home, a
book published, a shoe or a book made, these are steps in that diffusion
of thought and interest that is needed. Teach your neighbors to withdraw
from the vassalage of distant capitalists, and pay, under any sacrifice,
the mortgage on the home or the land. By simple and prudent lives stay
within your own resources, and establish the freedom of your community.
Make every village and cross-roads as far as may be sovereign to its own
wants. Learn that thriving country-sides with room for limbs,
conscience, and liberty are better than great cities with congested
wealth and population. Preserve the straight and simple homogeneity of
our people. Welcome emigrants, but see that they come as friends and
neighbors, to mingle their blood with ours, to build their houses in our
fields, and to plant their Christian faith on our hills, and honoring
our constitution and reverencing our God, to confirm the simple beliefs
in which we have been reared, and which we should transmit unsullied to
our children. Stand by these old-fashioned beliefs. Science hath
revealed no better faith than that you learned at your mother’s knee—nor
has knowledge made a wiser and a better book than the worn old Bible
that, thumbed by hands long since still, and blurred with the tears of
eyes long since closed, held the simple annals of your family and the
heart and conscience of your homes.
Honor and emulate the virtues and the faith of your forefathers—who,
learned, were never wise above a knowledge of God and His gospel—who,
great, were never exalted above an humble trust in God and His mercy!
Let me sum up what I have sought to say in this hurried address. Your
Republic—on the glory of which depends all that men hold dear—is menaced
with great dangers. Against these dangers defend her, as you would
defend the most precious concerns of your own life. Against the dangers
of centralizing all political powers, put the approved and imperishable
principle of local self-government. Between the rich and the poor now
drifting into separate camps, build up the great middle class that,
neither drunk with wealth, nor embittered by poverty, shall lift up the
suffering and control the strong. To the jangling of races and creeds
that threaten the courts of men and the temples of God, oppose the home
and the citizen—a homogeneous and honest people—and the simple faith
that sustained your fathers and mothers in their stainless lives and led
them serene and smiling into the valley of the shadow.
Let it be understood in my parting words to you that I am no pessimist
as to this Republic. I always bet on sunshine in America. I know that my
country has reached the point of perilous greatness, and that strange
forces not to be measured or comprehended are hurrying her to heights
that dazzle and blind all mortal eyes—but I know that beyond the
uttermost glory is enthroned the Lord God Almighty, and that when the
hour of her trial has come He will lift up His everlasting gates and
bend down above her in mercy and in love. For with her He has surely
lodged the ark of His covenant with the sons of men. Emerson wisely
said, “Our whole history looks like the last effort by Divine Providence
in behalf of the human race.” And the Republic will endure. Centralism
will be checked, and liberty saved—plutocracy overthrown and equality
restored. The struggle for human rights never goes backward among
English-speaking peoples. Our brothers across the sea have fought from
despotism to liberty, and in the wisdom of local self-government have
planted colonies around the world. This very day Mr. Gladstone, the
wisest man that has lived since your Jefferson died—with the light of
another world beating in his face until he seems to have caught the
wisdom of the Infinite and towers half human and half divine from his
eminence—this man, turning away from the traditions of his life, begs
his countrymen to strip the crown of its last usurped authority, and
lodge it with the people, where it belongs. The trend of the times is
with us. The world moves steadily from gloom to brightness. And bending
down humbly as Elisha did, and praying that my eyes shall be made to
see, I catch the vision of this Republic—its mighty forces in balance,
and its unspeakable glory falling on all its children—chief among the
federation of English-speaking people—plenty streaming from its borders,
and light from its mountain tops—working out its mission under God’s
approving eye, until the dark continents are opened—and the highways of
earth established, and the shadows lifted—and the jargon of the nations
stilled and the perplexities of Babel straightened—and under one
language, one liberty, and one God, all the nations of the world
hearkening to the American drum-beat and girding up their loins, shall
march amid the breaking of the millennial dawn into the paths of
righteousness and of peace!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE FARMER AND THE CITIES.
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MR. GRADY’S SPEECH AT ELBERTON, GEORGIA, IN JUNE, 1889.
MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:—For the first time in my life I
address an audience in the open air. And as I stand here in this
beautiful morning, so shot through and through with sunshine that the
very air is as molten gold to the touch—under these trees in whose
trunks the rains and suns of years are compacted, and on whose leaves
God has laid His whispering music—here in His majestic temple, with the
brightness of His smile breaking all about us—standing above the soil
instinct with the touch of His life-giving hand, and full of His promise
and His miracle—and looking up to the clouds through which His thunders
roll, and His lightnings cut their way, and beyond that to the dazzling
glory of the sun, and yet beyond to the unspeakable splendor of the
universe, flashing and paling until the separate stars are but as mist
in the skies—even to the uplifted jasper gates through which His
everlasting glory streams, my mind falls back abashed, and I realize how
paltry is human speech, and how idle are the thoughts of men!
Another thought oppresses me. In front of me sit several thousand
people. Over there, in smelling distance, where we can almost hear the
lisping of the mop as it caresses the barbecued lamb or the pottering of
the skewered pig as he leisurely turns from fat to crackling, is being
prepared a dinner that I verily believe covers more provisions than were
issued to all the soldiers of Lee’s army, God bless them, in their last
campaign. And I shudder when I think that I, a single, unarmed,
defenseless man, is all that stands between this crowd and that dinner.
Here then, awed by God’s majesty, and menaced by man’s appetite, I am
tempted to leave this platform and yield to the boyish impulses that
always stir in my heart amid such scenes, and revert to the days of
boyhood when about the hills of Athens I chased the pacing coon, or
twisted the unwary rabbit, or shot my ramrod at all manner of birds and
beasts—and at night went home to look up into a pair of gentle eyes and
take on my tired face the benediction of a mother’s kiss and feel on my
weary head a pair of loving hands, now wrinkled and trembling, but,
blessed be God, fairer to me yet than the hands of mortal women, and
stronger yet to lead me than the hands of mortal man, as they laid a
mother’s blessing there, while bending at her knees I made my best
confession of faith and worshiped at the truest altar I have yet found
in this world. I had rather go out and lay down on the ground and hug
the grass to my breast and mind me of the time when I builded boyish
ambitions on the wooded hills of Athens, than do aught else to-day. But
I recall the story of Uncle Remus, who when his favorite hero, Brer
Rabbit, was sorely pressed by that arch villain, Brer Fox, said:
“An’ Brer Rabbit den he climb’d a tree.” “But,” said the little boy,
“Uncle Remus, a rabbit can’t climb a tree.”
“Doan you min’ dat, honey. Brer Fox pressed dis rabbit so hard he des
bleeged to clim’ a tree.”
I am pressed so hard to-day by your commands that I am just “bleeged” to
make a speech, and so I proceed. I heartily invoke God’s guidance in
what I say, that I shall utter no word to soil this temple of His, and
no sentiment not approved in His wisdom; and as for you, when the time
comes—as it will come—when you prefer barbecued shote to raw orator, and
feel that you can be happier at that table than in this forum, just say
the word and I will be with you heart and soul!
I am tempted to yield to the gaiety of this scene, to the flaunting
banners of the trees, the downpouring sunshine, the garnered plenty over
there, this smiling and hospitable crowd, and, throwing serious affairs
aside, to speak to you to-day as the bird sings—without care and without
thought. I should be false to myself and to you if I did, for there are
serious problems that beset our State and our country that no man,
facing, as I do this morning, a great and intelligent audience, can in
honor or in courage disregard. I shall attempt to make no brilliant
speech—but to counsel with you in plain and simple words, beseeching
your attention and your sympathy as to the dangers of the present hour,
and our duties and our responsibilities.
At Saturday noon in any part of this county you may note the farmer
going from his field, eating his dinner thoughtfully and then saddling
his plow-horse, or starting afoot and making his way to a neighboring
church or schoolhouse. There he finds from every farm, through every
foot-path, his neighbors gathering to meet him. What is the object of
this meeting? It is not social, it is not frolic, it is not a
pic-nic—the earnest, thoughtful faces, the serious debate and council,
the closed doors and the secret session forbid this assumption. It is a
meeting of men who feel that in spite of themselves their affairs are
going wrong—of free and equal citizens who feel that they carry unequal
burdens—of toilers who feel that they reap not the just fruits of their
toil—of men who feel that their labor enriches others while it leaves
them poor, and that the sweat of their bodies, shed freely under God’s
command, goes to clothe the idle and the avaricious in purple and fine
linen. This is a meeting of protest, of resistance. Here the farmer
meets to demand, and organize that he may enforce his demand, that he
shall stand equal with every other class of citizens—that laws
discriminating against him shall be repealed—that the methods oppressing
him shall be modified or abolished—and that he shall be guaranteed that
neither government nor society shall abridge, by statute or custom, his
just and honest proportion of the wealth he created, but that he shall
be permitted to garner in his barns, and enjoy by his hearthstone, the
full and fair fruits of his labor. If this movement were confined to
Elbert, if this disturbing feeling of discontent were shut in the limits
of your county lines, it would still demand the attention of the
thoughtful and patriotic. But, as it is in Elbert, so it is in every
county in Georgia—as in Georgia, so it is in every State in the South—as
in the South, so in every agricultural State in the Union. In every
rural neighborhood, from Ohio to Texas, from Michigan to Georgia, the
farmers, riding thoughtful through field and meadow, seek ten thousand
schoolhouses or churches—the muster grounds of this new army—and there,
recounting their wrongs and renewing their pledges, send up from
neighborhoods to county, from county to State, and State to Republic,
the measure of their strength and the unyielding quality of their
determination. The agricultural army of the Republic is in motion. The
rallying drumbeat has rolled over field and meadow, and from where the
wheat locks the sunshine in its bearded sheaf, and the clover carpets
the earth, and the cotton whitens beneath the stars, and the tobacco
catches the quick aroma of the rains—everywhere that patient man stands
above the soil, or bends about the furrow, the farmers are ready in
squads and companies and battalions and legions to be led against what
they hold to be an oppression that honest men would not deserve, and
that brave men would not endure. Let us not fail to comprehend the
magnitude and the meaning of this movement. It is no trifling cause that
brings the farmers into such determined and widespread organization as
this. It is not the skillful arts of the demagogue that has brought
nearly two million farmers into this perfect and pledge-bound
society—but it is a deep and abiding conviction that, in political and
commercial economy of the day, he is put at a disadvantage that keeps
him poor while other classes grow rich, and that bars his way to
prosperity and independence. General Toombs once said that the farmer,
considered the most conservative type of citizenship, is really the most
revolutionary. That the farmers of France, flocking to the towns and
cities from the unequal burdens of their farms, brought about the French
Revolution, and that about once in every century the French peasant
raided the towns. Three times the farmers of England have captured and
held London. It was the farmers of Mecklenburg that made the first
American declaration, and Putnam left his plow standing in the furrow as
he hurried to lead the embattled farmers who fought at Concord and
Lexington. I realize it is impossible that revolution should be the
outcome of our industrial troubles. The farmer of to-day does not
consider that remedy for his wrongs. I quote history to show that the
farmer, segregated and deliberate, does not move on slight provocation,
but organizes only under deep conviction, and that when once organized
and convinced, he is terribly in earnest, and is not going to rest until
his wrongs are righted.
Now, here we are confronted with the most thorough and widespread
agricultural movement of this or any other day. It is the duty alike of
farmers and those who stand in other ranks, to get together and consult
as to what is the real status and what is the patriotic duty. Not in
sullenness, but in frankness. Not as opponents, but as friends—not as
enemies, but as brothers begotten of a common mother, banded in common
allegiance, and marching to a common destiny. It will not do to say that
this organization will pass away, for if the discontent on which it is
based survives it, it had better have lived and forced its wrongs to
final issue. There is no room for divided hearts in this State, or in
this Republic. If we shall restore Georgia to her former greatness and
prosperity—if we shall solve the problems that beset the South in honor
and safety—if we shall save this Republic from the dangers that threaten
it—it will require the earnest and united effort of every patriotic
citizen, be he farmer, or merchant, or lawyer, or manufacturer. Let us
consider then the situation, and decide what is the duty that lies
before us.
In discussing this matter briefly, I beg the ladies to give me their
attention. I have always believed that there are few affairs of life in
which woman should not have a part. Not obtrusive part—for that is
unwomanly. The work falling best to the hand of woman is such work as is
done by the dews of night—that ride not on the boasting wind, and shine
not in the garish sun, but that come when the wind is stilled and the
sun is gone, and night has wrapped the earth in its sacred hush, and
fall from the distillery of the stars upon the parched and waiting
flowers, as a benediction from God.
Let no one doubt the power of this work, though it lack pomp and
circumstance. Is Bismarck the mightiest power of this earth, who is
attended by martial strains when he walks abroad, and in whose path
thrones are scattered as trophies? Why, the little housewife alone in
her chimney-corner, musing in her happiness with no trophy in her path
save her husband’s loving heart, and no music on her ear save the
chirping of the cricket beneath her hearthstone, is his superior. For,
while he holds the purse-strings of Germany, she holds the heart-strings
of men. She who rocks the cradle rules the world. Give me then your
attention, note the conflict that is gathering about us, and take your
place with seeming modesty in the ranks of those who fight for right. It
is not an abstract political theory that is involved in the contest of
which I speak. It is the integrity and independence of your home that is
at stake. The battle is not pitched in a distant State. Your home is the
battle-field, and by your hearthstones you shall fight for your
household gods. With your husband’s arms so wound around you that you
can feel his anxious heart beating against your cheek—with your sons,
sturdy and loving, holding your old hands in theirs—here on the
threshold of your house, under the trees that sheltered your babyhood,
with the graves of your dead in that plain enclosure yonder—here men and
women, heart to heart, with not a man dismayed, not a woman idle—while
the multiplied wolves of debt and mortgage, and trust and monopoly,
swarm from every thicket; here we must fight the ultimate battle for the
independence of our people and the happiness of our homes.
Now let us look at the facts: First, the notable movement of the
population in America is from the country to the cities. In 1840—a
generation ago, only one-twelfth of the American people lived in cities
of more than 8000 people. In 1850, one-eighth; in 1860, one-sixth; in
1870, one-fifth; in 1880, one-fourth. In the past half-century the
population of cities has increased more than four times as rapidly as
that of the country. Mind you, when I say that the city population has
increased in one generation from 8 per cent. to 25 per cent. in
population, I mean the population of cities of more than 8000 people.
There is not such a city in this congressional district. It is the
village and town population, as well as that of the farms, that goes to
swell so enormously the population of the great cities. Thus we see
diminishing with amazing rapidity that rural population that is the
strength and the safety of the people—slow to anger and thus a
safeguard, but terrible in its wrath, and thus a tremendous corrective
power. No greater calamity could befall any country than the sacrifice
of its town and village and country life. I rejoice in Atlanta’s growth,
and yet I wonder whether it is worth what it cost when I know that her
population has been drawn largely from rural Georgia, and that back of
her grandeur are thousands of deserted farms and dismantled homes. As
much as I love her—and she is all to me that home can be to any man—if I
had the disposal of 100,000 immigrants at her gates to-morrow, 5000
should enter there, 75,000 should be located in the shops and factories
in Georgia towns and villages, and 20,000 sent to her farms. It saddens
me to see a bright young fellow come to my office from village or
country, and I shudder when I think for what a feverish and speculative
and uncertain life he has bartered his rural birthright, and surrendered
the deliberation and tranquillity of his life on the farm. It is just
that deliberate life that this country needs, for the fever of the
cities is already affecting its system. Character, like corn, is dug
from the soil. A contented rural population is not only the measure of
our strength, and an assurance of its peace when there should be peace,
and a resource of courage when peace would be cowardice—but it is the
nursery of the great leaders who have made this country what it is.
Washington was born and lived in the country. Jefferson was a farmer.
Henry Clay rode his horse to the mill in the slashes. Webster dreamed
amid the solitude of Marshfield. Lincoln was a rail splitter. Our own
Hill walked between the handles of the plow. Brown peddled barefoot the
product of his patch. Stephens found immortality under the trees of his
country home. Toombs and Cobb and Calhoun were country gentlemen, and
afar from the cities’ maddening strife established that greatness that
is the heritage of their people. The cities produce very few leaders.
Almost every man in our history formed his character in the leisure and
deliberation of village or country life, and drew his strength from the
drugs of the earth even as a child draws his from his mother’s breast.
In the diminution of this rural population, virtuous and competent,
patriotic and honest, living beneath its own roof-tree, building its
altars by its own hearthstone and shrining in its own heart its liberty
and its conscience, there is abiding cause for regret. In the
corresponding growth of our cities—already center spots of danger, with
their idle classes, their sharp rich and poor, their corrupt politics,
their consorted thieves, and their clubs and societies of anarchy and
socialism—I see a pressing and impending danger. Let it be noted that
the professions are crowded, that middlemen are multiplied beyond
reason, that the factories can in six months supply the demand of
twelve—that machinery is constantly taking the place of men—that labor
in every department bids against itself until it is mercilessly in the
hands of the employer, that the new-comers are largely recruits of the
idle and dangerous classes, and we can appreciate something of the
danger that comes with this increasing movement to strip the villages
and the farms and send an increasing volume into the already overcrowded
cities. This is but one phase of that tendency to centralization and
congestion which is threatening the liberties of this people and the
life of this Republic.
Now, let us go one step further. What is the most notable financial
movement in America? It is the mortgaging of the farm lands of the
country—the bringing of the farmer into bondage to the money-lender. In
Illinois the farms are mortgaged for $200,000,000, in Iowa for
$140,000,000, in Kansas for $160,000,000, and so on through the
Northwest. In Georgia about $20,000,000 of foreign capital holds in
mortgage perhaps one-fourth of Georgia’s farms, and the work is but
started. Every town has its loan agent—a dozen companies are quartered
in Atlanta, and the work goes briskly on. A mortgage is the bulldog of
obligations—a very mud-turtle for holding on. It is the heaviest thing
of its weight in the world. I had one once, and sometimes I used to
feel, as it rested on my roof, deadening the rain that fell there, and
absorbing the sunshine, that it would crush through the shingles and the
rafters and overwhelm me with its dull and persistent weight, and when
at last I paid it off, I went out to look at the shingles to see if it
had not flopped back there of its own accord. Think of it, Iowa strips
from her farmers $14,000,000 of interest every year, and sends it to New
York and Boston to be reloaned on farms in other States, and to support
and establish the dominion of the money-lenders over the people. Georgia
gathers from her languishing fields $2,000,000 of interest every year,
and sends it away forever. Could her farmers but keep it at home, one
year’s interest would build factories to supply at cost every yard of
bagging and every pound of guano the farmers need, establish her
exchanges and their warehouses, and have left more than a million
dollars for the improvement of their farms and their homes. And year
after year this drain not only continues, but deepens. What will be the
end? Ireland has found it. Her peasants in their mud cabins, sending
every tithe of their earnings to deepen the purple luxury of London,
where their landlords live, realize how poor is that country whose farms
are owned in mortgage or fee simple by those who live beyond its
borders. If every Irish landlord lived on his estate, bought of his
tenants the product of their farms, and invested his rents in Irish
industries, this Irish question that is the shame of the world would be
settled without legislation or strife. Georgia can never go to Ireland’s
degradation, but every Georgia farm put under mortgage to a foreign
capitalist is a step in that direction, and every dollar sent out as
interest leaves the State that much poorer. I do not blame the farmers.
It is a miracle that out of their poverty they have done so well. I
simply deplore the result, and ask you to note in the millions of acres
that annually pass under mortgage to the money-lenders of the East, and
in the thousands of independent country homes annually surrendered as
hostages to their hands, another evidence of that centralization that is
drinking up the life-blood of this broad Republic.
Let us go one step further. All protest as to our industrial condition
is met with the statement that America is startling the world with its
growth and progress. Is this growth symmetrical—is this progress shared
by every class? Let the tax-books of Georgia answer. This year, for the
first time since 1860, our taxable wealth is equal to that with which,
excluding our slaves, we entered the civil war—$368,000,000. There is
cause for rejoicing in this wonderful growth from the ashes and
desolation of twenty years ago, but the tax-books show that while the
towns and cities are $60,000,000 richer than they were in 1860, the
farmers are $50,000,000 poorer.
Who produced this wealth? In 1865, when our towns and cities were
paralyzed, when not a mine or quarry was open, hardly a mill or a
factory running; when we had neither money or credit, it was the
farmers’ cotton that started the mills of industry and of trade. Since
that desolate year, when, urging his horse down the furrow, plowing
through fields on which he had staggered amid the storm of battle, he
began the rehabilitation of Georgia with no friend near him save nature
that smiled at his kindly touch, and God that sent him the message of
cheer through the rustling leaves, he has dug from the soil of Georgia
more than $1,000,000,000 worth of product. From this mighty resource
great cities have been builded and countless fortunes amassed—but amid
all the splendor he has remained the hewer of wood and the drawer of
water. He had made the cities $60,000,000 richer than they were when the
war began, and he finds himself, in the sweat of whose brow this miracle
was wrought, $50,000,000 poorer than he then was. Perhaps not a farmer
in this audience knew this fact—but I doubt if there is one in the
audience who has not felt in his daily life the disadvantage that in
twenty short years has brought about this stupendous difference. Let the
figures speak for themselves. The farmer—the first figure to stumble
amid the desolate dawn of our new life and to salute the coming
day—hurrying to market with the harvest of his hasty planting that
Georgia might once more enter the lists of the living States and buy the
wherewithal to still her wants and clothe her nakedness—always
apparently the master of the situation, has he not been really its
slave, when he finds himself at the end of twenty hard and faithful
years $110,000,000 out of balance?
Now, let us review the situation a moment. I have shown you, first, that
the notable drift of population is to the loss of village and country,
and the undue and dangerous growth of the city; second, that the notable
movement of finance is that which is bringing villages and country under
mortgage to the city; and third, that they who handle the products for
sale profit more thereby than those who create them—the difference in
one State in twenty years reaching the enormous sum of $110,000,000. Are
these healthy tendencies? Do they not demand the earnest and thoughtful
consideration of every patriotic citizen? The problem of the day is to
check these three currents that are already pouring against the bulwarks
of our peace and prosperity. To anchor the farmer to his land and the
villager to his home; to enable him to till the land under equal
conditions and to hold that home in independence; to save with his hands
the just proportion of his labor, that he may sow in content and reap in
justice,—this is what we need. The danger of the day is centralization,
its salvation diffusion. Cut that word deep in your heart. This Republic
differs from Russia only because the powers centralized there in one man
are here diffused among the people. Western Ohio is happy and tranquil,
while Chicago is feverish and dangerous, because the people diffused in
the towns and the villages of the one are centralized and packed in the
tenements of the other; but of all centralization that menaces our peace
and threatens our liberties, is the consolidation of capital—and of all
the diffusion that is needed in this Republic, congesting at so many
points, is the leveling of our colossal fortunes and the diffusion of
our gathered wealth amid the great middle classes of this people. As
this question underruns the three tendencies we have been discussing,
let us consider it a moment.
Few men comprehend the growth of private fortunes in this country, and
the encroachments they have made on the rest of the people. Take one
instance: A man in Chicago that had a private fortune secured control of
all the wheat in the country, and advanced the price until flour went up
three dollars a barrel. When he collected $4,000,000 of this forced
tribute from the people, he opened his corner and released the wheat,
and the world, forgetting the famishing children from whose hungry lips
he had stolen the crust, praised him as the king of finance and trade.
Let us analyze this deal. The farmer who raised the wheat got not one
cent of the added profit. The mills that ground it not one cent. Every
dollar went to swell the toppling fortunes of him who never sowed it to
the ground, nor fed it to the thundering wheels, but who knew it only as
the chance instrument of his infamous scheme. Why, our fathers declared
war against England, their mother country, from whose womb they came,
because she levied two cents a pound on our tea, and yet, without a
murmur, we submit to ten times this tax placed on the bread of our
mouths, and levied by a private citizen for no reason save his greed,
and no right save his might. Were a man to enter an humble home in
England, bind the father helpless, stamp out the fire on the
hearthstone, empty the scanty larder, and leave the family for three
weeks cold and hungry and helpless, he would be dealt with by the law;
and yet four men in New York cornered the world’s cotton crop and held
it until the English spindles were stopped and 14,000,000 operatives
sent idle and empty-handed to their homes, to divide their last crust
with their children, and then sit down and suffer until the greed of the
speculators was filled. The sugar refineries combined their plants at a
cost of $14,000,000, and so raised the price of sugar that they made the
first year $9,500,000 profit, and since then have advanced it rapidly
until we sweeten our coffee absolutely in their caprice. When the
bagging mills were threatened with a reduced tariff, they made a trust
and openly boasted that they intended to make one season’s profits pay
the entire cost of their mills—and these precious villains, whom thus
far the lightnings have failed to blast, having carried out their
infamous boast, organized for a deeper steal this season. And so it
goes. There is not a thing we eat or drink, nor an article we must have
for the comfort of our homes, that may not be thus seized and controlled
and made an instrument for the shameless plundering of the people. It is
a shame—this people patient and cheerful under the rise or fall of
prices that come with the failure of God’s season’s charge as its
compensation—or under the advance at the farm which enriches the farmer,
or under that competitive demand which bespeaks brisk prosperity—this
people made the prey and the sport of plunderers who levy tribute
through a system that mocks at God’s recurring rains, knows not the
farmer, and locks competition in the grasp of monopoly. And the
millions, thus wrung from the people, loaned back to them at usury,
laying the blight of the mortgage on their homes, and the obligation of
debt on their manhood. Talk about the timidity of capital. That is a
forgotten phrase. In the power and irresponsibility of this sudden and
enormous wealth is bred an insolence that knows no bounds. “The public
be damned!” was the sentiment of the plutocrats, speaking through the
voice of Vanderbilt’s millions. In cornering the product and levying the
tribute—in locking up abundant supply until the wheels of industry
stop—in oppressing through trusts, and domineering in the strength of
corporate power, the plutocrats do what no political party would dare
attempt and what no government on this earth would enforce. The Czar of
Russia would not dare hold up a product until the mill-wheels were idle,
or lay an unusual tax on bread and meat to replenish his coffers, and
yet these things our plutocrats, flagrant and irresponsible, do day
after day until public indignation is indignant and shame is lost in
wonder.
And when an outraged people turn to government for help what do they
find? Their government in the hands of a party that is in sympathy with
their oppressors—that was returned to power with votes purchased with
their money—and whose confessed leaders declared that trusts are largely
private concerns with which the government had naught to do. Not only is
the dominant party the apologist of the plutocrats and the beneficiary
of their crimes, but it is based on that principle of centralization
through which they came into life and on which alone they can exist. It
holds that sovereignty should be taken from the States and lodged with
the nation—that political powers and privileges should be wrested from
the people and guarded at the capital. It distrusts the people, and even
now demands that your ballot-boxes shall be hedged about by its
bayonets. It declares that a strong government is better than a free
government, and that national authority, backed by national armies and
treasury, is a better guarantee of peace and prosperity and liberty and
enlightenment diffused among the people. To defend this policy, that
cannot be maintained by argument or sustained by the love or confidence
of the people, it rallies under its flag the mercenaries of the
Republic, the syndicate, the trust, the monopolist, and the plutocrat,
and strengthening them by grant and protection, rejoices as they grow
richer and the people grow poorer. Confident in the debauching power of
money and the unscrupulous audacity of their creatures, they catch the
spirit of Vanderbilt’s defiance and call aloud from their ramparts, “the
people be damned!” I charge that this party has bought its way for
twenty years. Its nucleus was the passion that survived the war—and
around this it has gathered the protected manufacturer, the pensioned
soldier, the licensed monopolist, the privileged corporation, the
unchallenged trust—all whom power can daunt, or money can buy, and with
these in close and constant phalanx it holds the government against the
people. Not a man in all its ranks that is not influenced by prejudice
or bought by privilege.
What a spectacle, my countrymen! This free Republic in the hands of a
party that withdraws sovereignty from the people that its own authority
may be made supreme—that fans the smouldering embers of war, and loosing
among the people the dogs of privilege and monopoly to hunt, and harrow
and rend, that its lines may be made stronger and its ramparts
fortified. And now, it is committed to a crime that is without precedent
or parallel in the history of any people, and this crime it is obliged
by its own necessity as well as by its pledge to commit as soon as it
gets the full reins of power. This crime is hidden in the bill known as
the service pension bill, which pensions every man who enlisted for
sixty days for the Union army. Let us examine this pension list. Twelve
years ago it footed $46,000,000. Last year it was $81,000,000. This year
it has already run to over $100,000,000. Of this amount Georgia pays
about $3,500,000 a year. Think of it. The money that her people have
paid, through indirect taxation into the treasury, is given, let us say
to Iowa, for that State just equals Georgia in population. Every year
$3,500,000 wrung from her pockets and sent into Iowa as pensions for her
soldiers. Since 1865, out of her poverty, Georgia has paid $51,000,000
as pensions to Northern soldiers—one-sixth of the value of her whole
property. And now it is proposed to enlarge the pension list until it
includes every man who enlisted for sixty days. They will not fail. The
last Congress passed a pension bill that Commissioner Black—himself a
gallant Union general—studied deliberately, and then told the President
that if he signed it, it would raise the pension list to $200,000,000,
and had it not been for the love of the people that ran in the veins of
Grover Cleveland and the courage of Democracy which flamed in his heart,
that bill would have been law to-day. A worse bill will be offered.
There is a surplus of $120,000,000 in the treasury. While that remains
it endangers the protective tariff, behind which the trained captains of
the Republican party muster their men. But let the pension list be
lifted to $200,000,000 a year. Then the surplus is gone and a deficiency
created, and the protective tariff must be not only perpetuated but
deepened, and the vigilance of the spies and collectors increased to
meet the demands of the government. And back of it all will be mustered
the army of a million and a half pensioners, drawing their booty from
the Republican party and giving it in turn their purchased allegiance
and support.
My countrymen, a thousand times I have thought of that historic scene
beneath the apple-tree at Appomattox, of Lee’s 8000 ragged, half-starved
immortals, going home to begin anew amid the ashes of their homes, and
the graves of their dead, the weary struggle for existence, and Grant’s
68,000 splendid soldiers, well fed and equipped, going home to riot amid
the plenty of a grateful and prosperous people, and I have thought how
hard it was that out of our poverty we should be taxed to pay their
pension, and to divide with this rich people the crust we scraped up
from the ashes of our homes. And I have thought when their maimed and
helpless soldiers were sheltered in superb homes, and lapped in luxury,
while our poor cripples limped along the highway or hid their shame in
huts, or broke bitter bread in the county poor-house, how hard it was
that, of all the millions we send them annually, we can save not one
dollar to go to our old heroes, who deserve so much and get so little.
And yet we made no complaint. We were willing that every Union soldier
made helpless by the war should have his pension and his home, and thank
God, without setting our crippled soldiers on the curbstone of distant
Babylons to beg, as blind Belisarius did, from the passing stranger. We
have provided them a home in which they can rest in honorable peace
until God has called them hence to a home not made with hands, eternal
in the heavens. We have not complained that our earnings have gone to
pension Union soldiers—the maimed soldiers of the Union armies. But the
scheme to rob the people that every man who enlisted for sixty days, or
his widow, shall be supported at public expense is an outrage that must
not be submitted to. It is not patriotism—it is politics. It is not
honesty—it is plunder. The South has played a patient and a waiting game
for twenty years, fearing to protest against what she knew to be wrong
in the fear that she would be misunderstood. I fear that she has gained
little by this course save the contempt of her enemies. The time has
come when she should stand upright among the States of this Republic and
declare her mind and stand by her convictions. She must not stand silent
while this crowning outrage is perpetrated. It means that the Republican
party will loot the treasury to recruit its ranks—that $70,000,000 a
year shall be taken from the South to enrich the North, thus building up
one section against another—that the protective tariff shall be
deepened, thus building one class against another, and that the party of
trusts and monopoly shall be kept in power, the autonomy of the Republic
lost, the government centralized, the oligarchs established, and justice
to the people postponed. But this party will not prevail, even though
its pension bill should pass, and its pretorial God be established in
every Northern State. It was Louis XVI. who peddled the taxing
privileges to his friends, and when the people protested surrounded
himself with an army of Swiss mercenaries. His minister, Neckar, said to
him: “Sire, I beseech you send away these Swiss and trust your people”;
but the king, confident in his strength and phalanx, buckled it close
about him and plundered the people until his head paid the penalty of
his crime. So this party, bartering privileges and setting up classes,
may feel secure as it closes the ranks of its mercenaries, but some day
the great American heart will burst with righteous wrath, and the voice
of the people, which is the voice of God, will challenge the traitors,
and the great masses will rise in their might, and breaking down the
defenses of the oligarchs, will hurl them from power and restore this
Republic to the old moorings from which it had been swept by the storm.
The government can protect its citizens. It is of the people, and it
shall not perish from the face of the earth. It can top off these
colossal fortunes and, by an income tax, retard their growth. It can set
a limit to personal and corporate wealth. It can take trusts and
syndicates by the throat. It can shatter monopoly; it can equalize the
burden of taxation; it can distribute its privileges impartially; it can
clothe with credit its land now discredited at its banks; it can lift
the burdens from the farmer’s shoulders, give him equal strength to bear
them—it can trust the people in whose name this Republic was founded; in
whose courage it was defended; in whose wisdom it has been administered,
and whose stricken love and confidence it can not survive.
But the government, no matter what it does, does not do all that is
needed, nor the most; that is conceded, for all true reform must begin
with the people at their homes. A few Sundays ago I stood on a hill in
Washington. My heart thrilled as I looked on the towering marble of my
country’s Capitol, and a mist gathered in my eyes as, standing there, I
thought of its tremendous significance and the powers there assembled,
and the responsibilities there centered—its presidents, its congress,
its courts, its gathered treasure, its army, its navy, and its
60,000,000 of citizens. It seemed to me the best and mightiest sight
that the sun could find in its wheeling course—this majestic home of a
Republic that has taught the world its best lessons of liberty—and I
felt that if wisdom, and justice, and honor abided therein, the world
would stand indebted to this temple on which my eyes rested, and in
which the ark of my covenant was lodged for its final uplifting and
regeneration.
A few days later I visited a country home. A modest, quiet house
sheltered by great trees and set in a circle of field and meadow,
gracious with the promise of harvest—barns and cribs well filled and the
old smoke-house odorous with treasure—the fragrance of pink and
hollyhock mingling with the aroma of garden and orchard, and resonant
with the hum of bees and poultry’s busy clucking—inside the house,
thrift, comfort and that cleanliness that is next to godliness—the
restful beds, the open fireplace, the books and papers, and the old
clock that had held its steadfast pace amid the frolic of weddings, that
had welcomed in steady measure the newborn babes of the family, and kept
company with the watchers of the sick bed, and had ticked the solemn
requiem of the dead; and the well-worn Bible that, thumbed by fingers
long since stilled, and blurred with tears of eyes long since closed,
held the simple annals of the family, and the heart and conscience of
the home. Outside stood the master, strong and wholesome and upright;
wearing no man’s collar; with no mortgage on his roof, and no lien on
his ripening harvest; pitching his crops in his own wisdom, and selling
them in his own time in his chosen market; master of his lands and
master of himself. Near by stood his aged father, happy in the heart and
home of his son. And as they started to the house the old man’s hands
rested on the young man’s shoulder, touching it with the knighthood of
the fourth commandment, and laying there the unspeakable blessing of an
honored and grateful father. As they drew near the door the old mother
appeared; the sunset falling on her face, softening its wrinkles and its
tenderness, lighting up her patient eyes, and the rich music of her
heart trembling on her lips, as in simple phrase she welcomed her
husband and son to their home. Beyond was the good wife, true of touch
and tender, happy amid her household cares, clean of heart and
conscience, the helpmate and the buckler of her husband. And the
children, strong and sturdy, trooping down the lane with the lowing
herd, or weary of simple sport, seeking, as truant birds do, the quiet
of the old home nest. And I saw the night descend on that home, falling
gently as from the wings of the unseen dove. And the stars swarmed in
the bending skies—the trees thrilled with the cricket’s cry—the restless
bird called from the neighboring wood—and the father, a simple man of
God, gathering the family about him, read from the Bible the old, old
story of love and faith, and then went down in prayer, the baby hidden
amid the folds of its mother’s dress, and closed the record of that
simple day by calling down the benediction of God on the family and the
home!
And as I gazed the memory of the great Capitol faded from my brain.
Forgotten its treasure and its splendor. And I said, “Surely here—here
in the homes of the people is lodged the ark of the covenant of my
country. Here is its majesty and its strength. Here the beginning of its
power and the end of its responsibility.” The homes of the people; let
us keep them pure and independent, and all will be well with the
Republic. Here is the lesson our foes may learn—here is work the
humblest and weakest hands may do. Let us in simple thrift and economy
make our homes independent. Let us in frugal industry make them
self-sustaining. In sacrifice and denial let us keep them free from debt
and obligation. Let us make them homes of refinement in which we shall
teach our daughters that modesty and patience and gentleness are the
charms of woman. Let us make them temples of liberty, and teach our sons
that an honest conscience is every man’s first political law. That his
sovereignty rests beneath his hat, and that no splendor can rob him and
no force justify the surrender of the simplest right of a free and
independent citizen. And above all, let us honor God in our homes—anchor
them close in His love. Build His altars above our hearthstones, uphold
them in the set and simple faith of our fathers and crown them with the
Bible—that book of books in which all the ways of life are made straight
and the mystery of death is made plain. The home is the source of our
national life. Back of the national Capitol and above it stands the
home. Back of the President and above him stands the citizen. What the
home is, this and nothing else will the Capitol be. What the citizen
wills, this and nothing else will the President be.
Now, my friends, I am no farmer. I have not sought to teach you the
details of your work, for I know little of them. I have not commended
your splendid local advantages, for that I shall do elsewhere. I have
not discussed the differences between the farmer and other classes, for
I believe in essential things there is no difference between them, and
that minor differences should be sacrificed to the greater interest that
depends on a united people. I seek not to divide our people, but to
unite them. I should despise myself if I pandered to the prejudice of
either class to win the applause of the other.
But I have noted these great movements that destroy the equilibrium and
threaten the prosperity of my country, and standing above passion and
prejudice or demagoguery I invoke every true citizen, fighting from his
hearthstone outward, with the prattle of his children on his ear, and
the hand of his wife and mother closely clasped, to determine here to
make his home sustaining and independent, and to pledge eternal
hostility to the forces that threaten our liberties, and the party that
stands behind it.
When I think of the tremendous force of the currents against which we
must fight, of the great political party that impels that fight, of the
countless host of mercenaries that fight under its flag, of the enormous
powers of government privilege and monopoly that back them up, I confess
my heart sinks within me, and I grow faint. But I remember that the
servant of Elisha looked abroad from Samaria and beheld the hosts that
encompassed the city, and said in agonized fear: “Alas, master, what
shall we do?” and the answer of Elisha was the answer of every brave man
and faithful heart in all ages: “Fear not, for they that be with us are
more than they that be with them,” and this faith opened the eyes of the
servant of the man of God, and he looked up again, and lo, the air was
filled with chariots of fire, and the mountains were filled with
horsemen, and they compassed the city about as a mighty and
unconquerable host. Let us fight in such faith, and fear not. The air
all about us is filled with chariots of unseen allies, and the mountains
are thronged with unseen knights that shall fight with us. Fear not, for
they that be with us are more than they that be with them. Buckle on
your armor, gird about your loins, stand upright and dauntless while I
summon you to the presence of the immortal dead. Your fathers and mine
yet live, though they speak not, and will consecrate this air with their
wheeling chariots, and above them and beyond them to the Lord God
Almighty, King of the Hosts in whose unhindered splendor we stand this
morning. Look up to them, be of good cheer, and faint not, for they
shall fight with us when we strike for liberty and truth, and all the
world, though it be banded against us, shall not prevail against them.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
AT THE BOSTON BANQUET.
-------
IN HIS SPEECH AT THE ANNUAL BANQUET OF THE BOSTON MERCHANTS’ ASSOCIATION
IN DECEMBER, 1889, MR. GRADY SAID:
MR. PRESIDENT: Bidden by your invitation to a discussion of the race
problem—forbidden by occasion to make a political speech—I appreciate in
trying to reconcile orders with propriety the predicament of the little
maid who, bidden to learn to swim, was yet adjured, “Now, go, my
darling, hang your clothes on a hickory limb, and don’t go near the
water.”
The stoutest apostle of the church, they say, is the missionary, and the
missionary, wherever he unfurls his flag, will never find himself in
deeper need of unction and address than I, bidden to-night to plant the
standard of a Southern Democrat in Boston’s banquet hall, and discuss
the problem of the races in the home of Phillips and of Sumner. But, Mr.
President, if a purpose to speak in perfect frankness and sincerity; if
earnest understanding of the vast interests involved; if a consecrating
sense of what disaster may follow further misunderstanding and
estrangement, if these may be counted to steady undisciplined speech and
to strengthen an untried arm—then, sir, I find the courage to proceed.
Happy am I that this mission has brought my feet at last to press New
England’s historic soil, and my eyes to the knowledge of her beauty and
her thrift. Here, within touch of Plymouth Rock and Bunker Hill—where
Webster thundered and Longfellow sang, Emerson thought and Channing
preached—here in the cradle of American letters, and almost of American
liberty, I hasten to make the obeisance that every American owes New
England when first he stands uncovered in her mighty presence. Strange
apparition! This stern and unique figure—carved from the ocean and the
wilderness—its majesty kindling and growing amid the storms of winters
and of wars—until at last the gloom was broken, its beauty disclosed in
the sunshine, and the heroic workers rested at its base—while startled
kings and emperors gazed and marveled that from the rude touch of this
handful, cast on a bleak and unknown shore, should have come the
embodied genius of human government, and the perfected model of human
liberty! God bless the memory of those immortal workers—and prosper the
fortunes of their living sons—and perpetuate the inspiration of their
handiwork.
Two years ago, sir, I spoke some words in New York that caught the
attention of the North. As I stand here to reiterate, as I have done
everywhere, every word I then uttered—to declare that the sentiments I
then avowed were universally approved in the South—I realize that the
confidence begotten by that speech is largely responsible for my
presence here to-night. I should dishonor myself if I betrayed that
confidence by uttering one insincere word, or by withholding one
essential element of the truth. Apropos of this last, let me confess,
Mr. President—before the praise of New England has died on my lips—that
I believe the best product of her present life is the procession of
17,000 Vermont Democrats that for twenty-two years, undiminished by
death, unrecruited by birth or conversion, have marched over their
rugged hills, cast their Democratic ballots, and gone back home to pray
for their unregenerate neighbors, and awake to read the record of 26,000
Republican majority. May the God of the helpless and the heroic help
them—and may their sturdy tribe increase!
Far to the south, Mr. President, separated from this section by a line,
once defined in irrepressible difference, once traced in fratricidal
blood, and now, thank God, but a vanishing shadow, lies the fairest and
richest domain of this earth. It is the home of a brave and hospitable
people. There, is centered all that can please or prosper humankind. A
perfect climate, above a fertile soil, yields to the husbandman every
product of the temperate zone. There, by night the cotton whitens
beneath the stars, and by day the wheat locks the sunshine in its
bearded sheaf. In the same field the clover steals the fragrance of the
wind, and the tobacco catches the quick aroma of the rains. There, are
mountains stored with exhaustless treasures; forests, vast and primeval,
and rivers that, tumbling or loitering, run wanton to the sea. Of the
three essential items of all industries—cotton, iron and wool—that
region has easy control. In cotton, a fixed monopoly—in iron, proven
supremacy—in timber, the reserve supply of the Republic. From this
assured and permanent advantage, against which artificial conditions
cannot much longer prevail, has grown an amazing system of industries.
Not maintained by human contrivance of tariff or capital, afar off from
the fullest and cheapest source of supply, but resting in Divine
assurance, within touch of field and mine and forest—not set amid costly
farms from which competition has driven the farmer in despair, but amid
cheap and sunny lands, rich with agriculture, to which neither season
nor soil has set a limit—this system of industries is mounting to a
splendor that shall dazzle and illumine the world.
That, sir, is the picture and the promise of my home—a land better and
fairer than I have told you, and yet but fit setting, in its material
excellence, for the loyal and gentle quality of its citizenship. Against
that, sir, we have New England, recruiting the Republic from its sturdy
loins, shaking from its overcrowded hives new swarms of workers and
touching this land all over with its energy and its courage. And yet,
while in the Eldorado of which I have told you, but 15 per cent. of
lands are cultivated, its mines scarcely touched and its population so
scant that, were it set equidistant, the sound of the human voice could
not be heard from Virginia to Texas—while on the threshold of nearly
every house in New England stands a son, seeking with troubled eyes some
new land in which to carry his modest patrimony, the strange fact
remains that in 1880 the South had fewer Northern-born citizens than she
had in 1870—fewer in ’70 than in ’60. Why is this? Why is it, sir,
though the sectional line be now but a mist that the breath may dispel,
fewer men of the North have crossed it over to the South than when it
was crimson with the best blood of the Republic, or even when the
slaveholder stood guard every inch of its way?
There can be but one answer. It is the very problem we are now to
consider. The key that opens that problem will unlock to the world the
fairest half of this Republic, and free the halted feet of thousands
whose eyes are already kindling with its beauty. Better than this, it
will open the hearts of brothers for thirty years estranged, and clasp
in lasting comradeship a million hands now withheld in doubt. Nothing,
sir, but this problem, and the suspicions it breeds, hinders a clear
understanding and a perfect union. Nothing else stands between us and
such love as bound Georgia and Massachusetts at Valley Forge and
Yorktown, chastened by the sacrifices at Manassas and Gettysburg, and
illumined with the coming of better work and a nobler destiny than was
ever wrought with the sword or sought at the cannon’s mouth.
If this does not invite your patient hearing to-night—hear one thing
more. My people, your brothers in the South—brothers in blood, in
destiny, in all that is best in our past and future—are so beset with
this problem that their very existence depends upon its right solution.
Nor are they wholly to blame for its presence. The slave-ships of the
Republic sailed from your ports—the slaves worked in our fields. You
will not defend the traffic, nor I the institution. But I do hereby
declare that in its wise and humane administration, in lifting the slave
to heights of which he had not dreamed in his savage home, and giving
him a happiness he has not yet found in freedom—our fathers left their
sons a saving and excellent heritage. In the storm of war this
institution was lost. I thank God as heartily as you do that human
slavery is gone forever from the American soil. But the freedman
remains. With him a problem without precedent or parallel. Note its
appalling conditions. Two utterly dissimilar races on the same soil—with
equal political and civil rights—almost equal in numbers, but terribly
unequal in intelligence and responsibility—each pledged against
fusion—one for a century in servitude to the other, and freed at last by
a desolating war—the experiment sought by neither, but approached by
both with doubt—these are the conditions. Under these, adverse at every
point, we are required to carry these two races in peace and honor to
the end.
Never, sir, has such a task been given to mortal stewardship. Never
before in this Republic has the white race divided on the rights of an
alien race. The red man was cut down as a weed, because he hindered the
way of the American citizen. The yellow man was shut out of this
Republic because he is an alien and inferior. The red man was owner of
the land—the yellow man highly civilized and assimilable—but they
hindered both sections and are gone! But the black man, affecting but
one section, is clothed with every privilege of government and pinned to
the soil, and my people commanded to make good at any hazard, and at any
cost, his full and equal heirship of American privilege and prosperity.
It matters not that every other race has been routed or excluded,
without rhyme or reason. It matters not that wherever the whites and
blacks have touched, in any era or in any clime, there has been
irreconcilable violence. It matters not that no two races, however
similar, have lived anywhere at any time on the same soil with equal
rights in peace! In spite of these things we are commanded to make good
this change of American policy which has not perhaps changed American
prejudice—to make certain here what has elsewhere been impossible
between whites and blacks—and to reverse, under the very worst
conditions, the universal verdict of racial history. And driven, sir, to
this superhuman task with an impatience that brooks no delay—a rigor
that accepts no excuse—and a suspicion that discourages frankness and
sincerity. We do not shrink from this trial. It is so interwoven with
our industrial fabric that we cannot disentangle it if we would—so bound
up in our honorable obligation to the world, that we would not if we
could. Can we solve it? The God who gave it into our hands, He alone can
know. But this the weakest and wisest of us do know; we cannot solve it
with less than your tolerant and patient sympathy—with less than the
knowledge that the blood that runs in your veins is our blood—and that
when we have done our best, whether the issue be lost or won, we shall
feel your strong arms about us and hear the beating of your approving
hearts.
The resolute, clear-headed, broad-minded men of the South—the men whose
genius made glorious every page of the first seventy years of American
history—whose courage and fortitude you tested in five years of the
fiercest war—whose energy has made bricks without straw and spread
splendor amid the ashes of their war-wasted homes—these men wear this
problem in their hearts and their brains, by day and by night. They
realize, as you cannot, what this problem means—what they owe to this
kindly and dependent race—the measure of their debt to the world in
whose despite they defended and maintained slavery. And though their
feet are hindered in its undergrowth, and their march encumbered with
its burdens, they have lost neither the patience from which comes
clearness, nor the faith from which comes courage. Nor, sir, when in
passionate moments is disclosed to them that vague and awful shadow,
with its lurid abysses and its crimson stains, into which I pray God
they may never go, are they struck with more of apprehension than is
needed to complete their consecration!
Such is the temper of my people. But what of the problem itself? Mr.
President, we need not go one step further unless you concede right here
the people I speak for are as honest, as sensible, and as just as your
people, seeking as earnestly as you would in their place, to rightly
solve the problem that touches them at every vital point. If you insist
that they are ruffians, blindly striving with bludgeon and shotgun to
plunder and oppress a race, then I shall sacrifice my self-respect and
tax your patience in vain. But admit that they are men of common sense
and common honesty—wisely modifying an environment they cannot wholly
disregard—guiding and controlling as best they can the vicious and
irresponsible of either race—compensating error with frankness, and
retrieving in patience what they lose in passion—and conscious all the
time that wrong means ruin,—admit this, and we may reach an
understanding to-night.
The President of the United States in his late message to Congress,
discussing the plea that the South should be left to solve this problem,
asks: “Are they at work upon it? What solution do they offer? When will
the black man cast a free ballot? When will he have the civil rights
that are his?” I shall not here protest against the partisanry that, for
the first time in our history in time of peace, has stamped with the
great seal of our government a stigma upon the people of a great and
loyal section, though I gratefully remember that the great dead soldier
who held the helm of state for the eight stormiest years of
reconstruction never found need for such a step; and though there is no
personal sacrifice I would not make to remove this cruel and unjust
imputation on my people from the archives of my country! But, sir,
backed by a record on every page of which is progress, I venture to make
earnest and respectful answer to the questions that are asked. I bespeak
your patience, while with vigorous plainness of speech, seeking your
judgment rather than your applause, I proceed step by step. We give to
the world this year a crop of 7,500,000 bales of cotton, worth
$45,000,000, and its cash equivalent in grain, grasses and fruit. This
enormous crop could not have come from the hands of sullen and
discontented labor. It comes from peaceful fields, in which laughter and
gossip rise above the hum of industry, and contentment runs with the
singing plow.
It is claimed that this ignorant labor is defrauded of its just hire. I
present the tax-books of Georgia, which show that the negro, 25 years
ago a slave, has in Georgia alone $10,000,000 of assessed property,
worth twice that much. Does not that record honor him, and vindicate his
neighbors? What people, penniless, illiterate, has done so well? For
every Afro-American agitator, stirring the strife in which alone he
prospers, I can show you a thousand negroes, happy in their cabin homes,
tilling their own land by day, and at night taking from the lips of
their children the helpful message their State sends them from the
schoolhouse door. And the schoolhouse itself bears testimony. In Georgia
we added last year $250,000 to the school fund, making a total of more
than $1,000,000—and this in the face of prejudice not yet conquered—of
the fact that the whites are assessed for $368,000,000, the blacks for
$10,000,000, and yet 49 per cent. of the beneficiaries are black
children—and in the doubt of many wise men if education helps, or can
help, our problem. Charleston, with her taxable values cut half in two
since 1860, pays more in proportion for public schools than Boston.
Although it is easier to give much out of much than little out of
little, the South with one-seventh of the taxable property of the
country, with relatively larger debt, having received only one-twelfth
as much public land, and having back of its tax-books none of the half
billion of bonds that enrich the North—and though it pays annually
$26,000,000 to your section as pensions—yet gives nearly one-sixth of
the public-school fund. The South since 1865 has spent $122,000,000 in
education, and this year is pledged to $37,000,000 for state and city
schools, although the blacks paying one-thirtieth of the taxes get
nearly one-half of the fund.
Go into our fields and see whites and blacks working side by side. On
our buildings in the same squad. In our shops at the same forge. Often
the blacks crowd the whites from work, or lower wages by the greater
need or simpler habits, and yet are permitted because we want to bar
them from no avenue in which their feet are fitted to tread. They could
not there be elected orators of the white universities, as they have
been here, but they do enter there a hundred useful trades that are
closed against them here. We hold it better and wiser to tend the weeds
in the garden than to water the exotic in the window. In the South,
there are negro lawyers, teachers, editors, dentists, doctors,
preachers, multiplying with the increasing ability of their race to
support them. In villages and towns they have their military companies
equipped from the armories of the State, their churches and societies
built and supported largely by their neighbors. What is the testimony of
the courts? In penal legislation we have steadily reduced felonies to
misdemeanors, and have led the world in mitigating punishment for crime,
that we might save, as far as possible, this dependent race from its own
weakness. In our penitentiary record 60 per cent. of the prosecutors are
negroes, and in every court the negro criminal strikes the colored
juror, that white men may judge his case. In the North, one negro in
every 1865 is in jail—in the South only one in 446. In the North the
percentage of negro prisoners is six times as great as native whites—in
the South, only four times as great. If prejudice wrongs him in southern
courts, the record shows it to be deeper in northern courts.
I assert here, and a bar as intelligent and upright as the bar of
Massachusetts will solemnly indorse my assertion, that in the southern
courts, from highest to lowest, pleading for life, liberty or property,
the negro has distinct advantage because he is a negro, apt to be
over-reached, oppressed—and that this advantage reaches from the juror
in making his verdict to the judge in measuring his sentence. Now, Mr.
President, can it be seriously maintained that we are terrorizing the
people from whose willing hands come every year $1,000,000,000 of farm
crops? Or have robbed a people, who twenty-five years from unrewarded
slavery have amassed in one State $20,000,000 of property? Or that we
intend to oppress the people we are arming every day? Or deceive them
when we are educating them to the utmost limit of our ability? Or outlaw
them when we work side by side with them? Or re-enslave them under legal
forms when for their benefit we have even imprudently narrowed the limit
of felonies and mitigated the severity of law? My fellow countryman, as
you yourself may sometimes have to appeal to the bar of human judgment
for justice and for right, give to my people to-night the fair and
unanswerable conclusion of these incontestible facts.
But it is claimed that under this fair seeming there is disorder and
violence. This I admit. And there will be until there is one ideal
community on earth after which we may pattern. But how widely it is
misjudged! It is hard to measure with exactness whatever touches the
negro. His helplessness, his isolation, his century of servitude, these
dispose us to emphasize and magnify his wrongs. This disposition,
inflamed by prejudice and partisanry, has led to injustice and delusion.
Lawless men may ravage a county in Iowa and it is accepted as an
incident—in the South a drunken row is declared to be the fixed habit of
the community. Regulators may whip vagabonds in Indiana by platoons, and
it scarcely arrests attention—a chance collision in the South among
relatively the same classes is gravely accepted as evidence that one
race is destroying the other. We might as well claim that the Union was
ungrateful to the colored soldiers who followed its flag, because a
Grand Army post in Connecticut closed its doors to a negro veteran, as
for you to give racial significance to every incident in the South, or
to accept exceptional grounds as the rule of our society. I am not one
of those who becloud American honor with the parade of the outrages of
either section, and belie American character by declaring them to be
significant and representative. I prefer to maintain that they are
neither, and stand for nothing but the passion and the sin of our poor
fallen humanity. If society, like a machine, were no stronger than its
weakest part, I should despair of both sections. But, knowing that
society, sentient and responsible in every fibre, can mend and repair
until the whole has the strength of the best, I despair of neither.
These gentlemen who come with me here, knit into Georgia’s busy life as
they are, never saw, I dare assert, an outrage committed on a negro! And
if they did, not one of you would be swifter to prevent or punish. It is
through them, and the men who think with them—making nine-tenths of
every southern community—that these two races have been carried thus far
with less of violence than would have been possible anywhere else on
earth. And in their fairness and courage and steadfastness—more than in
all the laws that can be passed or all the bayonets that can be
mustered—is the hope of our future.
When will the black cast a free ballot? When ignorance anywhere is not
dominated by the will of the intelligent; when the laborer anywhere
casts a vote unhindered by his boss; when the vote of the poor anywhere
is not influenced by the power of the rich; when the strong and the
steadfast do not everywhere control the suffrage of the weak and
shiftless—then and not till then will the ballot of the negro be free.
The white people of the South are banded, Mr. President, not in
prejudice against the blacks—not in sectional estrangement, not in the
hope of political dominion—but in a deep and abiding necessity. Here is
this vast ignorant and purchasable vote—clannish, credulous, impulsive
and passionate—tempting every art of the demagogue, but insensible to
the appeal of the statesman. Wrongly started, in that it was led into
alienation from its neighbor and taught to rely on the protection of an
outside force, it cannot be merged and lost in the two great parties
through logical currents, for it lacks political conviction and even
that information on which conviction must be based. It must remain a
faction—strong enough in every community to control on the slightest
division of the whites. Under that division it becomes the prey of the
cunning and unscrupulous of both parties. Its credulity is imposed on,
its patience inflamed, its cupidity tempted, its impulses
misdirected—and even its superstition made to play its part in a
campaign in which every interest of society is jeopardized and every
approach to the ballot-box debauched. It is against such campaigns as
this—the folly and the bitterness and the danger of which every southern
community has drunk deeply—that the white people of the South are banded
together. Just as you in Massachusetts would be banded if 300,000 black
men, not one in a hundred able to read his ballot—banded in race
instinct, holding against you the memory of a century of slavery, taught
by your late conquerors to distrust and oppose you, had already
travestied legislation from your statehouse, and in every species of
folly or villainy had wasted your substance and exhausted your credit.
But admitting the right of the whites to unite against this tremendous
menace, we are challenged with the smallness of our vote. This has long
been flippantly charged to be evidence, and has now been solemnly and
officially declared to be proof of political turpitude and baseness on
our part. Let us see. Virginia—a State now under fierce assault for this
alleged crime—cast in 1888 75 per cent. of her vote. Massachusetts, the
State in which I speak, 60 per cent. of her vote. Was it suppression in
Virginia and natural causes in Massachusetts? Last month Virginia cast
69 per cent. of her vote, and Massachusetts, fighting in every district,
cast only 49 per cent. of hers. If Virginia is condemned because 31 per
cent. of her vote was silent, how shall this State escape in which 51
per cent. was dumb? Let us enlarge this comparison. The sixteen southern
States in 1888 cast 67 per cent. of their total vote—the six New England
States but 63 per cent. of theirs. By what fair rule shall the stigma be
put upon one section, while the other escapes? A congressional election
in New York last week, with the polling-place in touch of every voter,
brought out only 6000 votes of 28,000—and the lack of opposition is
assigned as the natural cause. In a district in my State, in which an
opposition speech has not been heard in ten years, and the
polling-places are miles apart—under the unfair reasoning of which my
section has been a constant victim—the small vote is charged to be proof
of forcible suppression. In Virginia an average majority of 10,000,
under hopeless division of the minority, was raised to 42,000; in Iowa,
in the same election, a majority of 32,000 was wiped out, and an
opposition majority of 8000 was established. The change of 42,000 votes
in Iowa is accepted as political revolution—in Virginia an increase of
30,000 on a safe majority is declared to be proof of political fraud. I
charge these facts and figures home, sir, to the heart and conscience of
the American people, who will not assuredly see one section condemned
for what another section is excused!
If I can drive them through the prejudice of the partisan, and have them
read and pondered at the fireside of the citizen, I will rest on the
judgment there formed and the verdict there rendered!
It is deplorable, sir, that in both sections a larger percentage of the
vote is not regularly cast, but more inexplicable that this should be so
in New England than in the South. What invites the negro to the
ballot-box? He knows that, of all men, it has promised him most and
yielded him least. His first appeal to suffrage was the promise of
“forty acres and a mule.” His second, the threat that Democratic success
meant his re-inslavement. Both have proved false in his experience. He
looked for a home, and he got the freedman’s bank. He fought under the
promise of the loaf, and in victory was denied the crumbs. Discouraged
and deceived, he has realized at last that his best friends are his
neighbors, with whom his lot is cast, and whose prosperity is bound up
in his—and that he has gained nothing in politics to compensate the loss
of their confidence and sympathy that is at last his best and his
enduring hope. And so, without leaders or organization—and lacking the
resolute heroism of my party friends in Vermont that makes their
hopeless march over the hills a high and inspiring pilgrimage—he
shrewdly measures the occasional agitator, balances his little account
with politics, touches up his mule and jogs down the furrow, letting the
mad world jog as it will!
The negro vote can never control in the South, and it would be well if
partisans in the North would understand this. I have seen the white
people of a State set about by black hosts until their fate seemed
sealed. But, sir, some brave man, banding them together, would rise, as
Elisha rose in beleaguered Samaria, and touching their eyes with faith,
bid them look abroad to see the very air “filled with the chariots of
Israel and the horsemen thereof.” If there is any human force that
cannot be withstood, it is the power of the banded intelligence and
responsibility of a free community. Against it, numbers and corruption
cannot prevail. It cannot be forbidden in the law or divorced in force.
It is the inalienable right of every free community—and the just and
righteous safeguard against an ignorant or corrupt suffrage. It is on
this, sir, that we rely in the South. Not the cowardly menace of mask or
shotgun; but the peaceful majesty of intelligence and responsibility,
massed and unified for the protection of its homes and the preservation
of its liberty. That, sir, is our reliance and our hope, and against it
all the powers of the earth shall not prevail. It was just as certain
that Virginia would come back to the unchallenged control of her white
race—that before the moral and material power of her people once more
unified, opposition would crumble until its last desperate leader was
left alone vainly striving to rally his disordered hosts—as that night
should fade in the kindling glory of the sun. You may pass force bills,
but they will not avail. You may surrender your own liberties to Federal
election law, you may submit, in fear of a necessity that does not
exist, that the very form of this government may be changed—this old
State that holds in its charter the boast that “it is a free and
independent commonwealth”—it may deliver its election machinery into the
hands of the government it helped to create—but never, sir, will a
single State of this Union, North or South, be delivered again to the
control of an ignorant and inferior race. We wrested our State
government from negro supremacy when the Federal drumbeat rolled closer
to the ballot-box and Federal bayonets hedged it deeper about than will
ever again be permitted in this free government. But, sir, though the
cannon of this Republic thundered in every voting district of the South,
we still should find in the mercy of God the means and the courage to
prevent its re-establishment!
I regret, sir, that my section, hindered with this problem, stands in
seeming estrangement to the North. If, sir, any man will point out to me
a path down which the white people of the South divided may walk in
peace and honor, I will take that path though I took it alone—for at the
end, and nowhere else, I fear, is to be found the full prosperity of my
section and the full restoration of this Union. But, sir, if the negro
had not been enfranchised, the South would have been divided and the
Republic united. His enfranchisement—against which I enter no
protest—holds the South united and compact. What solution, then, can we
offer for the problem? Time alone can disclose it to us. We simply
report progress and ask your patience. If the problem be solved at
all—and I firmly believe it will, though nowhere else has it been—it
will be solved by the people most deeply bound in interest, most deeply
pledged in honor to its solution. I had rather see my people render back
this question lightly solved than to see them gather all the spoils over
which faction has contended since Catiline conspired and Cæsar fought.
Meantime we treat the negro fairly, measuring to him justice in the
fullness the strong should give to the weak, and leading him in the
steadfast ways of citizenship that he may no longer be the prey of the
unscrupulous and the sport of the thoughtless. We open to him every
pursuit in which he can prosper, and seek to broaden his training and
capacity. We seek to hold his confidence and friendship, and to pin him
to the soil with ownership, that he may catch in the fire of his own
hearthstone that sense of responsibility the shiftless can never know.
And we gather him into that alliance of intelligence and responsibility
that, though it now runs close to racial lines, welcomes the responsible
and intelligent of any race. By this course, confirmed in our judgment
and justified in the progress already made, we hope to progress slowly
but surely to the end.
The love we feel for that race you cannot measure nor comprehend. As I
attest it here, the spirit of my old black mammy from her home up there
looks down to bless, and through the tumult of this night steals the
sweet music of her croonings as thirty years ago she held me in her
black arms and led me smiling into sleep. This scene vanishes as I
speak, and I catch a vision of an old Southern home, with its lofty
pillars, and its white pigeons fluttering down through the golden air. I
see women with strained and anxious faces, and children alert yet
helpless. I see night come down with its dangers and its apprehensions,
and in a big homely room I feel on my tired head the touch of loving
hands—now worn and wrinkled, but fairer to me yet than the hands of
mortal woman, and stronger yet to lead me than the hands of mortal
man—as they lay a mother’s blessing there while at her knees—the truest
altar I yet have found—I thank God that she is safe in her sanctuary,
because her slaves, sentinel in the silent cabin or guard at her chamber
door, puts a black man’s loyalty between her and danger.
I catch another vision. The crisis of battle—a soldier struck,
staggering, fallen. I see a slave, scuffling through the smoke, winding
his black arms about the fallen form, reckless of the hurtling
death—bending his trusty face to catch the words that tremble on the
stricken lips, so wrestling meantime with agony that he would lay down
his life in his master’s stead. I see him by the weary bedside,
ministering with uncomplaining patience, praying with all his humble
heart that God will lift his master up, until death comes in mercy and
in honor to still the soldier’s agony and seal the soldier’s life. I see
him by the open grave, mute, motionless, uncovered, suffering for the
death of him who in life fought against his freedom. I see him when the
mound is heaped and the great drama of his life is closed, turn away and
with downcast eyes and uncertain step start out into new and strange
fields, faltering, struggling, but moving on, until his shambling figure
is lost in the light of this better and brighter day. And from the grave
comes a voice saying: “Follow him! Put your arms about him in his need,
even as he puts his about me. Be his friend as he was mine.” And out
into this new world—strange to me as to him, dazzling, bewildering
both—I follow! And may God forget my people—when they forget these!
Whatever the future may hold for them—whether they plod along in the
servitude from which they have never been lifted since the Cyrenian was
laid hold upon by the Roman soldiers and made to bear the cross of the
fainting Christ—whether they find homes again in Africa, and thus hasten
the prophecy of the psalmist who said: “And suddenly Ethiopia shall hold
out her hands unto God”—whether, forever dislocated and separated, they
remain a weak people beset by stronger, and exist as the Turk, who lives
in the jealousy rather than in the conscience of Europe—or whether in
this miraculous Republic they break through the caste of twenty
centuries and, belying universal history, reach the full stature of
citizenship, and in peace maintain it—we shall give them uttermost
justice and abiding friendship. And whatever we do, into whatever
seeming estrangement we may be driven, nothing shall disturb the love we
bear this Republic, or mitigate our consecration to its service. I stand
here, Mr. President, to profess no new loyalty. When General Lee, whose
heart was the temple of our hopes and whose arm was clothed with our
strength, renewed his allegiance to the government of Appomattox, he
spoke from a heart too great to be false, and he spoke for every honest
man from Maryland to Texas. From that day to this, Hamilcar has nowhere
in the South sworn young Hannibal to hatred and vengeance—but everywhere
to loyalty and to love. Witness the soldier standing at the base of a
Confederate monument above the graves of his comrades, his empty sleeve
tossing in the April wind, adjuring the young men about him, to serve as
honest and loyal citizens the government against which their fathers
fought. This message, delivered from that sacred presence, has gone home
to the hearts of my fellows! And, sir, I declare here, if physical
courage be always equal to human aspiration, that they would die, sir,
if need be, to restore this Republic their fathers fought to dissolve!
Such, Mr. President, is this problem as we see it; such is the temper in
which we approach it: such the progress made. What do we ask of you?
First, patience; out of this alone can come perfect work. Second,
confidence; in this alone can you judge fairly. Third, sympathy; in this
you can help us best. Fourth, give us your sons as hostages. When you
plant your capital in millions, send your sons that they may help know
how true are our hearts and may help to swell the Anglo-Saxon current
until it can carry without danger this black infusion. Fifth, loyalty to
the Republic—for there is sectionalism in loyalty as in estrangement.
This hour little needs the loyalty that is loyal to one section and yet
holds the other in enduring suspicion and estrangement. Give us the
broad and perfect loyalty that loves and trusts Georgia alike with
Massachusetts—that knows no south, no north, no east, no west; but
endears with equal and patriotic love every foot of our soil, every
State in our Union.
A mighty duty, sir, and a mighty inspiration impels every one of us
to-night to lose in patriotic consecration whatever estranges, whatever
divides. We, sir, are Americans—and we fight for human liberty. The
uplifting force of the American idea is under every throne on earth.
France, Brazil—these are our victories. To redeem the earth from
kingcraft and oppression—this is our mission. And we shall not fail. God
has sown in our soil the seed of his millennial harvest, and he will not
lay the sickle to the ripening crop until his full and perfect day has
come. Our history, sir, has been a constant and expanding miracle from
Plymouth Rock and Jamestown all the way—aye, even from the hour when,
from the voiceless and trackless ocean, a new world rose to the sight of
the inspired sailor. As we approach the fourth centennial of that
stupendous day—when the old world will come to marvel and to learn, amid
our gathered treasures—let us resolve to crown the miracles of our past
with the spectacle of a Republic compact, united, indissoluble in the
bonds of love—loving from the lakes to the Gulf—the wounds of war healed
in every heart as on every hill—serene and resplendent at the summit of
human achievement and earthly glory—blazing out the path, and making
clear the way up which all the nations of the earth must come in God’s
appointed time!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BEFORE THE BAY STATE CLUB.
-------
DURING MR. GRADY’S VISIT TO BOSTON, IN 1889, HE WAS A GUEST OF THE BAY
STATE CLUB, BEFORE WHOM HE DELIVERED THE FOLLOWING SPEECH:
MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN: I am confident you will not expect a speech
from me this afternoon, especially as my voice is in such a condition
that I can hardly talk. I am free to say that it is not a lack of
ability to talk, because I am a talker by inheritance. My father was an
Irishman, my mother was a woman; both talked. I came by it honestly.
I don’t know how I could take up any discussion here on any topic apart
from the incidents of the past two days. I saw this morning Plymouth
Rock. I was pulled up on top of it and was told to make a speech.
It reminded me of an old friend of mind, Judge Dooley, of Georgia, who
was a very provoking fellow and was always getting challenged to duels,
and never fighting them. He always got out of it by being smarter than
the other fellow. One day he went out to fight a man with one leg, and
he insisted on bringing along a bee gum and sticking one leg into it so
that he would have no more flesh exposed than his antagonist. On the
occasion I am thinking of, however, he went out to fight with a man who
had St. Vitus’s dance, and the fellow stood before him holding the
pistol cocked and primed, his hand shaking. The judge went quietly and
got a forked stick and stuck it up in front of him.
“What’s that for?” said the man.
“I want you to shoot with a rest, so that if you hit me you will bore
only one hole. If you shoot that way you will fill me full of holes with
one shot.”
I was reminded of that and forced to tell my friends that I could not
think of speaking on top of Plymouth Rock without a rest.
But I said this, and I want to say it here again, for I never knew how
true it was till I had heard myself say it and had taken the evidence of
my voice, as well as my thoughts—that there is no spot on earth that I
had rather have seen than that. I have a boy who is the pride and the
promise of my life, and God knows I want him to be a good citizen and a
good man, and there is no spot in all this broad Republic nor in all
this world where I had rather have him stand to learn the lessons of
right citizenship, of individual liberty, of fortitude and heroism and
justice, than the spot on which I stood this morning, reverent and
uncovered.
Now, I do not intend to make a political speech, although when Mr.
Cleveland expressed some surprise at seeing me here, I said: “Why, I am
at home now; I was out visiting last night.” I was visiting mighty
clever folks, but still I was visiting. Now I am at home.
It is the glory and the promise of Democracy, it seems to me, that its
success means more than partisanry can mean. I have been told that what
I said helped the Democratic party in this State. Well, the chief joy
that I feel at that, and that you feel, is that, beyond that and above
it, it helped those larger interests of the Republic, and those
essential interests of humanity that for seventy years the Democratic
party has stood for, being the guarantor and the defender.
Now, Mr. Cleveland last night made—I trust this will not get into the
papers—one of the best Democratic speeches I ever heard in my life, and
yet all around sat Republicans cheering him to the echo. It was just
simply because he pitched his speech on a high key, and because he said
things that no man, no matter how partisan he was, could gainsay.
Now it seems to me we do not care much for political success in the
South—for a simple question of spoils or of patronage. We wanted to see
one Democratic administration since General Lee surrendered at
Appomattox, just to prove to the people of this world that the South was
not the wrong-headed and impulsive and passionate section she was
represented to be. I heard last night from Mr. Cleveland, our great
leader, as he sat by me, that he held to be the miracle of modern
history the conservatism and the temperance and the quiet with which the
South accepted his election, and the few office-seekers in comparison
that came from that section to besiege and importune him.
Now it seems to me that the struggle in this country, the great fight,
the roar and din of which we already hear, is a fight against the
consolidation of power, the concentration of capital, the diminution of
local sovereignty and the dwarfing of the individual citizen. Boston is
the home of the one section of a nationalist party that claims that the
remedy for all our troubles, the way in which Dives, who sits inside the
gate, shall be controlled, and the poor Lazarus who sits outside shall
be lifted up, is for the government to usurp the functions of the
citizen and take charge of all his affairs. It is the Democratic
doctrine that the citizen is the master and that the best guarantee of
this government is not garnered powers at the capital, but diffused
intelligence and liberty among the people.
My friend, General Collins—who, by the way, captured my whole State and
absolutely conjured the ladies—when he came down there talked about this
to us, and he gave us a train of thought that we have improved to
advantage.
It is the pride, I believe, of the South, with her simple faith and her
homogeneous people, that we elevate there the citizen above the party,
and the citizen above everything. We teach a man that his best guide at
least is his own conscience, that his sovereignty rests beneath his hat,
that his own right arm and his own stout heart are his best dependence;
that he should rely on his State for nothing that he can do for himself,
and on his government for nothing that his State can do for him; but
that he should stand upright and self-respecting, dowering his family in
the sweat of his brow, loving to his State, loyal to his Republic,
earnest in his allegiance wherever it rests, but building at last his
altars above his own hearthstone, and shrining his own liberty in his
own heart. That is a sentiment that I would not have been afraid to avow
last night. And yet it is mighty good democratic doctrine, too.
I went to Washington the other day and I stood on the Capitol hill, and
my heart beat quick as I looked at the towering marble of my country’s
Capitol, and a mist gathered in my eyes as I thought of its tremendous
significance, of the armies and the treasury, and the judges and the
President, and the Congress and the courts, and all that was gathered
there; and I felt that the sun in all its course could not look down on
a better sight than that majestic home of a Republic that had taught the
world its best lessons of liberty. And I felt that if honor and wisdom
and justice abided therein, the world would at last owe that great house
in which the ark of the covenant of my country is lodged its final
uplifting and its regeneration.
But a few days afterwards I went to visit a friend in the country, a
modest man, with a quiet country home. It was just a simple,
unpretentious house, set about with great trees and encircled in meadow
and field rich with the promise of harvest; the fragrance of the pink
and the hollyhock in the front yard was mingled with the aroma of the
orchard and the garden, and the resonant clucking of poultry and the hum
of bees. Inside was quiet, cleanliness, thrift and comfort.
Outside there stood my friend, the master—a simple, independent, upright
man, with no mortgage on his roof, no lien on his growing crops—master
of his land and master of himself. There was his old father, an aged and
trembling man, but happy in the heart and home of his son. And, as he
started to enter his home, the hand of the old man went down on the
young man’s shoulder, laying there the unspeakable blessing of an
honored and honorable father, and ennobling it with the knighthood of
the fifth commandment. And as we approached the door the mother came, a
happy smile lighting up her face, while with the rich music of her heart
she bade her husband and her son welcome to their home. Beyond was the
housewife, busy with her domestic affairs, the loving helpmate of her
husband. Down the lane came the children after the cows, singing
sweetly, as like birds they sought the quiet of their nest.
So the night came down on that house, falling gently as the wing from an
unseen dove. And the old man, while a startled bird called from the
forest and the trees thrilled with the cricket’s cry, and the stars were
falling from the sky, called the family around him and took the Bible
from the table and called them to their knees. The little baby hid in
the folds of its mother’s dress while he closed the record of that day
by calling down God’s blessing on that simple home. While I gazed, the
vision of the marble Capitol faded; forgotten were its treasuries and
its majesty; and I said: “Surely here in the homes of the people lodge
at last the strength and the responsibility of this government, the hope
and the promise of this Republic.”
My friends, that is the democracy in the South; that is the democratic
doctrine we preach; a doctrine, sir, that is writ above our
hearthstones. We aim to make our homes, poor as they are,
self-respecting and independent. We try to make them temples of
refinement, in which our daughters may learn that woman’s best charm and
strength is her gentleness and her grace, and temples of liberty in
which our sons may learn that no power can justify and no treasure repay
for the surrender of the slightest right of a free individual American
citizen.
Now you do not know how we love you Democrats. Had we better print that?
Yes, we do, of course we do. If a man does not love his home folks, who
should he love? We know how gallant a fight you have made here, not as
hard and hopeless as our friends in Vermont, but still an up-hill fight.
You have been doing better, much better.
Now, gentlemen, I have some mighty good Democrats here. There is one of
the fattest and best in the world sitting right over there [pointing to
his partner, Mr. Howell].
You want to know about the South. My friends, we representative men will
tell you about it. I just want to say that we have had a hard time down
there.
When my partner came out of the war he didn’t have any breeches. That is
an actual truth. Well, his wife, one of the best women that ever lived,
reared in the lap of luxury, took her old woolen dress that she had worn
during the war—and it had been a garment of sorrow and of consecration
and of heroism—and cut it up and made a good pair of breeches. He
started with that pair of breeches and with $5 in gold as his capital,
and he scraped up boards from amid the ashes of his home, and built him
a shanty of which love made a home and which courtesy made hospitable.
And now I believe he has with him three pairs of breeches and several
pairs at home. We have prospered down there.
I attended a funeral once in Pickens county in my State. A funeral is
not usually a cheerful object to me unless I could select the subject. I
think I could, perhaps, without going a hundred miles from here, find
the material for one or two cheerful funerals. Still, this funeral was
peculiarly sad. It was a poor “one gallus” fellow, whose breeches struck
him under the armpits and hit him at the other end about the knee—he
didn’t believe in _decollete_ clothes. They buried him in the midst of a
marble quarry: they cut through solid marble to make his grave; and yet
a little tombstone they put above him was from Vermont. They buried him
in the heart of a pine forest, and yet the pine coffin was imported from
Cincinnati. They buried him within touch of an iron mine, and yet the
nails in his coffin and the iron in the shovel that dug his grave were
imported from Pittsburg. They buried him by the side of the best
sheep-grazing country on the earth, and yet the wool in the coffin bands
and the coffin bands themselves were brought from the North. The South
didn’t furnish a thing on earth for that funeral but the corpse and the
hole in the ground. There they put him away and the clods rattled down
on his coffin, and they buried him in a New York coat and a Boston pair
of shoes and a pair of breeches from Chicago and a shirt from
Cincinnati, leaving him nothing to carry into the next world with him to
remind him of the country in which he lived, and for which he fought for
four years, but the chill of blood in his veins and the marrow in his
bones.
Now we have improved on that. We have got the biggest marble-cutting
establishment on earth within a hundred yards of that grave. We have got
a half-dozen woolen mills right around it, and iron mines, and iron
furnaces, and iron factories. We are coming to meet you. We are going to
take a noble revenge, as my friend, Mr. Carnegie, said last night, by
invading every inch of your territory with iron, as you invaded ours
twenty-nine years ago.
A voice—I want to know if the tariff built up these industries down
there?
Mr. Grady—The tariff? Well, to be perfectly frank with you, I think it
helped some; but you can bet your bottom dollar that we are Democrats
straight through from the soles of our feet to the top of our heads, and
Mr. Cleveland will not have if he runs again, which I am inclined to
think he ought to do, a stronger following.
Now, I want to say one word about the reception we had here. It has been
a constant revelation of hospitality and kindness and brotherhood from
the whole people of this city to myself and my friends. It has touched
us beyond measure.
I was struck with one thing last night. Every speaker that rose
expressed his confidence in the future and lasting glory of this
Republic. There may be men, and there are, who insist on getting up
fratricidal strife, and who infamously fan the embers of war that they
may raise them again into a blaze. But just as certain as there is a God
in the heavens, when those noisy insects of the hour have perished in
the heat that gave them life, and their pestilent tongues have ceased,
the great clock of this Republic will strike the slow-moving, tranquil
hours, and the watchman from the street will cry, “All is well with the
Republic; all is well.”
We bring to you, from hearts that yearn for your confidence and for your
love, the message of fellowship from our homes. This message comes from
consecrated ground. The fields in which I played were the battle-fields
of this Republic, hallowed to you with the blood of your soldiers who
died in victory, and doubly sacred to us with the blood of ours who died
undaunted in defeat. All around my home are set the hills of Kennesaw,
all around the mountains and hills down which the gray flag fluttered to
defeat, and through which American soldiers from either side charged
like demigods; and I do not think I could bring you a false message from
those old hills and those sacred fields—witnesses twenty years ago in
their red desolation of the deathless valor of American arms and the
quenchless bravery of American hearts, and in their white peace and
tranquillity to-day of the imperishable Union of the American States and
the indestructible brotherhood of the American people.
It is likely that I will not again see Bostonians assembled together. I
therefore want to take this occasion to thank you, and my excellent
friends of last night and those friends who accompanied us this morning
for all that you have done for us since we have been in your city, and
to say that whenever any of you come South just speak your name, and
remember that Boston or Massachusetts is the watchword, and we will meet
you at the gates.
The monarch may forget the crown
That on his head so late hath been;
The bridegroom may forget the bride
Was made his own but yester e’en;
The mother may forget the babe
That smiled so sweetly on her knee;
But forget thee will I ne’er, Glencairn,
And all that thou hast done for me.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
HENRY W. GRADY’S ATLANTA HOME.
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
WRITINGS.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
“SMALL JANE.”
THE STORY OF A LITTLE HEROINE.
-------
SINCE my experience with the case of “Sallie,” I feel a hesitation in
presenting a new heroine to the attention of the public.
You see, I do not mind the real sorrow that I experienced when my
sincere efforts to improve the condition of this child came to naught.
But I was staggered and sickened by the fact that most of my friends
were rejoiced at her downfall.
I do not remember anything that gave more genuine joy to the town than
the relapse of this wretched girl into the slums from which she had been
lifted. It was the occasion of general hilarity—this falling back of an
immortal soul into Death—this terrible spectacle of a child staggering
blindly from sunlight into shame. I was poked in the ribs facetiously. A
perfect shower of chuckles fell on my ear. It was the joke of the
season—this triumph of the Devil over the body of a girl. One mad young
wag, who, with a keen nose for a joke, followed her into her haunts of
crime, came back, his honest face convulsed with laughter, and bearing
on his lips a statement from her, to the literal effect that “I was a
d—d fool.”
I was staggered, I say, at the enjoyment created by the downfall of this
girl. For myself, I can hardly imagine a more pitiful sight than her
childish figure, as with face averted and hands raised, blinded by the
white light of virtue and bewildered by her new condition, she slipped
back in despair to her old shame. I may be a “d—d fool,” but I cannot
find the heart to laugh at that.
I don’t know how it is, but I have a mania for looking into cases of
this sort. It is not philanthropy with me; it is a disease.
At the editorial desk, I sit opposite a young man of a high order of
mind.
He makes it a point to compass the problems of nations. I dodge them. He
has settled, to his own agreement, every European problem of the past
decade. Those problems have settled me. He soars—I plod. Once in a
while, when he yearns for a listener, he reaches down for my scalp, and
lifts me up to his altitude, where I shiver and blink, until his
talented fingers relax, and I drop home. It delights him to adjust his
powerful mind to the contemplation of contending armies,—I swash around
with the swarm that hangs about me.
His hero is Bismarck, that phlegmatic miracle that has yoked impulse to
an ox, and having made a chess-board of Europe, plays a quiet game with
the Pope. My hero is a blear-eyed sot, that having for four years waged
a gigantic battle with drink, and alternated between watery Reform and
positive Tremens, is now playing a vague and losing game with
Spontaneous Combustion. My friend discusses Bismarck’s projects with a
vastness of mind that actually makes his discourse dim, and I slip off
to try my hero’s temper, and see whether I shall have him wind his
intoxicated arms about my neck and envelop me in an atmosphere of whisky
and reform, or fall recumbent in the gutter, his weak but honest face
upturned to the sky, and his moist, white hand working vaguely upward
from his placid breast, in token of abject surrender.
Bismarck is a bigger man than Bob.
But I can’t help thinking that Bob is engaged in the most thrilling and
desperate conflict. Anyhow, I had rather see his watery eyes grow clear
and his paroxysmal arms grow steadfast, than to see Bismarck wipe out
every potentate in Europe. It’s a grave thing to watch the conflicts of
kings, and see nations embattled rushing against each other. But there
are greater and deeper conflicts waged in our midst every day, when the
legions of Despair swarm against stout hearts, and Hunger and Suffering
storm the citadel of human lives!
But I started to tell you of my new heroine.
Her name is Jane.
She presented herself one morning about three months ago. A trim,
slender figure, the growth of nine years. It was such a small area of
poverty that I felt capable of attending to it myself. But I remembered
that small beggars usually represent productive but prostrated parents
and a brood of children. The smaller the beggar the larger the family. I
therefore summoned the good little woman who guides my household
affairs.
She claims to be an expert in beggars. She has certain tests that she
applies to all comers. Her fundamental rule is that all applicants are
entitled to cold bread on first call. After this she either grades them
up to cake and preserves, or holds them to scraps. I remember that she
kept Col. Nash on dry biscuit for thirteen months, while other
applicants have gone up to pie in three visits. I never felt any
hesitation in taking her judgment after that, for of all wheedling
mendicants Col. Nash, the alleged scissors-grinder, takes the lead.
But Jane was not a beggar. She carried on her arm a basket. It was
filled with some useless articles that she wanted to sell. Would the
lady look at them? Oh! of course! They were bits of splints embroidered
with gay worsted. What were they for? Why, she didn’t know. She just
thought somebody would buy them, and she needed some money so badly.
“Who is your mother?”
“I haven’t any. She is dead. I have a father, though.”
“What does he do?”
“He’s sick most of the time. He works when he is well.”
“What’s his name?”
“Robert ——!”
(Saints! My “Bob!” Sick indeed! The weak rascal!)
Jane was asked in, and I began to investigate. I learned that this child
was literally alone in the world. She had a sister, a puny two-year-old,
and a drunken father—my flabby friend. They lived in a rickety hovel,
out of which the last chair had been sold to pay rent. The mother, a
year an invalid, had been accustomed to work little trifles in splints
and worsted. She dying, the child picked up the splints, and worked
grotesque baby fancies in wood and worsted. She had no time for weeping.
Her hunger dried her eyes. The cooing baby by her side, crying for
bread, made her forget the dead mother. So she fashioned the splints
together, and with a brave heart went out to sell them.
Bob reformed at the bedside of his dying wife. Possibly at that moment
the angels that had come to guide the woman home swept away the mist of
the man’s debauch, and gave him a glimpse of the pure life that lay
behind. Certain it is that his moist, uncertain hands crept vaguely up
the cover till they caught the wasted cheeks of his wife, and his shaggy
head bent down till his quivering lips found hers. And the poor wife,
yielding once more to the love that had outlived shame and desertion,
turned her eyes from her children and fixed them on her husband. Ah! how
this earthly hope and this earthly love chased even the serenity of
Heaven from her face, and lighted it with tender rapture! How quickly
this drunkard supplanted God in the dying woman’s soul? “Oh, Bob! my
darling!” she gasped, and raising her face toward him with a masterful
yearning, she died.
“Mother didn’t seem to know we were there after father came,” Jane told
me. And I wondered if the child had not been hurt, that all her months
of patient love and watching had been forgotten in a tempest of love for
a vagabond husband that had wrought nothing but disaster and death.
After the funeral, through which he went in a dazed sort of stupor, Bob
got drunk, I don’t know why or how. He seemed tenderer since then than
before. I noticed that he reformed oftener and got over it quicker. A
piece of crape that Jane had fixed about his hat seemed to possess
sacred properties to him. When he touched it and swore abstinence, he
generally held out two or three days. One night, as he lay in the
gutter, a cow, full of respect for his person, and yet unable to utterly
control her hunger, chewed his hat. Since then he seemed to have lost
his moorings, and drifted about on a currentless drunk.
He was always kind to Jane and the little biddie. In his maudlin way he
would caress them, and cry over them, and reform with them, and promise
to work for them. Even when he ate their last crust of bread, he
accompanied the action with a sort of fumbling pomposity that robbed it
of its horror. He never did it without promising to go out at once and
bring back a sack of flour. Once he went so high as to promise four
sacks. So that the child, in love like her mother with the old rascal,
and like her mother fresh always in faith, was rather rejoiced than
otherwise when he ate the bread. Did he bring the flour?
“Why, how could he? They had to bring him home. So of course I did not
blame him. Poor father!”
I must do Bob the justice to say that he never earned a cent in all
these days that he did not intend giving to Jane. Of course he never did
it, but I desire him to have the credit of his intention. If the Lord
held the best of us strictly to performance and ruled out intention, we
wouldn’t be much better in his sight than Bob is in ours.
One day I was sitting behind a window looking at Jane, who stood in the
kitchen door. Her oldish-looking, chipper little face was turned
straight to me. It was a pretty face. The brown eyes were softened with
suffering, and fear and anxiety had driven all color from her thin
cheeks. I noticed that her mouth was never still. Though she was alone
and silent, her lips quivered and trembled all the time. At times they
would break into a dumb sob. Then she would draw them firmly together.
Again they would twitch convulsively in the terrible semblance of a
smile. Then in that pretty, feminine way she would pucker them together.
Long suffering had racked the child until she was all awry, and her
nerves were plunging through her tender frame like devils.
“Jane, were you ever hungry?”
“Sir!” and she started painfully, while her starved heart managed to
send a thin coating of scarlet into her cheeks. She was a proud little
body, and never talked of her sorrows.
May the Lord forgive me for repeating the question!
“Sometimes, sir, when I couldn’t sell anything. Last Saturday we had
only some bread for dinner. We never had anything else until Sunday
night. I wouldn’t have minded it then, but Mary cried so for bread that
I went out, and a lady that I knew gave me some things.”
Now, think of that. From a crust at Saturday noon, on nothing till
Sunday night. Of all the abundant marketing of Saturday evening; of all
the luxuries of Sunday breakfast and dinner, not a crumb for this poor
child. While we were dressing our children for their trip to
Sunday-school, or their romp over the hills, this poor child, gnawed by
hunger, deserted by her drunken father, holding a starving baby, sat
crouched in a hovel, given up to despair and hopelessness. And that,
too, within the sound of the bells that made the church-steeples thrill
with music, and called God’s people to church!
A friend who had heard Jane’s story had given me three dollars for her.
I gave it to her, and told her that as her rent was paid, she could with
this lay in some provisions. She was crying then, but she dried her
tears and hurried off.
* * * * *
“Will you please come here and look?” called a lady whose call I always
obey, about an hour afterward.
I went, and there stood Jane, flushed and happy.
“I declare I am astonished at this child!” said the lady.
And therewith she displayed Jane’s purchases. A little meal and meat had
been sent home. The rest she had with her. First, there was a goblet of
strained honey; then a bundle of candy “for baby,” a package of tea “for
father,” and a chip straw hat, with three gayly colored ribbons, “for
herself.” And that’s where the money had gone!
“I am just put out with her,” said the arbitress of my affairs, after
Jane had gathered up her treasures and departed. “To waste her money
like that! I can imagine how the poor, half-starved child couldn’t help
buying the honey-goblet; I should die myself if I didn’t have something
sweet; but how she came to buy that hat and ribbons I can’t see!”
Ah, blue-eyed woman! There’s a yearning in the feminine soul stronger
than hunger. There’s a passion there that starvation cannot conquer. The
hat and ribbons were bought in response to that craving. The hat, I’ll
bet thee, was bought before the honey,—aye, before the meal or meat.
“Can’t understand it?” Then, my spouse, I’ll explain: Jane is a woman!
I must confess that I was pleased at the misdirection of Jane’s funds.
Have you ever had a child deep in a long-continued stupor from fever?
How delighted you were then when, tempted by some trifle, he gave signs
of eagerness! So I was rejoiced to see that the long years of suffering
had not crushed hope and emotion out of this girl’s life.
The tea and the candy showed that her affections, working up to the
father and drawn to the baby, were all right. The honey gave evidence
that the fresh impulses of childhood had not been nipped and chilled.
The hat and ribbons—best and most hopeful purchase of all—proved that
the womanly vanity and love of prettiness still fluttered in her young
soul. Nothing is so charming and so feminine in woman as the passion for
dress. Laugh at it as we may, I think that men will agree that there is
nothing so pathetic as a young woman out of whom all hope of fine
appearance has been pressed. A gay ribbon is the sign in which woman
conquers. I wager that Eve made a neat, many-colored thing of
fig-leaves.
But to return to Jane.
I know that this desultory sketch should be closed with something
unusual. Jane should die or get married. But she’s too young for either.
And so her life is running on ever. She plods the streets as she used to
do. She has quit selling the flaming scraps she used to sell, and now
knits her young but resolute brow over crochet work, which she sells at
marvelous prices. Her path is flecked with more sunshine than ever
before, and at Sunday-school she is as smart a little woman as can be
seen. If the shadow of a staggering figure, that falls so often across
her course, could be lifted, she would have little else to grieve over.
Not that she complains of this—not a bit of it. “Poor father is sick so
much. How can he be expected to work?” And so she goes on, with her
woman’s nature clinging to him closer than ever; even as the ivy clings
to the old ruin. Hiding his shame from the world, wrapping him in the
plenitude of her faith, and binding up his shattered resolves with her
heart-strings.
And as for Bob:
I am strongly tempted to tell a lie, and say that he is either sober or
dead. But he is neither. He is the same shiftless, irresponsible fellow
that I have known for three years. His face is heavier, his eyes are
smaller, his nose redder, his flesh more moist than ever. But in the
depth of his debauch there seems to have been winged some idea of the
excellence of Jane’s life, and the fineness of her martyrdom. He catches
me anywhere he sees me, and, falling on my shirt-front, weeps copious
tears of praise and pop-skull, while talking of her. He swears by her.
By the way, I must do him justice. Yesterday he came to me very much
affected. He was white-lipped, and trembling, and hungry. He had spent
the night in the gutter, and the policeman who was scattering the
disinfecting lime, either careless or wise beyond his kind, had powdered
him all over. He seemed to be terribly in earnest. He raised his
trembling hand to his hat and touched the place where the crape used to
be, and swore that he intended to reform, for good and all. “S’elp me
Jane!” he said.
I have not seen him since. I hope that the iron has at last entered his
soul and will hold him steadfast. Ha! that sounds like him stumbling up
the steps now. Hey! he has rolled back to the bottom! Here he comes
again. That must be him. “Of course!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
DOBBS!
A THUMBNAIL SKETCH OF A MARTYR.
-------
I AM proud of my acquaintance with Dobbs.
He was a hero, whose deeds were not spread upon any of the books of men,
but whose martyrdom I am sure illustrates a glowing page in God’s great
life book.
I met him late one night.
The paper, with its burden of news and gossip, had just been put to
press, and I strolled out of the hot, clanking room to catch a sight of
the cool morning stars, and a whiff of the dew-laden breezes of the
dawn.
Silhouetted against the intercepted stars, I saw a tall and striking
form, standing like a statue on the corner.
As I came out of the door the figure approached.
“Is this the _Herald_ office, sir?”
“Yes, sir. Can I serve you in any way?”
“Well—” hesitating for an instant, and then speaking boldly and sharply,
“I wanted to know if you could not trust me for a few papers?”
“I suppose so; walk in to the light.”
I shall never forget the impression Dobbs made on me that night, as we
two walked in from the starlight to the glare of the gas-burners.
A BLAZE OF HONESTY.
As I have said before, he had a tall and striking figure. His face was
ugly. He was ungraceful, ragged, and uncouth. Yet there was a splendid
glow of honesty that shone from every feature, and challenged your
admiration. It was not that cheap honesty that suffuses the face of your
average honest man; but a vivid burst of light that, fed by principle,
sent its glow from the heart. It was not the passive honesty that is the
portion of men who have no need to steal, but the triumphant honesty
that has grappled with poverty, with disease, with despair, and
conquered the whole devil’s brood of temptation; the honesty that has
been sorely tried, the honesty of martyrdom; the honesty of heroism. He
was the honestest man I ever knew.
THE PATHOS OF INCONGRUITY.
There was one feature of his dress that was pathetic in its uniqueness.
He wore a superb swallow-tail dress-coat; a gorgeous coat, which was
doubtless christened at some happy wedding (his father’s, I suppose);
had walked side by side with dainty laces; been swept through stately
quadrilles, pressed upon velvet, and to-night came to me upon a
shirtless back, and asked “trust” for a half-dozen newspapers.
It had that seedy, threadbare look which makes broadcloth, after its
first season, the most melancholy dress that sombre ingenuity ever
invented. It was scrupulously brushed and buttoned close up to the chin,
whether to hide the lack of a shirt, I never in the course of six
months’ intimate acquaintance had the audacity to inquire. In the
sleeve, on which rosy wrists had, in days gone by, laid in loving
confidence, a shriveled arm hung loosely, and from its outlet three
decrepit fingers driveled. His hat was old, and fell around his ears.
His breeches, of a whitish material, which had the peculiarity of
leaving the office perfectly dirty one evening and coming back pure and
clean the next morning. What amount of midnight scrubbing this required
from my hero Dobbs, I will not attempt to tell. Neither will I guess how
he became possessed of that wonderful coat. Whether in the direst days
of the poverty which had caught him, his old mother, pitying her boy’s
rags, had fished it up from the bottom of a trunk where, with mayhaps an
orange-wreath or a bit of white veil, it had lain for years, the last
token of a happy bridal night, and, baptizing it with her tears, had
thrown it around his bare shoulders, I cannot tell. All I know is, that
taken in connection with the rest of his attire, it was startling in its
contrast; and that I honored the brave dignity with which he buttoned
this magnificent coat against his honest rags, and strode out to meet
the jeers of the world and work out a living.
FIVE DOLLARS A WEEK.
I knew Dobbs for six months! Day after day I saw him come at three
o’clock in the morning. I saw his pale face, and that coat so audacious
in its fineness, go to the press-room, fold his papers, and hurry out
into the weather. One night I stopped him.
“Dobbs,” says I, “how much do you make a week?”
“I average five dollars and twenty cents, sir. I have twenty-seven
regular customers. I get the paper at fifteen cents a week from you, and
sell it to them at twenty-five cents. I make two dollars and seventy
cents off of them, and then I sell about twenty-five extra papers a
morning.”
“What do you do with your money?”
“It takes nearly all of it to support me and mother.”
“You don’t mean to tell me that you and your mother live on five dollars
and twenty cents a week?”
“Yes, sir, we do, and pay five dollars a month rent out of that. We live
pretty well, too,” with a smile, possibly induced by the vision of some
of those luxuries which were included under the head of “living pretty
well.” I was crushed!
_Five dollars and twenty-five cents a week!_ The sum which I waste per
week upon cigars. The paltry amount which I pay almost any night at the
theater. The sum that I spend any night I may chance to strike a
half-dozen boon companions. This sum, so contemptible to me—wasted so
lightly—I find to be the sum total of the income of a whole family—the
whole support of two human beings.
I left Dobbs, humiliated and crushed. I pulled my hat over my eyes,
strolled down to Mercer’s, and bought a twenty-five cent cigar and sat
down to think over my duty in the premises.
* * * * *
... One morning the book-keeper of the _Herald_, to whom my admiration
for Dobbs was well known (I having frequently delivered glowing lectures
upon his character from the mailing table to an audience of carriers,
clerks, and printers), approached me and with a devilish smack of joy in
his voice, says:
“I am afraid your man Dobbs is a fraud. Some time ago he persuaded the
clerk to give him credit on papers. He ran up a bill of about seven
dollars, and then melted from our view. We have not seen or heard of him
since—expect he’s gone to trading with the _Constitution_ now, to bilk
them out of a bill.”
This looked bad—but somehow or other I still had a firm faith in my
hero. God had written “honesty” too plain in his face for my confidence
in him to be shaken. I knew that if he had sinned or deceived, that it
was starvation or despair that had driven him to it, and I forgave him
even before I knew he was guilty....
* * * * *
About a week after this happened, a bombazine female—one of those
melancholy women that occasionally arise like some Banquo’s ghost in my
pathway, and always, I scarce know why, put remorse to twitching at my
heart-strings—came into my sanctum and asked for me.
“I am the mother,” says she, in a voice which sorrow (or snuff) had
filled with tears and quavers—“of Mr. Dobbs, a young man who used to buy
papers from you. He left owing you a little, and asked me to see you
about it.”
“Left? Where has he gone?”
“To heaven, I hope, sir! He is dead!”
“Dead?”
A CONSCIENTIOUS DEBTOR.
“Yes, sir; my poor boy went last Thursday. He were all I had on earth,
but he suffered so it seemed like a mercy to let him go. He were worried
to the last about a debt he was owin’ of you. He said you had been
clever to him, and would think hard ef he didn’t pay you. He wanted you
to come and see him so he could explain as how he were took down with
the rheumatizum, but that were no one to nuss him while I come for you.
He had owin’ to him when he were took, about three dollars, which he
have an account of in this little book. He told me with his last breath
to cullect this money, and not to use a cent tell I had paid you, and if
I didn’t git enough, to turn you over the book. I hev took in one dollar
and tirty cents, and”—with the air of one who has fought the good
fight—“here it is!” So saying, she ran her hand into a gash in the
bombazine, which looked like a grievous wound, and pulled out one of
those long cloth purses that always reminded me of the entrails of some
unfortunate dead animal, and counted out the money. This she handed me
with the book.
I ran my eye over the ruggedly kept accounts and found that each man
owed from a dime up to fifty cents.
“Why, madam,” says I, “these accounts are not worth collecting.”
“That’s what he was afraid of,” says she, moving toward a bundle that
lay upon the floor; “he told me if you said so, to give you this, and
ask you to sell it if you could, and make your money. It’s all he had,
sir, or me, either, and he wouldn’t die easy ’til I told him I wud do
it! God knows”—and the tears rolled down her thin and hollow cheeks—“God
knows it were a struggle to promise to give it up. He wore it, and his
father before him. How many times it has covered ’em both! I had hoped
to carry it to the end with me, and wrap my old body in it when I died.
But it was all we had which was fine, and he wouldn’t rest ’til I told
him I wud give it to you. Then he smiled as pert-like as a child, and
kissed me, and says, ‘Now I am ready to go!’ He were a good boy, sir, as
ever lived”—and she rocked her old body to and fro with her grief. Need
I say that she had offered me the old dress-coat? That sacred garment,
blessed with the memory of her son and his father, and which, rather
than give up, she would willingly pluck either of the withered arms that
hung at her sides from its socket!
I dropped my eyes to the account book again—for what purpose I am not
ashamed that the reader may guess.
In a few moments I spoke:
“Madam, I was mistaken in the value of these accounts; most of the
debtors on this book, I find upon a second look, are capitalists. The
$11 worth of accounts will sell for $12 anywhere. Your son owed me $7.
Leave the book with me; I will pay myself, and here is $5 balance which
I hand to you. Your son was a good boy, and I feel honored that I can
serve his mother.”
She folded the old coat up and departed.
I kept the book.
It was a simple record of Dobbs’s life. Here ran his expense list—a
dreary trickle of “bacon” and “meal” and “rent,” enlivened only once
with “sugar”; a saccharine suggestion that I am unable to account for,
as it surely did not comport with either of the staples that formed the
basis of his life. Probably, on some grand occasion, he and his mother
ate it in the lump.
Here were his accounts, of say fifty cents each, on men accounted
responsible in the world’s eye—accounts for papers furnished through
snow, and sleet, and rain! Some of them showed signs of having been
called for a dozen times, being frescoed with such notes as “Call
Tuesday,” “Call Wednesday,” “Call Thursday,” etc.
On another page was a pathetic list of delusive liniments and medicines,
with which he had attacked his stubborn disease. Such as, “King of
Pane—kored a man in Maryetti in 2 days, $1.00”; “Magic Linament—kores in
10 minnits, $2.00 a bottel”; and so on through the whole catalogue of
snares which the patent office turns out year after year. Poor fellow!
the only relief he got from his racking pains was when God laid his
healing hand on him.
I shall keep the book as long as I live.
In its thumbed and greasy leaves is written the record of a heroism more
lofty and a martyrdom more lustrous than ever lit the page of book
before or since.
I think I shall have it printed in duplicate, and scattered as leaven
throughout the lumpy Sunday-school libraries of the land.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A CORNER LOT.
-------
“HE has been at that for thirteen years.”
And the speaker laughed as he watched an old man gathering up a bucket
of stones and broken bricks. The old man continued his work until his
bucket was filled, and then started back toward Spring Street, stopping
on the way to resurrect a rusted old hoop that was nearly buried in the
gutter.
After walking about three blocks he stopped at the corner of Spring and
James streets, and laying the rusty hoop carefully upon a great heap of
hoops of all kinds and sizes, he carried the bucket to the back of his
lot, a part of which was considerably lower than the front, and emptied
the bucketful of bricks and stones.
He was a very old man—about seventy years old, apparently—in his
shirt-sleeves, and wearing a dingy straw hat. He was feeble, too, and
his steps were slow, but he stopped only to get a drink of water at the
back door, and then ambled off with the empty bucket.
The little frame structure is half store and half residence. Just inside
the door to the store sat a portly old lady of sixty or thereabouts.
“Who is that old man yonder with that empty bucket?”
“Him! Why that’s old man Lewis Powell, and he’s my husband. I thought
everybody knowed him.”
“Is that all he does?”
“Fill up the lot, you mean? No, no, he puts hoops on barrels and kegs,
and raises calves and such like, but that’s his main business. He’s been
at it now for nigh on to fourteen years.”
“And how much has he filled in?”
“Oh, from the sidewalk on back. The lot is fifty by eighty, and it used
to be just one big hole. Now here on Spring Street where the front is,
the bank went nearly straight down ’cause the eye of the sewer was right
there. Then the sewer was open and run in a gully the whole length of
the lot, and just about in the middle of the lot. Here on James Street,
at the side there, it wasn’t so steep. The front of the old house was
about half-way down the bank, and the pillars at the back was over ten
feet high. The house wasn’t more’n twelve feet that way, either, so you
can tell how steep it was. And right at the back door the sewer passed.”
“How deep was it?”
“Well, right here at the front the city men measured to the sewer once,
and it was a little over twenty feet below the sidewalk. The back of the
lot was a little lower. It was one big hole fifty by eighty, and almost
in the bottom of it was the old house.”
“Fourteen years ago.”
“Fourteen years ago we bought it from Jack Smith on time. It wasn’t
much, but me and Jenny and Joe and Stella just buckled down and worked
like tigers. The neighbors made fun of us at first, and even the niggers
thought it was funny. Now, I aint telling you this because I’m stuck up
about it, but it just shows what the Powell family has done, and it
shows what any poor folks can do if they just stick at it.”
“Didn’t the old man help?”
“Yes, a little. But we had to live, and then he spent lots of his time
a-fillin’ up, so the brunt of the money part fell on me and the
children. We bought the mudhole, and he made the mudhole what it is now.
Right here where the mudhole was there is a corner lot, and them what
used to laugh at us would like mighty well to own it now.”
And the old lady smiled as though the thought was a very pleasant one.
“Yes, sir,” she continued, “it’s worth a good deal now, and the first
thing you know, when the streets get paved along here, it will be worth
a lot more than it is now.”
“And the old man?”
“The old man has worked mighty faithful. Little at a time he has fetched
dirt, and rocks, and bricks, and trash. Then the city put a pipe there
for the sewer, and he begun at the sidewalk on Spring Street and filled
back. The bank kept getting further and further, and after, I don’t know
how long, we built this little house on the filled-in part. The old man
kept fillin’ back till we’ve got a pretty big back yard; and there’s
only a little part left to fill back there. You see, he never tore up
the old house—the patchwork palace of ’77—just throwed in around it and
in it till he has almost buried it.”
“Why?”
“Oh, it’s just a notion of his. He didn’t want to see the old house tore
up, and there it is now, with just the roof stickin’ out. In a little
while it will be one level yard, fifty by eighty, and a corner lot, too.
And by the time it all gets filled up—well, me and the old man is
gettin’ feeble now, and we won’t last much longer. But, now that we are
all out of debt, and just enough left to do to keep the old man’s hand
in, it does me good to think of that old mudhole, and how we had to save
and slave and pinch to pay for it. And I think the old man likes to
stand there at the corner and look back how level and smooth it is, and
think how it was done, a handful at a time, through the rain and the
snow and the sunshine. Fourteen years! It was a big job, but we stuck to
it, and I’m restin’ now, for my work is done. The old man don’t work
like he used to, but he says his job aint finished yet, and he keeps
fillin’ up.”
“And when his work is done—”
“Then he’ll rest, too.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE ATHEISTIC TIDE SWEEPING OVER THE CONTINENT.
-------
THE THREATENED DESTRUCTION OF THE SIMPLE FAITH OF THE FATHERS BY THE
VAIN DECEITS OF MODERN PHILOSOPHERS.—AN ATTACK CHRISTIANS MUST MEET.
-------
[WRITTEN FOR THE CONSTITUTION, 1881.]
NEW YORK, January 26.—The dread of the times, as I see it, is the
growing skepticism in the leading circles of thought and action
throughout the country—a swelling tide of atheism and unbelief that has
already swept over the outposts of religion.
I am not alarmed by the fact that Henry Ward Beecher shook hands with
Ingersoll on a public stand, and has since swung beyond the limit of
orthodoxy, any more than I am reassured by the fact that Stephen H. Tyng
has, by indorsing the miracles at Lourdes, swung back into the
stronghold of superstition. These are mere personal expressions that may
mean much or little. They may be classed with the complaint of Dr.
Talmage that he found religion dead in a circuit of 3000 miles of travel
last year, which complaint is balanced by the assertion of Dr. Hall that
the growth of religious sentiment was never so decisive as at present.
I have noted, in the first place, that the latter-day writers—novelists,
scientists and essayists—are arraying themselves in great force either
openly on the side of skepticism, or are treating religious sentiment
with a readiness of touch and lack of reverence, that is hardly less
dangerous. I need not run over the lists of scientists, beginning with
Tyndall, Huxley and Stephens, that have raised the banner of
negation—nor recount the number of novelists who follow the lead of
sweet George Eliot, this sad and gentle woman, who allied sentiment to
positivism so subtly, and who died with the promise on her lips that her
life would “be gathered like a scroll in the tomb, unread forever”—who
said that she “wanted no future that broke the ties of the past,” and
has gone to meet the God whose existence she denied. We all know that
within the past twenty years there has been an alarming increase of
atheism among the leading writers in all branches. But it is the growth
of skepticism among the people that has astonished me.
I am not misled by the superb eloquence of Ingersoll nor the noisy
blasphemy of his imitators. I was with five journalists, and I found
that every one of them were skeptics, two of them in the most emphatic
sense. In a sleeping-car with eight passengers, average people I take
it, I found that three were confirmed atheists, three were doubtful
about it, and two were old-fashioned Christians. A young friend of mine,
a journalist and lecturer, asked me a few months ago what I thought of
his preparing a lecture that would outdo Ingersoll—his excuse being that
he found Ingersoll so popular. I asked Henry Watterson once what effect
Ingersoll’s lectures had on the Louisville public. “No more than a
theatrical representation,” was the quick reply. Watterson was wrong. I
have never seen a man who came away from an Ingersoll lecture as stout
of faith and as strong in heart as he was when he went there.
I do not know that this spirit of irreligion and unbelief has made much
inroad on the churches. It is as yet simply eating away the material
upon which the churches must recruit and perpetuate themselves. There is
a large body of men and women, the bulk probably of our population, that
is between the church and its enemies; not members of the church or open
professors of religion, they have yet had reverence for the religious
beliefs, have respected the rule of conscience, and believed in the
existence of one Supreme Being. These men and women have been useful to
the cause of religion, in that they held all the outposts about the camp
of the church militant, and protected it with enwrapping conservatism
and sympathy. It is this class of people that are now yielding to the
assaults of the infidel. Having none of the inspiration of religion, and
possessing neither the enthusiasm of converts nor the faith of veterans,
they are easily bewildered and overcome. It is a careless and unthinking
multitude on which the atheists are working, and the very inertia of a
mob will carry thousands if the drift of the mass once floats to the
ocean. And the man or woman who rides on the ebbing tide goes never to
return. Religious beliefs once shattered are hardly mended. The church
may reclaim its sinners, but its skeptics, never.
It is not surprising that this period of critical investigation into all
creeds and beliefs has come. It is a logical epoch, come in its
appointed time. It is one of the penalties of progress. We have stripped
all the earth of mystery, and brought all its phenomena under the square
and compass, so that we might have expected science to doubt the mystery
of life itself, and to plant its theodolite for a measurement of the
Eternal, and pitched its crucible for an analysis of the soul. It was
natural that the Greek should be led to the worship of his physical
gods, for the earth itself was a mystery that he could not divine—a
vastness and vagueness that he could not comprehend. But we have
fathomed its uttermost secret; felt its most secret pulse, girdled it
with steel, harnessed it and trapped it to our liking. What was mystery
is now demonstrated; what was vague is now apparent. Science has
dispelled illusion after illusion, struck down error after error, made
plain all that was vague on earth, and reduced every mystery to
demonstration. It is little wonder then that, at last having reduced all
the illusions of matter to an equation, and anchored every theory to a
fixed formula, it should assail the mystery of life itself, and warn the
world that science would yet furnish the key to the problem of the soul.
The obelisk, plucked from the heart of Egypt, rests upon a shore that
was as vaguely and infinitely beyond the knowledge or aspiration of its
builders as the shores of a star that lights the space beyond our vision
are to us to-day; the Chinaman jostles us in the streets, and the
centuries that look through his dreamy eyes have lost all sense of
wonder; ships that were freighted from the heart of Africa lie in our
harbor, and our market-places are vocal with more tongues than
bewildered the builders at Babel; a letter slips around the earth in
ninety days, and the messages of men flash along the bed of the ocean;
we tell the secrets of the universe as a woman tells her beads, and the
stars whirl serenely through orbits that science has defined; we even
read of the instant when the comet that plunged in dim illimitable
distance, where even the separate stars are lost in mist and vapor,
shall whirl again into the vision of man, a wanderer that could not
shake off the inexorable supervision of science, even in the chill and
measureless depths of the universe. Fit time is this, then, for science
to make its last and supreme assault—to challenge the last and supreme
mystery—defy the last and supreme force. And the church may gird itself
for the conflict! As the Pope has said, “It is no longer a rebel that
threatens the church. It is a belligerent!” It is no longer a shading of
creed. It is the upsettal of all creeds that is attempted.
It is impossible to conceive the misery and the blindness that will come
in the wake of the spreading atheism. The ancients witnessed the fall of
a hundred creeds, but still had a hundred left. The vast mystery of life
hung above them, but was lit with religions that were sprinkled as stars
in its depths. From a host of censers was their air made rich with
fragrance, and warmed from a field of altars. No loss was irreparable.
But with us it is different. We have reached the end. Destroy our one
belief and we are left hopeless, helpless, blind. Our air will be
odorless, chill, colorless. Huxley, the leader of the positivists,
himself confesses—I quote from memory: “Never, in the history of man,
has a calamity so terrific befallen the race, as this advancing deluge,
black with destruction, uprooting our most cherished hopes, engulfing
our most precious creed, and burying our highest life in mindless
desolation.” And yet Mr. Huxley urges on this deluge with furious
energy. The aggressiveness of the atheists is inexplicable to me. Why
they should insist on destroying a system that is pure and ennobling,
when they have nothing to replace it with; why they should shatter a
faith that colors life, only to leave it colorless; why they should rob
life of all that makes life worth living; why they should take away the
consolation that lifts men and women from the despair of bereavement and
desolation, or the light that guides the feet of struggling humanity, or
the hope that robs even the grave of its terror,—why they should do all
this, and then stand empty-handed and unresponsive before the yearning
and supplicating people they have stripped of all that is precious, is
more than I can understand. The best atheist, to my mind, that I ever
knew, was one who sent his children to a convent for their education. “I
cannot lift the blight of unbelief from my own mind,” he said, “but it
shall never fall upon the minds of my children if I can help it. As for
me, I would give all I have on earth for the old faith that I wore so
lightly and threw off so carelessly.”
The practical effects of the growth of atheism are too terrible to
contemplate. A vessel on an unknown sea that has lost its rudder and is
tossed in a storm—that’s the picture. It will not do for Mr. Ingersoll
to say that a purely human code of right and wrong can be established to
which the passions of men can be anchored and from which they can swing
with safety. It will not do for him to cite his own correct life or the
correct lives of the skeptical scientists, or of leading skeptics, as
proof that unbelief does not bring license. These men are held to
decency by a pride of position and by a sense of special responsibility.
It is the masses that atheism will demoralize and debauch. It is
thousands of simple men and women, who, loosed of the one restraint that
is absolute and imperious, will drift upon the current of their
passions, colliding everywhere, and bringing confusion and ruin. The
vastly greatest influence that religion has exercised, as far as the
world goes, has been the conservative pressure that it has put upon the
bulk of the people, who are outside of the church. With the pressure
barely felt and still less acknowledged, it has preserved the integrity
of society, kept the dangerous instincts within bounds, repressed
savagery, and held the balance. Conscience has dominated men who never
confessed even to themselves its power, and the dim, religious memories
of childhood, breathing imperceptibly over long wastes of sin and
brutality, have dissolved clouds of passion in the souls of veterans.
Atheism will not work its full effect on this class of men. Even after
they have murdered conscience by withholding the breath upon which it
lives, its ghost will grope through the chambers of their brain,
menacing and terrible, and to the last,—
Creeping on a broken wing
Through cells of madness, haunts of horror and fear!
It is on the young men and women—the generation bred in the chill
atmosphere of unbelief—that atheism will do its worst. With no
traditions in which to guide their faith, no altar before which they can
do reverence, no ideal to which their eyes can turn, no standard lofty
enough to satisfy, or steadfast enough to assure—with no uplifting that
is not limited, no aspiration that has wings, and no enthusiasm that is
not absurd—with life but a fever that kindles in the cradle and dies in
the grave,—truly atheism meets youth with a dread prospect, sullen,
storm-swept, hopeless.
In the conflict that is coming, the church is impregnable, because the
church is right; because it is founded on a rock. The scientists boast
that they have evolved everything logically from the first particles of
matter; that from the crystal rock to sentient man is a steady way,
marked by natural gradations. They even say that, if a new bulk were
thrown off from the sun to-morrow it would spin into the face of the
earth, and the same development that has crowned the earth with life
would take place in the new world. And yet Tyndall says: “We have
exhausted physics, and reached its very rim, and yet a mighty mystery
looms up before us.” And this mystery is the kindling of the atoms of
the brain with the vital spark. There science is baffled, for there is
the supreme force that is veiled eternally from the vision of man.
The church is not bound to the technicalities of argument in this
contest. It has the perfect right to say, and say logically, that
something must rest on faith—that there must be something in the heart
or soul before conviction can be made perfect. Just as we cannot impress
with the ecstasies and transports of earthly love a man who has never
loved, or paint a rainbow to a man who has never seen. And yet the time
has passed when religion can dismiss the skeptic with a shriek or a
sneer. I read one little book a year ago, gentle, firm, decisive; a book
that demonstrated the necessity and existence of the Supreme Being, as
clearly and as closely as a mathematical proposition was worked out. But
the strength of the church is, after all, the high-minded consistency of
its members; the warmth and earnestness of its evangelism; the purity
and gentleness of its apostles. If the creeds are put at peace, and
every man who wears the Christian armor will go forth to plead the cause
of the meek and lowly Nazarene, whose love steals into the heart of man
as the balm of flowers into the pulses of a summer evening—then we shall
see the hosts of doubt and skepticism put to rout.
Of course I have no business to write all this. It is the province of
the preachers to talk of these things, and many no doubt will resent as
impertinent even the suggestion of a worldling. And yet it seems so sure
to me that in the swift and silent marshaling of the hosts of unbelief
and irreligion there is presaged the supremest test that the faith of
Christians has ever undergone, that I felt impelled to write. There are
men, outside of the active workers of the church, who have all reverence
for its institutions and love for its leaders; whose hearts are stirred
now and then by a faith caught at a mother’s knee, or the memory of some
rapt and happy moment; who want to live, if not in the fold of the
chosen, at least in the shadow of the Christian sentiment, and among the
people dominated by Christian faith; and who hope to die at last, in the
same trust and peace that moved the dying Shakespeare—wisest, sweetest
mind ever clothed in mortal flesh—when he said: “I commend my soul into
the hands of God, my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing, through
the only merits of Jesus Christ, my Saviour, to be made partaker of life
everlasting.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ON THE OCEAN WAVE.
-------
AN AMATEUR’S EXPERIENCE ON A STEAMSHIP.
-------
A VERY TALL STORY.—THE FIRST IMPRESSIONS.—A SIDE VIEW OF
SEA-SICKNESS.—THE SIGHT OF THE OCEAN.—LAND AT LAST AND GLAD OF IT.
-------
[SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE OF THE COURIER.]
PHILADELPHIA, Feb. 20, 1876.—The ocean is a greatly exaggerated affair.
About four years ago, my friend Charles I. Graves and myself were
sitting on a country fence, in Floyd County, after the manner of
lizards, drinking in the sunshine, when a wagon containing a small box
wheeled past us. It had hardly got abreast us when my friend dropped
from his comfortable perch as if he were shot, and rushed to the wagon.
Then ensued a remarkable scene. You have all seen a well-bred country
dog meet a city dog on some green highway. You know with what hurried
circumspection he smells the stranger at all points. So did my friend
approach the little square box on the wagon. He sniffed at it as if “he
would draw his soul through his nose.” I examined the ugly little box
closely. It was marked
TO MR. BERCKMANS,
MONT ALTO, NEAR ROME,
GA., U.S.A.
It was Rhenish wine shipped from Paris.
My friend explained to me, after his rhapsody was over, that the box
having been brought across the ocean in the hold of a steamer, retained
a subtle scent of bilge-water, that brought the sea with all its
dangerous fascination back to him—he having served all his young life
before the mast. He was, at this writing, a plain, staid farmer, content
among his cattle and clover. And yet that sharp, briny, saline flavor,
thrown on the bosom of the still country breeze, put a restless devil in
his breast. It was as if a born gallant, exiled for a decade to the
heart of some desert, should, near the expiration of his sentence,
stumble upon a cambric handkerchief, redolent with the perfume of a
lady’s boudoir. In less than two years after the sight or rather the
smell of that box my friend had sold his plantation, convinced his wife,
and gone to the ocean again. Had Dr. Berckmans been content to drink
native wine, Mr. Graves would yet be alternating cotton with clover, in
the peaceful valley of the Etowah.
After this strong proof of the fascination that the sea has for its
votaries, I achieved a strong desire to try it for myself. It renewed in
my mature days the wild ambition that put turmoil into my schoolboy
life, after I had read “Lafitte, or the Pirate of the Gulf.”
I have longed for many a day to run a “gore” into each leg of my
pantaloons, roll back my collar, tousle my hair, fold my cloak about my
shoulders, and stand before the mast in a stiff breeze, and there read
Byron with one eye, and with the other watch the effect of the tableau
on the female passengers.
I never had a chance to gratify the desire until lately. I never saw the
ocean until the trip that results in this letter; I shall never forget
the impression it made on me.
I had imagined that it would be a moment of ecstasy. I had believed that
my soul, in the glad recognition of something as infinite, as
illimitable as itself, would laugh with joy, and leap to my lips, and
burn in my fingers, and tingle in my veins. I wisely reserved the first
sight until we had steamed out beyond the land, and then with the air of
one who unchains himself, I raised my head and looked out to the future.
There, as far as the eye could reach, aye, and way beyond, as if mocking
the finiteness of sight, stretched the blue waters. Ah! how my fine-spun
fancies crumbled and came tumbling back on me in dire confusion! My soul
literally shriveled! My very imagination was cowed and driven to its
corner, and I sat there dumb and trembling!
No tenant of a cradle was ever more simple or more trusting than I
became at that moment. I literally rejoiced in the abrogation of all the
pride and manliness that I had boasted of two hours before. I flung away
my self-dependence, and my soul ran abashed into the hollow of His hand,
even as a frightened child runs to its father’s arms. As I looked
shuddering upon the vast and restless waste of waters in front of me, I
felt as if some person had taken me to the confines of that time which
human calculation can compass, and holding me on the chill edge of that
gulf called the Eternal, had asked me to translate its meaning, and
pronounce its uttermost boundary.
I suppose the truth of the matter is that I was about scared to death;
certain it is that I crouched there for hours, trembling, and yet gazing
out beyond me upon the lapping waters, from where they parted before our
ship to where they curled up against the half-consenting sky! At last I
arose, shook myself, as if throwing off some nightmare, and sought the
crowd again.
I can never forget how dissonant and inopportune the flippant
conversation of the voyagers seemed to me to be at that time. It was as
if some revelers should jest and shout in a great church. With the awful
abyss in front, and these prattlers to the rear, one had the two
extremes. There was God in the deep and awful stillness ahead, and the
world behind in the chatter and gayety that rang out “like a man’s
cracked laughter heard way down in hell.”
The first man’s voice that I heard, as I turned away from the solemn
hush of the Eternal that yawned before us, was that of a young fellow
who remarked to his chum rhapsodically (evidently alluding to some
female acquaintance), “Why, she had a leg on her like a government
mule.” These words bit into my memory as if they were cut there by
white-hot pincers.
HOW SEA-SICKNESS WORKS.
I believe I have said somewhere in this letter that my soul didn’t leap
to my lips when I went out to meet the ocean. I regret to say that my
breakfast did. I do not know whether any writer has addressed himself to
sea-sickness. I am certain that no writer of sacred or profane
literature can do it sufficient injustice. Walt Whitman might do it.
He’s better on the yawp than any poet I know. Never tell me again that
hell is a lake of fire and brimstone. Eternal punishment means riding on
a rough sea, in a steamer that don’t roll well, without a
copper-bottomed stomach, and a self-acting stop-valve in the throat. To
have been jostled about in a lake of fire would have been real cheerful
business compared to the unutterable anguish that I suffered for three
days. I do believe that if I had tied a cannon-ball to a crumb of bread
and swallowed them both, the crumb would have come prancing to the front
again, and brought the cannon-ball with it. It at last became a sort of
dismal joke to send anything down. But this was not what made it so hard
to bear. It was the abject degradation that it brought upon me. The
absolute prostration of every mental, moral and physical activity, of
every emotion, impulse and ambition; the reduction of a system that
boasted of some nervous power and of excessive tone, to the condition of
a wet dish-clout,—these were the things that made sea-sickness a misery
beyond the power of words. For three days I lay like an old volcano,
still, desolate and haggard; but with an exceedingly active crater. I
was brought to that condition which Chesterfield says is the finest
pitch to which a gentleman can be brought, that sublime pitch of
indifference that enables him to hear of the loss of an estate, or a
poodle dog, with the same feeling. Nothing disturbs the man who is
sea-sick. He blinks in the face of disaster, and yawps at death itself.
He actually longs for sensation. To stick him with a pin, or drop ice
down his back, would be a mercy. He spraddles madly over the ship,
flabbing himself like a mollusk over everything he stumbles on, and
knows not night or morning. As far as I was concerned, I was seized with
a yawning that came very near proving fatal. I was taken with a longing
to turn myself wrong-side outwards, and hang myself on the taffrail.
Several times I was on the point of doing it; but I struggled against it
and saved myself.
THE SIGHTS OF THE SEA.
The “sights” of the sea are not what they are cracked up to be. Some
writer, Lowell, I believe, who was seduced into going seaward, had a
sovereign contempt for everything connected with the sea. With a
charming abandon, he says, “A whale looks like a brown paper parcel—the
white stripes down his back resembling the pack-thread.” It is not hard
to bring everything down to this standard.
The very motion of the waves, the cause of rhymes unnumbered, becomes
terribly monotonous after the first day or two. The rise and relapse of
the tinted water glistening in the sun, and blooming lilies on the
wave-crest, is a pretty enough sight at first; but before long one longs
to shiver the surface of the deep, and calm its eternal restlessness.
The waves, wriggling up like a woman’s regrets from nowhere, come
dragging themselves over the weary waste, and, plashing back upon each
other, spring off on another uneasy remonstrance, until the brain of the
looker-on is actually addled. I would have given a great deal to have
had the power to have settled the upheaving waters for one hour, just as
a schoolboy has the power, and the inclination, too, to break the
inexorable calm of a mill-pond by splashing it with rocks. Nothing tires
us like sameness; sameness, inactivity, is intolerable.
We saw some flying-fish. And we saw, what I valued much more, on board
with us a man who knew a man whose cousin had seen the great
sea-serpent. I have a great respect for a man who knows somebody that
has seen the sea-serpent. He is a link between us and the supernatural
in the ocean. He is a relic, stranded by the shore of science, of that
world of wonders that began with the syrens, was modernized with the
mermaids, and that ends in the devil-fish and sea-serpent. While he
lives I want to be near him. When he dies I want his tooth set on my
mantel-piece; it will be a sort of guarantee, under which I can read the
weird stories of the old, unexplored ocean, that made boyhood joyous.
Give me the sea-serpent as a fact, and I will swear to the mermaids, bet
on the phantom ship, and pin my faith to the syrens.
THE LOVERS AND THE PILOT.
The intercourse between the passengers was not pleasant. We got tired of
each other. The fact that none of us could get on or off, gave us a sort
of feeling that we were prisoners; or, when locked up at night in our
berths, that we were animals traveling in the same menagerie; brought
together by chance, and held together through necessity.
There was one couple on board that won my attention. It was a man,
full-grown, handsome and accomplished, but with the deep furrows in his
brow that always come after a man has wrestled with the world; and the
girl not more than fifteen years of age. The girl had not worn off the
subtle bloom of childhood that gave her grace and glow, as the
dew-chrism of early dawn graces the lily. She was not beautiful, after
the approved models, but there was an elastic freshness, a bright charm
that would have put beauty to the blush. She was brimming with the
splendid and tender divinity that fills the odorous buds just before
they burst into life’s beauty. She was full of spring. She carried its
balms about with her, its aroma hung about her skirts, and its auroral
light illuminated her very being. She was April, with all its joys and
all its happy tears—its dear restlessness, and its thrills. I marveled
to see how the man of affairs loved her. It annoyed me to see how this
man, with all his vast concerns, his rugged schemes, his vaulting
ambition, bowed down at the feet of a child. It was a very miracle of
love that centered all the impulses, aspirations, hopes, and endeavors
of this man of the world in a bright slip of a girl. She understood her
power, too; and taking the reins of affairs in her little fingers,
carried herself with a pretty imperiousness. Not always was she
mistress, though. Once in awhile I noticed, when he held her beneath his
words, her eyes softened and fell, and she sat half absorbed and
trembling, thrilling under an ecstasy that stirred her soul to its very
depths, and yet left her unconscious of what it meant or from what it
came. I watched this couple with a strange interest, and my heart went
out to the child. But beyond this there was nothing interesting on
shipboard. The people were all tame. They seemed to have been planted on
the ship, and grown there. They were all indigenous; and hence, when the
pilot—a breezy fellow, by the way—jumped on board just outside of New
York, he brought with him the charm of a rare exotic, and actually
acquired a sort of game flavor, by being a stranger.
SOME CONCLUSIONS NOT JUMPED AT.
Altogether, a trip on the ocean is a very great bore. It does not
compare to the cozy and bustling comforts of an inland trip, especially
if one have the benefits of a Pullman.
The ocean is meant to be looked at and enjoyed—from the shore, or
through books. You may see more of it by going on board a ship. It is
pretty apt to see more of you, though, than you do of it. There are many
moments during the first day or two, when, leaning over the taffrail,
you yawp into its face, that it can see clear through to your boots.
That’s the way it was with
JOHN, JR.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TWO MEN WHO HAVE THRILLED THE STATE.
AN ACCIDENTAL MEETING ON THE STREET, IN WHICH TWO GREAT MEN ARE
RECOGNIZED AS THE TYPES OF TWO CLASHING THEORIES—TOOMBS’S
SUCCESSES—BROWN’S JUDGMENT.
THE other day I saw two men meet on the street, bow cordially, and pass.
I was struck by the contrast between them—by the difference in their
walk, appearance and manner. This suggested that the contrast in their
lives, in their lineage and their methods, was even greater than their
physical make-up. And then, forgetting for the moment that a
gubernatorial campaign of great fierceness was raging, I fell to
wondering if there had ever been two masterful men whose paths lay near
each other, and whose performance was so nearly equal, who had been born
in such dissimilar conditions, and moved by such dissimilar motives. Joe
Brown and Bob Toombs! Both illustrious and great—both powerful and
strong—and yet at every point, and from every view, the perfect
opposites of each other.
Through two centuries have two strains of blood, two conflicting lines
of thought, two separate theories of social, religious and political
life, been working out the two types of men, which have in our day
flowered into the perfection of contrast—vivid, thorough pervasive. For
seven generations the ancestors of Joe Brown have been aggressive
rebels; for a longer time the Toombs have been dauntless and intolerant
followers of the king and kingliness. At the siege of Londonderry—the
most remarkable fasting match beyond Tanner—Margaret and James Brown,
grandparents of the James Brown who came to America and was grandparent
of Joe Brown, were within the walls starving and fighting for William
and Mary; and I have no doubt there were hard-riding Toombs outside the
walls charging in the name of the peevish and unhappy James. Certain it
is that forty years before, the direct ancestors of General Toombs on
the Toombs estate were hiding good King Charles in the oak at Boscabel,
where, I have no doubt, the father and uncles of the Londonderry Brown,
with cropped hair and severe mien, were proguing about the place with
their pikes, searching every bush, in the name of Cromwell and the
psalm-singers. From these initial points sprang the two strains of
blood—the one affluent, impetuous, prodigal, the other slow, resolute,
forceful. From these ancestors came the two men—the one superb, ruddy,
fashioned with incomparable grace and fulness; the other pale,
thoughtful, angular, stripped down to bone and sinew. From these
opposing theories came the two types—the one patrician, imperious, swift
in action and brooking no stay; the other democratic, sagacious, jealous
of rights and submitting to no imposition. The one for the king; the
other for the people. It does not matter that the elder Toombs was a
rebel in Virginia against the fat George, for that revolt was kingly of
itself, and the Virginian cavaliers went into it with love-locks flying
and care cast to the winds, feeling little of the patient spirit of
James Brown, who, by his Carolina fireside, fashioned his remonstrance
slowly, and at last put his life upon the issue.
Governor Brown and General Toombs started under circumstances in
accordance with the suggestions of the foregoing. General Toombs’s
father had a fine estate, given him by the State of Georgia, and his son
had a fine education and started in life in liberal trim. Governor Brown
had nothing, and for years hauled wood to Dahlonega; and sold vegetables
from a basket to the hotel and what others would buy. Young Toombs made
money rapidly, his practice for the first five years amounting to much
over $50,000. He conquered by the grace of his genius, and went easily
from triumph to triumph. Young Brown moved ahead laboriously but
steadily. He made only about $1200 his first year, and then pushed his
practice to $2000 or $3000. He made no brilliant reputation, but never
lost a client, and added to his income and practice. His progress was
the result of hard labor and continuous work. He lived moderately and
his habits were simple. General Toombs has lived in princely style all
his life, and has always been fond of wine and cards. Both men are rich,
and both are well preserved for their time of life. General Toombs is
seventy-one and Governor Brown fifty-nine. Each had a lucky stroke early
in life, and in both cases it was in a land investment. General Toombs
bought immense tracts of Texas land, of which he has sold perhaps
$100,000 profit and still holds enough to yield double or treble that
much more. Governor Brown, when very young, paid $450 for a piece of
land, and afterward sold a half interest in a copper mine thereon for
$25,000. This he invested in farms, and thus laid the basis of his
fortune.
The first time these men met was in Milledgeville, in 1851 or ’52, when
Governor Brown was a young Democratic State Senator and General Toombs
was a Whig Congressman—then the idol of his party and the most eloquent
man in Georgia. They were then just such men physically as one who had
never seen them would imagine from reading their lives. General Toombs
was, as Governor Brown has told me, “the handsomest man he ever saw.”
His physique was superb, his grand head fit for a crown, his presence
that of a king, overflowing with vitality, his majestic face illumined
with his divine genius. Governor Brown was then pallid, uncomely—his
awkward frame packed closely with nerve and sinew, and fed with a
temperate flow of blood. They met next at Marietta, where Toombs had a
fiery debate with that rare master of discussion, the late Robert
Cowart. Governor Brown was deeply impressed with the power and genius of
that wonderful man, but General Toombs thought but little of the awkward
young mountaineer. For later, when in Texas, hearing that Joe Brown was
nominated for Governor, he did not even remember his name, and had to
ask a Georgia-Texan “who the devil it was.”
But the next time he met him he remembered it. Of course we all remember
when the “Know-Nothings” took possession of the Whig party, and Toombs
and Stephens seceded. Stephens having a campaign right on him, and being
pressed to locate himself, said he was neither Whig nor Democrat, but
“was toting his own skillet,” thus introducing that homely but
expressive phrase into our political history. Toombs was in the Senate
and had time for reflection. It ended by his marching into the
Democratic camp. Shortly afterward he was astounded at seeing the
standard of his party, upon the success of which his seat in the Senate
depended, put in the hands of Joe Brown, a new campaigner, while the
opposition was led by Ben Hill, then as now an audacious and eloquent
speaker, incomparable on the stump. Hill and Brown had had a meeting at
Athens, I believe, and it was reported that Brown had been worsted.
Howell Cobb wrote Toombs that he must take the canvass in hand at once,
at least until Brown could learn how to manage himself. Toombs wrote to
Brown to come to his home at Washington, which he did. General Toombs
told me that he was not hopeful when he met the new candidate, but after
talking to him awhile, found that he had wonderful judgment and
sagacity. After coquetting with Mr. Hill a while, they started on a tour
together, going to south Georgia. General Toombs has talked to me often
about this experience. He says that after two or three speeches Governor
Brown was as fully equipped as if he had been in public for forty years,
and he was amazed at the directness with which he would get to the
hearts of the masses. He talked in simple style, using the homeliest
phrases, but his words went home every time. There was a sympathy
between the speaker and the people that not even the eloquence of Toombs
could emphasize, or the matchless skill of Mr. Hill disturb. In Brown
the people saw one of themselves, lifted above them by his superior
ability, and his unerring sagacity, but talking to them common sense in
a sensible way. General Toombs soon saw that the new candidate was more
than able to take care of himself, and left him to make his tour
alone—impressed with the fact that a new element had been introduced
into our politics and that a new leader had arisen.
It is hard to say which has been the more successful of the two men.
Neither has ever been beaten before the people. General Toombs has won
his victories with the more ease. He has gone to power as a king goes to
his throne, and no one has gainsaid him. Governor Brown has had to fight
his way through. It has been a struggle all the time, and he has had to
summon every resource to carry his point. Each has made unsurpassed
records in his departments. As Senator, General Toombs was not only
invincible, he was glorious. As Governor, was not only invincible, he
was wise. General Toombs’s campaigns have been unstudied and careless,
and were won by his presence, his eloquence, his greatness. His canvass
was always an ovation, his only caucusing was done on the hustings. With
Governor Brown it was different. He planned his campaigns and then went
faithfully through them. His victories were none the less sure, because
his canvass was more laborious. His nomination as Governor, while
unexpected, was not accidental. It was the inevitable outcome of his
young life, disciplined so marvelously, so full of thought, sagacity and
judgment. If he had not been nominated Governor then, his time would
have come at last, just as sure as cause produces result. His record as
Governor proves that he was prepared for the test—just as his brilliant
record in the Senate proves that he is fitted for any sphere to which he
might be called.
To sum it up: Toombs is the embodiment of genius, and Brown is the
embodiment of common sense. One is brilliant, the other unerring; one is
eloquent, the other sagacious. Toombs moves by inspiration; Brown is
governed by judgment. The first is superb; the latter is sage. Despite
the fact that Governor Brown is by instinct and by inheritance a rebel,
he is prudent, conservative, and has a turn for building things up.
General Toombs, despite his love for kingliness and all that implies,
has an almost savage instinct for overturning systems and tearing things
down. It must not be understood that I depreciate General Toombs’s
wisdom. Genius often flies as true to its mark as judgment can go. The
wisest speech, and the ablest ever made by an American, in my opinion,
is Mr. Toombs’s speech on slavery, delivered in Boston about ten years
before the war. In that speech he showed a prescience almost divine, and
clad in the light of thirty years of confirmation, it is simply
marvelous. His leadership of the southern Whigs in the House during the
contest of 1850 was a masterpiece of brilliancy, and even his Hamilcar
speech, delivered after the most exasperating insults, was sublime in
its lofty eloquence and courage. Safer as a leader, Governor Brown is
more sagacious on material points—truer to the practical purposes of
government: but no man but Toombs could have represented Georgia as he
did for the decade preceding 1860.
Messrs. Brown and Toombs have disagreed since the war. That Governor
Brown may have been wiser in “reconstruction” than Mr. Toombs, many wise
men believe, and events may have proved. In that matter my heart was
with Mr. Toombs, and I have never seen reason to recall it. That
Governor Brown was honest and patriotic in his advice, my knowledge of
the man would not permit me to doubt. The trouble between these
gentlemen came very near resulting in a duel. While I join with all good
men that this duel was arrested, I confess that I have been wicked
enough to speculate on its probable result—had it occurred. In the first
place, General Toombs made no preparation for the duel. He went along in
his careless and kingly way, trusting, presumably, to luck and quick
shot. Governor Brown, on the contrary, made the most careful and
deliberate preparation. He made his will, put his estate in order,
withdrew from the church, and then clipped all the trees in his orchard
practicing with the pistol. Had the duel come off—which fortunately it
did not—General Toombs would have fired with his usual magnificence and
his usual disregard of rule. I do not mean to imply that he would not
have hit Governor Brown; on the contrary, he might have perforated him
in a dozen places at once. But one thing is sure—Governor Brown would
have clasped his long white fingers around the pistol butt, adjusted it
to his gray eye, and sent his bullet within the eighth of an inch of the
place he had selected. I should not be surprised if he drew a diagram of
General Toombs, and marked off with square and compass the exact spot he
wanted to hit.
General Toombs has always been loose and prodigal in his money matters.
Governor Brown has been precise and economical all his life, and gives
$50,000 to a Baptist college—not a larger amount probably than General
Toombs has dispensed casually, but how much more compact and useful!
This may be a good fact to stop on, as it furnishes a point of view from
which the two lives may be logically surveyed. Two great lives they are,
illustrious and distinguished—utterly dissimilar. Georgia could have
spared neither and is jealous of both. I could write of them for hours,
but the people are up and the flags are flying, and the journalist has
no time for moralizing or leisurely speculation.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
“_BOB_.”
HOW AN OLD MAN “COME HOME.”
-------
A STORY WITHOUT A MORAL, PICKED OUT OF A BUSY LIFE.
-------
[WRITTEN FOR THE SUNDAY GAZETTE.]
“YOU are the no-countest, laziest, meanest dog that ever wore breeches!
Never let me see you again!”
Thus Mrs. Tag to Mr. Tag, her husband; she standing in the door, her
arms akimbo, and, cat-like, spitting the words at him.
Mr. Tag made no reply. He did not even put up his hands in evasion. He
stood dazed and bewildered, as one who hesitates in a sudden shower, and
then turning, pulled his old hat down over his shoulders, as if she was
throwing rocks at him instead of words, and shambled off in silence,
quickening his retreat by a pitiful little jerk, every time she launched
a new volley at him.
This she did as often as her brains could forge them and her tongue send
them. She stood there, the very picture of fury. And at length, with
disgust on every feature, she turned, sprawled a weevilly little child
that was clinging to her skirts, and went into the house.
As for Mr. Tag, he hurried on, never once looking back until he had
reached a hill, against which the sun was setting. He then slowed up a
little, lifted the flap of his hat cautiously, as if to be sure he was
out of ear-shot—then stopped. He pulled off his hat, shook it to and
fro—unconsciously, I think—in his hand as one who comes out of the
storm. He looked about him a while, as if undetermined, and then browsed
about vaguely in the sunset, until his bent, shambling figure seemed
melting into the golden glory that enveloped it; and his round, chubby
head was tipped with light.
I thought probably he wanted to see me, so I climbed up the hill. He
seemed to approve of my coming, and walked down in the shade to meet me.
“Ann was sorter rough to me, wan’t she?” he said, with a chuckle of
deprecation.
I assented quietly to the lack of smoothness in Ann’s remarks.
“You aint know’d me long,” he said, with a sudden flicker of
earnestness; “and you’ve knowed the worst part of me. You’ve knowed the
trouble and the fag-end. You warn’t in at the good part of my life!”
I should think not, poor fellow. Ever since I had known him he had been
the same shabby, good-for-nothing that he is now. He had grown a bit
more serious of late, and his long face—it was abnormally long between
the eyes and the chin—had whitened somewhat, but otherwise he was about
the same shabby, ragged, half-starved old fellow I had known for a year
or so. Yes, Bob, I had clearly known the worst of you!
“I was a better man once; not a better man, either, as I know of, but I
had luck. When me and Ann married, there warn’t a happier couple
nowhere. I remember just as well when I courted her. She didn’t think
about me then as she does now. We had a buggy to ourselves, and we
turned down a shady road. I fetched it on soon after we left the crowd,
and she was about as well pleased as me. It seemed like that road was
the road to heaven, and we was so happy that we wasn’t in no hurry to
get to the end of it. Ann was handsome then. Oh yes, she was!”—as I
winced at this,—“and at first as good a wife to me as ever a man had.
“It may a-been me that started the trouble. I was unfortnit in
everything I touched. My fingers slipped off o’ everything and
everything slipped off o’ them. I could get no grip on nothin’. I worked
hard, but something harder agin me. Ann was ambitious and uppish, and I
used to think when I come home at night, most tired to death, she was
gettin’ to despise me. She’d snap me up and abuse me till actually I was
afraid to come home. I never misused her or give her a back word. I
thought maybe she wasn’t to blame, and that what she said about me was
true. Things kept a-gitten worse, and we sold off pretty much what we
had. Five years ago a big surprise came to us. It was a baby—a boy—him!”
nodding toward the hut. “It was a surprise to both of us. We’d been
married fourteen years. It made Ann harder on me than ever. She never
let me rest; it was all the time hard words and hard looks. I never
raised even a look against her, o’ course. I thought she was right about
me. He never had a cross word with me. Him and me knowed each other from
the start. We had a langwidge of our own. Ther wasn’t no words in
it—just looks and grunts. I never could git ‘nough, nuther could he. He
know’d more an’ me. Ther was a kinder way-off look in his eyes that was
solemn and deep, I tell you. At last Ann got to breaking me up. Whenever
she catch me with him she’d drive me off. I’d always hurry off, ’cause I
never wanted him to hear her ’spressin herself ’bout me. ’Peared like he
understood every word of it. Mos’t two years ago, and I ain’t had one
since. I couldn’t git one. Ann commenced takin’ in washing, and one day
she said I shouldn’t hang around no more a-eatin’ him and her out of
house and home. That was more’n a year ago, and I seen him since to talk
to him. Every time I go about she hustles me about like she did to-day.
I never make no fuss. She’s right about me, I reckon. I am powerful no
’count. But he has stirred things in me I ain’t felt movin’ for many a
year!”
“What’s his name, Bob?”
“Got none. She never would let me talk to her ’bout it, and I ain’t got
no right to name him. I ast her once how it would do to call him little
Bob, and she said I better git him sumpin’ to eat; he couldn’t eat a
name, nor dress in it neither; which was true. But he’s got my old face
on him, and my look. I know that, and he knows it too.”
“Did you ever drink, Bob?”
“Me? You know I didn’t. I did get drunk once. The boys give me the wine.
They say liquor makes a man savage, and makes him beat his wife. It
didn’t take me that way. I was the happiest fellow you ever see. I felt
light and free. My blood was warm, and just jumped along—and beat Ann?
why, all the old love come back to me, as I went to’ards home, feelin’
big as a king. I made as how I’d go up to Ann and put arm aroun’ her
neck in the old way, and tell her if she’d only encourage me a little,
I’d get about for her and him and make ’em both rich. I couldn’t hardly
wait to get home, I was so full of it. She was just settin’ down a pail
of water when I come in. I made for her, gentle like, and had just got
my arms to her neck, when she drawed back, with a few words like them
this evening, and dosed the pail of water full in my face. As I
scrambled out o’ the door, sorter blind like, I struck the edge o’ the
gulley there, rolled down head over heels, and fotch up squar’ at the
bottom, as sober a man as ever you see!”
* * * * *
I met Bob a few days after that in a state of effusive delight. He would
not disclose himself at first. He followed me through several blocks,
and at length, diving into an alley, beckoned me cautiously to him. He
took off his old hat, always with him a preliminary to conversation, and
glancing cautiously around, said in a hoarse whisper:
“Had a pic-nic to-day.”
“A pic-nic! Who?”
“Me and him!”
And his wrinkled, weather-beaten old face was broken by smiles and
chuckles, that struggled to the surface, as porpoises do, and then
shrunk back into the depths from whence they came.
“You don’t know Phenice—the neighbor’s gal as nusses him sometimes?
Well, I seed her out with him, to-day, and I tolled her off kinder, till
she got beyant the hill, and then I give her a quarter I had got, and
purposed as how she should gi’ me a little time with him. She sciddled
off to town to git her quarter spent, and I took him and made for the
woods, to meet her thar agin, by sun!”
“He’s a deep one, I tell you!” he said, drawing a breath of admiration;
“as deep a one as I ever see. He’d never been in the woods before, but
he jest knowed it all! You orter seed him when a jay-bird come and sot
on a high limb, and flung him some sass, and tried to sorter to make
free with him. The look that boy give him couldn’t a’ been beat by
nobody. The jay tried to hold up to it and chaffered a little, but he
finally had to skip, the wust beat bird you ever saw!”
And so the old fellow went on, telling me about that wonderful pic-nic;
how he had gathered flowers for the baby, and made little bouquets,
which the baby received with a critical air, as if he had spent his life
in a florist’s shop, and being a connoisseur in flowers, couldn’t afford
to become enthusiastic over pied daisies; how a gray squirrel scampering
down a near tree had startled him out of his wits, while the baby,
seated still nearer the disturbance than he, remained a marvel of
stolidity and presence of mind; how the baby was finally coaxed out of
his wise reserve by a group of yellow butterflies pulsating in the
golden sunshine, and by the flashing of the silvery brook that ran
beneath them; how all the birds in the county seemed to have entered
into a conspiracy to upset that baby’s dignity; and how they would
assail him with pert bursts of song and rapid curvetings about his head,
while Bob sat off at a distance, “and let ’em fight it out, not helping
one side or t’other,” always to see the chatterers retire in
good-humored defeat before the serene impassibility of the youngster;
how the only drawback to the pic-nic was that there was not a thing to
eat, and besides its being in violation of all pic-nic precedent, there
was danger of the little one getting very hungry; and how, in the
evening—what would have been after dinner if they’d had any dinner—the
baby, who was sitting opposite Bob on the grass, suddenly assumed an air
of deeper solemnity, even than he had worn before, and gazed at Bob with
a dense and inscrutable gaze, until he was actually embarrassed by the
searching and fixed character of this look; and how the round, grave
head suddenly keeled to one side as if it were so heavy with ideas that
it could not be held upright any longer; and how then, suddenly, and
without a sign or hint of warning, this self-possessed baby tumbled over
in the grass, shot his little toes upward, and, before Bob could reach
him, was dead asleep! And Bob told me then, with the glittering tears
gathering in his eyes and rolling down his old cheeks, how he had picked
the baby up and cuddled him close to his old bosom, and listened to his
soft breathing, and stroked his chubby face, and almost guessed the wise
dreams that were flitting through his round fuzzy head,—hugged him so
close, and pressed him to his bosom with such hungry, tender love, that
he felt as if he had him “layin’ agin’ my naked heart, and warmin’ it
up, and stirrin’ all its strings with his little fingers!”
It was late that night when I went home—after one o’clock; a fearful
night, too. The rain was pouring in torrents and the wind howled like
mad. Taking a near cut home, I passed by the hut where Bob’s wife lived.
Through the drifting rain, I saw a dark figure against the side of the
house. Stepping closer, I saw that it was Bob, mounted on a barrel,
flattened out against the planks, his old felt hat down about his ears,
and the rain pouring from it in streams—his face glued to the window.
Poor old follow! there he was! oblivious to the storm, to hunger and
everything else—clinging like some homeless night-bird, drifting and
helpless, to the outside of his own home; gazing in stealthily at the
bed where the little one slept, and warming his old heart up with the
memory of that wondrous pic-nic—of the solemn contest with the
impertinent jay-bird, and the grave rapture over the butterflies that
swung lazily about in their rift of sunshine.
One morning, many months after the pic-nic, Bob came to me sideways. His
right arm hung limp and inert by his side, and his right leg dragged
helplessly after the left. The yielding muscles of the neck had
stiffened and drawn his head awry. He stumbled clumsily to where I was
standing, and received my look of surprise shamefacedly.
“I’ve had a stroke,” he said. “Paralysis? It’s most used me up. I reckon
I’ll never be able to do anything for him! It came on me sudden,” he
said, as if to say that if it had given him any sort of notice, he could
have dodged it.
After that Bob went on from worse to worse. His face, all save that
fixed in the rigid grasp of the paralysis, became tremulous, pitiful and
uncertain. He had lost all the chirrupy good-humor of the other days,
and became shy and silent. There was a wistfulness and yearning in his
face that would have made your heart ache; a hungry passion had
struggled from the depth of his soul, and peered out of his blue eyes,
and tugged at the corners of his mouth. There was, too, a pitiful, scary
look about him. He had the air of one who is pursued. At the slightest
sigh he would pluck at his lame leg sharply, and shamble off, turning
full around at intervals to see if he was followed. I learned that his
wife had become even harder on him since his trouble, and that he was
even more than ever afraid of her.
He had never had another “pic-nic.” He had snatched a furtive interview
with the baby, under protection of the occasional nurse, from each of
which he came to me with a new idea of the “deepness” of that infant.
“He’s too much for me, that baby is!” he would say. “If I just had his
sense!” He was rapidly getting shabbier, and thinner and more
woe-begone. He became a slink. He hid about in the day-time, avoiding
everybody, and seeming to carry off his love and his passion, as a dog
with a bone, seeking an alley. At night he would be seen hanging like a
guilty thief about the hut in which his treasure was hid.
“I’ve a mind,” he said one morning, “to go home. I don’t think she” (he
had quit calling her “Ann” now) “could drive me out now. All I’d want
would be to just sit in a corner o’ the house and be with him. That’s
all.”
“Bob,” I said to him one morning, “you rascal, you are starving!”
He couldn’t deny it. He tried to put it off, but he couldn’t. His face
told on him.
“Have you had anything to eat to-day?”
“No, sir.”
“Nor yesterday?”
“No, sir.”
I gave him a half-dollar. A wolfish glare of hunger shot into his eyes
as he saw the money. He clutched it with a spasm of haste and started
off. I watched his side-long walk down the street, and then went to
work, satisfied that he would go off and pack himself full.
It was hardly an hour before he came back, his face brighter than I had
seen it in months. He carried a bundle in his live hand. He laid it on
my desk, and then fell back on his dead leg while I opened it. I found
in the bundle a red tin horse, attached to a blue tin wagon, on which
was seated a green tin driver. I looked up in blank astonishment.
“For him!” he said simply. And then he broke down. He turned slowly on
his live leg as an axis and leaned against the wall.
“Could you send it to him?” he said at last. “If she knew I sent it, she
mightn’t let him have it. He’s never had nothin’ o’ this kind, and I
thought it might pearten him up.”
“Bob, is this the money I gave you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you were starving when you left here?”
“Oh, I got some bread!”
* * * * *
I suppose every man, woman and child remembers that terrible night three
years ago when we had lightning while the snow was on the ground. The
flashes plowed great yellow seams through the gray of the day, and at
night a freezing storm of sleet and rain came.
It was a terrible night. I staggered home through it to where a big
fire, and blue eyes and black, and slippers, and roasting apples were
awaiting me. I thought of Bob—my old night-owl, with a heart in him, and
wondered whether he was keeping his silent, but uncomplaining vigil
about the little hut on the hillside. I even went so far as to speculate
on this point with a certain blue-eyed youngster on my knee, to whom
Bob’s life was a romance and a wonder.
Bless me! and all the time I was pitying him, I didn’t know that he had
“gone home” and was all right.
His wife slept uneasily that night, as she has since said. She rolled in
her sleep a long time, and at last got up and went to the window and
looked out. She shuddered at the sound of the whizzing sleet and
pitiless hum of the rain on the roof. Then she stumbled sleepily back to
her couch, and dreamed of a long shady lane, and a golden-green
afternoon in May, and a bright-faced young fellow that looked into her
heart, and held her face in his soft fingers. How this dream became
tangled in her thoughts that night of all nights, she never could tell.
But there it was gleaming like a thread of gold through the dismal warp
and woof of her life.
It was full day when she awoke. As she turned lazily upon her side she
started up in affright. There was a man, dripping wet, silent, kneeling
by her bedside. An old felt hat lay upon the floor. The man’s head was
bowed deep down over the bed and his hands were bundled tenderly about
one of the baby’s fists that had been thrown above its head.
The worn, weatherbeaten figure was familiar to her. But there was
something that stopped her, as she started forward angrily. She stood
posed like a statue for a moment, then bent down, curiously and
tenderly, and with trembling fingers pulled the cover back from the bed,
and looked up into the man’s face steadily. Then she put her fingers on
his hand furtively and shrinkingly. And then a strange look crept into
her face—the dream of the night came to her like a flash—and she sank
back upon the floor, and dropped her head between her knees.
Ah, yes, Bob had “come home.”
And the poor fellow had come to stay. Not even his place in the corner
would he want now! No place about the scanty board! Just to stay—that
was all; not to offend by his laziness, or to annoy with his ugly,
shambling figure, and his no-count ways. Just “come home to stay!”
And there the baby slept quietly, all unconscious of the shadow and the
mystery that hung above his wise little head—unconscious of the shabby
old watcher, and the woman on the floor, dreaming, perhaps, of the
swinging butterflies and the chaffing birds and the brook flashing in
the sunshine. And there was old Bob—brave, at last, through love—“come
home.”
Out of the storm like a night-bird! In the door stealthily like a thief!
Groping his way to the bedside through the dark like a murderer! But
there was no danger in him—no ill-omen about him. It was only old Bob,
come home, “come home to stay!”
He had clasped the little hand he loved so well in his rough palm and
cuddled it close, as if he hoped to hold it always—fondled it in his
hands, as if he hoped to ride his own life on the spring-tide that
gathered in its rosy palm, or to catch that young life in the ebbing
billows that wasted from his cold fingers. But no; the baby was “too
much for him!” And the young heart, all unconscious and all perverse,
sent the rich blood through the little arm, down the slender wrist, and
into the dimpled fist, where it pulsed and throbbed uneasily, as it
broke against the chill, stark presence of Death!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
COTTON AND ITS KINGDOM.[1]
Footnote 1:
Reprinted from Harper’s Magazine, Oct., 1881.
IT has long been the fortune of the South to deal with special
problems—slavery, secession, reconstruction. For fifty years has the
settlement of these questions engaged her people, and challenged the
attention of the world. As these issues are set aside finally, after
stubborn and bloody conflict, during which she maintained her position
with courage, and abided results with fortitude, she finds herself
confronted with a new problem quite as important as either of those that
have been disposed of. In the cultivation and handling, under the new
order of things, of the world’s great staple, cotton, she is grappling
with a matter that involves essentially her own welfare, and is of the
greatest interest to the general public. To the slaveholder the growing
of cotton was straight and easy, as the product of his land was
supplemented by the increase of his slaves, and he prospered in spite of
himself. To the Southern farmer of _post-bellum_ days, impoverished,
unsettled, and thrown upon free labor, working feverishly with untried
conditions, poorly informed as to the result of experiments made by his
neighbors, and too impatient to wait upon his own experience, it is
quite a different affair. After sixteen years of trial, everything is
yet indeterminate. And whether this staple is cultivated in the South as
a profit or a passion, and whether it shall bring the South to
independence or to beggary, are matters yet to be settled. Whether its
culture shall result in a host of croppers without money or credit,
appealing to the granaries of the West against famine, paying toll to
usurers at home, and mortgaging their crops to speculators abroad even
before it is planted—a planting oligarchy of money-lenders, who have
usurped the land through foreclosure, and hold by the ever-growing
margin between a grasping lender and an enforced borrower—or a
prosperous self-respecting race of small farmers, cultivating their own
lands, living upon their own resources, controlling their crops until
they are sold, and independent alike of usurers and provision
brokers—which of these shall be the outcome of cotton culture the future
must determine. It is certain only in the present that the vigor of the
cotton producers and the pace at which they are moving are rapidly
forcing a settlement of these questions, and that the result of the
experiments now swiftly working out in the South will especially concern
a large part of the human race, from the farmer who plods down the
cotton row, cutting through his doubts with a hoe, to the spinner in
Manchester who anxiously balances the totals of the world’s crop.
It may be well to remark at the outset that the production of cotton in
the South is practically without limit. It was 1830 before the American
crop reached 1,000,000 bales, and the highest point ever reached in the
days of slavery was a trifle above 4,500,000 bales. The crop of 1880-81
is about 2,000,000 in excess of this, and there are those who believe
that a crop of 8,000,000 bales is among the certainties of the next few
years. The heavy increase in the cotton crop is due entirely to the
increase of cotton acreage brought about by the use of fertilizers.
Millions of acres of land, formerly thought to be beyond the possible
limit of the cotton belt, have been made the best of cotton lands by
being artificially enriched. In North Carolina alone the limit of cotton
production has been moved twenty miles northward and twenty miles
westward, and the half of Georgia on which no cotton was grown twenty
years ago now produces fully half the crop of the State. The “area of
low production” as the Atlantic States are brought to the front by
artificial stimulation is moving westward, and is now central in Alabama
and Florida. But the increase in acreage, large as it is, will be but a
small factor in the increase of production, compared to the intensifying
of the cultivation of the land now in use. Under the present loose
system of planting, the average yield is hardly better than one bale to
three acres. This could be easily increased to a bale an acre. In
Georgia five bales have been raised on one acre, and a yield of three
bales to the acre is credited to several localities. President Morehead,
of the Mississippi Valley Cotton Planters’ Association, says that the
entire cotton crop of the present year might have been easily raised in
fourteen counties along the Mississippi River. It will be seen,
therefore, that the capacity of the South to produce cotton is
practically limitless, and when we consider the enormous demand for
cotton goods now opening up from new climes and peoples, we may conclude
that the near future will see crops compared to which the crop of the
past year, worth $300,000,000, will seem small.
Who will be the producers of these vast crops of the future? Will they
be land-owners or tenants—planters or farmers? The answer to this
inquiry will be made by the average Southerners without hesitation.
“Small farms,” he will say, “well tended by actual owners, will be the
rule in the South. The day of a land-holding oligarchy has passed
forever.” Let us see about this.
The history of agriculture—slow and stubborn industry that it is—will
hardly show stronger changes than have taken place in the rural
communities of the South in the past fifteen years. Immediately after
the war between the States there was a period of unprecedented disaster.
The surrender of the Confederate armies found the plantations of the
South stripped of houses, fences, stock, and implements. The planters
were without means or prospects, and uncertain as to what should be
done. The belief that extensive cotton culture had perished with slavery
had put the price of the staple up to thirty cents. Lured by the
dazzling price, which gave them credit as well as hope, the owners of
the plantations prepared for vast operations. They refitted their
quarters, repaired their fences, summoned hundreds of negro croppers at
high prices, and invested lavishly their borrowed capital in what they
felt sure was a veritable bonanza. The few years that followed are full
of sickening failure. Planters who had been princes in wealth and
possessions suddenly found themselves irretrievably in debt and reduced
to beggary. Under the stimulation of high prices the crops grew, until
there was a tumble from thirty to ten cents per pound. Unable to meet
their engagements with their factors, who, suddenly awakening to the
peril of the situation, refused to make further advances or grant
extensions, the planters had no recourse but to throw their lands on the
market. But so terrible had been their experience—many losing $100,000
in a single season—that no buyers were found for the plantations on
which they had been wrecked. The result of this panic to sell and
disinclination to buy was a toppling of land values. Plantations that
had brought from $100,000 to $150,000 before the war, and even since,
were sold at $6000 to $10,000, or hung on the hands of the planter and
his factor at any price whatever. The ruin seemed to be universal and
complete, and the old plantation system, it then seemed, had perished
utterly and forever. While no definite reason was given for the
failure—free labor and the credit system being the causes usually and
loosely assigned—it went without contradiction that the system of
planting under which the South had amassed its riches and lived in
luxury was inexorably doomed.
Following this lavish and disastrous period came the era of small farms.
Led into the market by the low prices to which the best lands had
fallen, came a host of small buyers, to accommodate whom the plantations
were subdivided, and offered in lots to suit purchasers. Never perhaps
was there a rural movement, accomplished without revolution or exodus,
that equalled in extent and swiftness the partition of the plantations
of the ex-slave-holders into small farms. As remarkable as was the
eagerness of the negroes—who bought in Georgia alone 6850 farms in three
years—the earth-hunger of the poorer class of the whites, who had been
unable under the slave-holding oligarchy to own land, was even more
striking. In Mississippi there were in 1867 but 412 farms of less than
ten acres, and in 1870, 11,003; only 2314 of over ten and less than
twenty acres, and 1870, 8981; only 16,024 between twenty and one hundred
acres, and in 1870, 38,015. There was thus in this one State a gain of
nearly forty thousand small farms of less than one hundred acres in
about three years. In Georgia the number of small farms sliced off of
the big plantations from 1868 to 1873 was 32,824. In Liberty County
there were in 1866 only three farms of less than ten acres; in 1870
there were 616, and 749 farms between ten and twenty acres. This
splitting of the old plantations into farms went on with equal rapidity
all over the South, and was hailed with lively expressions of
satisfaction. A population pinned down to the soil on which it lived,
made conservative and prudent by land-ownership, forced to abandon the
lavish method of the old time as it had nothing to spare, and to
cultivate closely and intelligently as it had no acres to waste, living
on cost as it had no credit, and raising its own supplies as it could
not afford to buy—this the South boasted it had in 1873, and this many
believe it has to-day. The small farmer—who was to retrieve the
disasters of the South, and wipe out the last vestige of the planting
aristocracy, between which and the people there was always a lack of
sympathy, by keeping his own acres under his own supervision, and using
hired labor only as a supplement to his own—is still held to be the
typical cotton-raiser.
But the observer who cares to look beneath the surface will detect signs
of a reverse current. He will discover that there is beyond question a
sure though gradual rebunching of the small farms into large estates,
and a tendency toward the re-establishment of a land-holding oligarchy.
Here and there through all the Cotton States, and almost in every
county, are reappearing the planter princes of the old time, still lords
of acres, though not of slaves. There is in Mississippi one planter who
raises annually 12,000 bales of cotton on twelve consolidated
plantations, aggregating perhaps 50,000 acres. The Capeheart estate on
Albemarle Sound, originally of several thousand acres, had $52,000 worth
of land added last year. In the Mississippi Valley, where, more than
anywhere else, is preserved the distinctive cotton plantation, this
re-absorbing of separate farms into one ownership is going on rapidly.
Mr. F. C. Morehead, an authority on these lands, says that not one-third
of them are owned by the men who held them at the close of the war, and
that they are passing, one after the other, into the hands of the
commission merchants. It is doubtful if there is a neighborhood in all
the South in which casual inquiry will not bring to the front from ten
to a dozen men who have added farm after farm to their possessions for
the past several years, and now own from six to twenty places. It must
not be supposed that these farms are bunched together and run after the
old plantation style. On the contrary, they are cut into even smaller
farms, and rented to small croppers. The question involved is not
whether or not the old plantation methods shall be revived. It is the
much more serious problem as to whether the lands divided forever into
small farms shall be owned by the many or by the few, whether we shall
have in the South a peasantry like that of France, or a tenantry like
that of Ireland.
By getting at the cause of this threatened re-absorption of the small
farmer into the system from which he so eagerly and bravely sought
release, we shall best understand the movement. It is primarily credit—a
false credit based on usury and oppression, strained to a point where it
breeds distrust and provokes a percentage to compensate for risk, and
strained, not for the purchase of land, which is a security as long as
the debt is unpaid, but for provisions and fertilizers, which are
valueless to either secure the lender or assist the borrower to pay.
With the failure of the large planters and their withdrawal from
business, banks, trust companies, and capitalists withdraw their money
from agricultural loans. The new breed of farmers held too little land
and were too small dealers to command credit or justify investigation.
And yet they were obliged to have money with which to start their work.
Commission merchants therefore borrowed the money from the banks, and
loaned it to village brokers or store-keepers, who in turn loaned it to
farmers in their neighborhood, usually in the form of advancing
supplies. It thus came to the farmer after it had been through three
principals, each of whom demanded a heavy percentage for the risk he
assumed. In every case the farmer gave a lien or mortgage upon his crop
of land. In this lien he waived exemptions and defense, and it amounted
in effect to a deed. Having once given such a paper to his merchant, his
credit was of course gone, and he had to depend upon the man who held
the mortgage for his supplies. To that man he must carry his crop when
it was gathered, pay him commission for handling it, and accept the
settlement that he offered. To give an idea of the oppressiveness of
this system it is only necessary to quote the Commissioner of
Agriculture of Georgia, who by patient investigation discovered that the
Georgia farmers paid prices for supplies that averaged fifty-four per
cent. interest on all they bought. For instance, corn that sold for
eighty-nine cents a bushel cash was sold on time secured by a lien at a
dollar and twelve cents. In Mississippi the percentage is even more
terrible, as the crop lien laws are in force there, and the crop goes
into the hands of the merchant, who charges commission on the estimated
number of bales, whether a half crop or a full one is raised. Even this
maladjustment of credits would not impoverish the farmer if he did not
yield to the infatuation for cotton-planting, and fail to plant anything
but cotton.
Those who have the nerve to give up part of their land and labor to the
raising of their own supplies and stock have but little need of credit,
and consequently seldom get into the hands of the usurers. But cotton is
the money crop, and offers such flattering inducements that everything
yields to that. It is not unusual to see farmers come to the cities to
buy butter, melons, meal, and vegetables. They rely almost entirely upon
their merchants for meat and bread, hay, forage, and stock. In one
county in Georgia last year, from the small dépôts, $80,000 worth of
meat and bread was shipped to farmers. The official estimate of the
National Cotton Planters’ Association, at its session of 1881, was that
the Cotton States lacked 42,252,244 bushels of wheat, 166,684,279
bushels of corn, 77,762,108 bushels of oats, or 286,698,632 bushels of
grain, of raising what it consumed. When to this is added 4,011,150 tons
of hay at thirty dollars a ton, and $32,000,000 paid for fertilizers, we
find that the value of the cotton crop is very largely consumed in
paying for the material with which it was made. On this enormous amount
the cotton farmer has to pay the usurous percentage charged by his
merchant broker, which is never less than thirty per cent., and
frequently runs up to seventy per cent. We can appreciate, when we
consider this, the statement of the man who said, “The commission
merchants of the South are gradually becoming farmers, and the farmers,
having learned the trick, will become merchants.”
The remedy for this deplorable tendency is first the establishment of a
proper system of credit. The great West was in much worse condition than
the South some years ago. The farms were mortgaged, and were being sold
under mortgages, under a system not half so oppressive as that under
which the Southern farmer labors. Boston capital, seeking lucrative
investment, soon began to pour toward the West, in charge of loan
companies, and was put out at eight per cent., and the redemption of
that section was speedily worked out. A similar movement is now started
in the South. An English company, with headquarters at New Orleans,
loaned over $600,000 its first year at eight per cent., with perfect
security. The farmers who borrowed this money were of course immensely
relieved, and the testimony is that they are rapidly working out. In
Atlanta, Georgia, a company is established with $2,000,000 of Boston and
New York capital, which it is loaning on farm lands at seven per cent.
In the first three months of its work it loaned $120,000, and it has now
appointed local agents in thirty counties in the State, and advertises
that it wishes to lend $50,000 in each county. The managers say that
they can command practically unlimited capital for safe risks at seven
per cent. Companies working on the same plan have been established
elsewhere in the South, and it is said that there will be no lack of
capital for safe risks on rural lands in a few years.
The first reform, however, that must be made is in the system of
farming. The South must prepare to raise her own provisions, compost her
fertilizers, cure her own hay, and breed her own stock. Leaving credit
and usury out of the question, no man can pay seventy-five cents a
bushel for corn, thirty dollars a ton for hay, twenty dollars a barrel
for pork, sixty cents for oats, and raise cotton for eight cents a
pound. The farmers who prosper at the South are the “corn-raisers,”
_i.e._, the men who raise their own supplies, and make cotton their
surplus crop. A gentleman who recorded 320 mortgages last year testified
that not one was placed on the farm of a man who raised his own bread
and meat. The shrewd farmers who always have a bit of money on hand with
which to buy any good place that is to be sold under mortgage are the
“corn-raisers,” and the moment they get possession they rule out the
all-cotton plan, and plant corn and the grasses. That the plan of
farming only needs revision to make the South rich beyond measure is
proven by constant example. A corn-raiser bought a place of 370 acres
for $1700. He at once put six tenants on it, and limited their cotton
acreage to one-third of what they had under cultivation. Each one of the
six made more clear money than the former owner had made, and the rents
for the first year were $1126. The man who bought this farm lives in
Oglethorpe, Georgia, and has fifteen farms all run on the same plan.
The details of the management of what may be the typical planting
neighborhood of the South in the future are furnished me by the manager
of the Capeheart estate in North Carolina. This estate is divided into
farms of fifty acres each, and rented to tenants. These tenants are
bound to plant fifteen acres in cotton, twelve in corn, eight in small
crops, and let fifteen lie in grass. They pay one-third of the crop as
rent, or one-half if the proprietor furnishes horses and mules. They
have comfortable quarters, and are entitled to the use of surplus
herring and the dressings of the herring caught in the fisheries annexed
to the place. In the center of the estate is a general store managed by
the proprietor, at which the tenants have such a line of credit as they
are entitled to, of course paying a pretty percentage of profit on the
goods they buy. They are universally prosperous, and in some cases,
where by skill and industry they have secured 100 acres, are laying up
money. The profits to Dr. Capeheart are large, and show the margin there
is in buying land that is loosely farmed, and putting it under
intelligent supervision. Of the $52,000 worth of land added to his
estates last year, at a valuation of twenty-five dollars per acre, he
will realize in rental nine dollars per acre for every acre cultivated,
and calculates that in five years at the most the rentals of the land
will have paid back what he gave for it.
Amid all this transition from land-owner to tenant there is, besides the
corn-raiser, one other steadfast figure, undisturbed by change of
relation or condition, holding tenaciously to what it has, though little
inclined to push for more. This is Cuffee, the darky farmer. There is no
more interesting study in our agriculture than this same dusky,
good-natured fellow—humble, patient, shrewd—as he drives into town with
his mixed team and his one bag of cotton, on which, drawn by a
sympathetic sense of ownership, his whole family is clustered. Living
simply and frugally, supplementing his humble meal with a ’possum caught
in the night hunt, or a rabbit shot with the old army musket that he
captured from some deserted battle-field, and allowing no idlers in the
family save the youngsters who “tend de free school,” he defies alike
the usurer and the land-shark. In the State of Georgia he owns 680,000
acres of land, cut up into farms that barely average ten acres each, and
in the Cotton States he owns 2,680,800 acres, similarly divided. From
this possession it is impossible to drive him, and to this possession he
adds gradually as the seasons go by. He is not ambitious, however, to
own large tracts of land, preferring the few acres that he has
constantly under his eye, and to every foot of which he feels a rude
attachment.
The relations of the negro to cotton are peculiar. Although he spends
the most of his life in the cotton field, and this staple is the main
crop with which he is concerned, it does not enter into his social life,
catch his sentiment, or furnish the occasion for any of his pleasures.
None of his homely festivals hinge upon the culture or handling of the
great staple. He has his corn-shuckings, his log-rollings, his quilting
bees, his threshing jousts, and indeed every special work about the farm
is made to yield its element of frolic, except the making of cotton.
None of those tuneful melodies with which he beguiles his work or
gladdens his play-time acknowledge cotton as a subject or an incident.
None of the folklore with which the moonlight nights are whiled away or
the fire-lit cabins sanctified, and which finds its home in the corn
patch or the meadows, has aught to do with the cotton field. I have
never heard a negro song in which the cotton field is made the
incidental theme or the subject of allusion, except in a broken
perversion of that incomparable ballad, “The Mocking-Bird,” in which the
name of the heroine, the tender sentiment, and the tune, which is a
favorite one with the negroes, are preserved. This song, with the flower
of Southern girlhood that points the regretful tenderness changed into a
dusky maiden idealized by early death, with the “mocking-bird singing
o’er her grave,” and sung in snatches almost without words or coherence,
is popular with the field hands in many parts of the South.
But when we have discussed the questions involved in the planting and
culture of the cotton crop, as serious as they are, we have had to do
with the least important phase of our subject. The crop of 7,000,000
bales, when ready for the market, is worth in round numbers
$300,000,000. The same crop when manufactured is worth over
$900,000,000. Will the South be content to see the whole of this added
value realized by outsiders? If not, how much of the work necessary to
create this value will she do within her own borders? She has abundant
water-powers, that are never locked a day by ice or lowered by drought,
that may be had for a mere song; cheap labor, cheap lands, an unequaled
climate, cheap fuel, and the conditions of cheap living. Can these be
utilized to any general extent?
It may be premised that there are questions of the utmost importance to
the South outside of the manufacture of the lint, which is usually held
to cover the whole question of cotton manufacture. There is no particle
of the cotton plant that may not be handled to advantage. Mr. Edward
Atkinson is authority for the statement that if a plant similar to
cotton, but having no lint, could be grown in the North, it would be one
of the most profitable of crops. And yet it is true that up to a late
date the seed of the cotton has been wholly wasted, and even now the
stalk is thrown away as useless. A crop of 7,000,000 bales will yield
3,500,000 tons of cotton seed. Every ounce of this seed is valuable, and
in the past few years it has been so handled as to add very heavily to
the value of the crop. The first value of the seed is as a fertilizer.
It has been discovered of late that the seed that had been formerly
allowed to accumulate about the gin-houses in vast piles and rot as
waste material, when put upon the fields would add twenty-five to
thirty-three per cent. to the crop, and was equal to many of the
fertilizers that sell in the market for $25 per ton. In 1869 a mill was
established in New Orleans for the purpose of pressing the oil from the
cotton seed, and manufacturing the bulk into stock food. Its success was
so pronounced that there are now fifty-nine seed-oil mills in the South,
costing over $6,000,000, and working up $5,500,000 worth of seed
annually. The product of the seed used sells for $9,600,000, so that the
mills create a value of $4,500,000 annually. They used only one-seventh
of the seed produced in the South. A ton of seed which can be worked for
$5.50 a ton, and cost originally $8 to $10, making an average cost when
worked of $15, is estimated to produce thirty-five gallons of oil worth
$11.50, seed-cake worth $5.50, and lint worth $1.50—a total of $18.50,
or profit of $3.50, per ton. The oil is of excellent quality, and is
used in the making of soaps, stearine, white oils, and when highly
refined is a table oil of such flavor and appearance as will deceive the
best judges. A quality has been lately discovered in it that makes it
valuable as a dye-stuff. It is shipped largely to Europe, 130,000
barrels having been exported last year, chiefly to Antwerp. It is put up
carefully, and re-shipped to this country as olive-oil to such an extent
that prohibitory duties have been put on it by the Italian government,
and it is ruled out of that country. Before it is placed in the oil mill
the cotton seed is hulled. The hulls are valuable, and may be used for
tanning, made into pulp for paper stock, or used as fuel, and the ashes
sold to the soap-makers for the potash they contain. The mass of kernels
left after the hulls have been removed and the oil pressed out is made
into seed-cake, a most desirable food for stock, which is exported
largely to Europe. It is also worked into a fertilizer that yields under
analysis $37.50 in value per ton, and can be sold for $22 a ton. It is a
notable fact that the ton of seed-cake is even more valuable as a stock
food after the $11.50 worth of oil has been taken from it than before,
and quite as valuable as a fertilizer. In the four hundred pounds of
lint in a bale of cotton there are but four pounds of chemical elements
taken from the soil; in the oil there is little more; but in the
seed-cake and hulls there are forty pounds of potash and phosphate of
lime. But admirable as is the disposition of the cotton seed for
manufacture, ample as is the margin of profit, and rapid as has been the
growth in the industry, there exists the same disorganization that is
noticeable in the handling of the whole cotton question. Although less
than one-seventh of the seed raised is needed by the mills, they are
unable to get enough to keep them running. The cotton is ginned in such
awkward distribution, and in such small quantity at any one locality,
that it cannot be gathered promptly or cheaply enough for the oil mills.
Of the 3,500,000 tons of seed, 500,000 tons only are worked up, and
perhaps as much more used for seed. This leaves 2,500,000 tons not
worked, and in which is lost nearly $30,000,000 worth of oil. For
whether this two and a half million tons is used as a fertilizer or fed
to the stock, it would lose none of its value for either purpose if the
thirty-five gallons of oil, worth $11.50, were extracted from each ton
of it.
Even when the South has passed beyond the proper handling of cotton
seed, she has very important ground to cover before she arrives at what
is generally known as cotton manufacturing. “The manufacture of this
staple,” says a very eminent authority, “is a unit, beginning at the
field where the cotton is picked, and ending at the factory from which
the cloth is sent to the merchant.” How little this essential truth has
been appreciated is apparent from the fact that, until the last census,
ginning, pressing, and baling have been classed with the “production” of
cotton, and its manufacture held to consist solely of spinning and
weaving. Yet there is not a process to which the lint is submitted after
it is thrown from the negro’s “pocket” that does not act directly on the
quality of the cloth that is finally produced, and on the cheapness and
efficiency with which the cloth is made. The separation of the fibre
from the seed, the disposition made of the fluffy lint before it is
compressed, the compression itself, and the baling of the compressed
cotton—these are all delicate operations, involving the integrity of the
fibre, the cost of getting it ready for the spindle, and the ease with
which it may be spun. Indeed, Mr. Hammond, of South Carolina, a most
accomplished writer, contends that the gin-house is the pivotal point
around which the whole manufacture of cotton revolves. There is no
question that with one-tenth of the money invested in improved gins,
cleaners, and pressers that would be required for factories, and with
incomparably less risk, the South could make one-half the profit, pound
for pound, that is made in the mills of New England. Mr. F. C. Morehead,
already alluded to in this article, says: “A farmer who produces 500
bales of cotton—200,000 pounds—can, by the expenditure of $1500 on
improved gins and cleaners, add one cent per pound to the value of his
crop, or $2000. If he added only one-half of one cent, he would get in
the first year over fifty per cent. return of his outlay.” Mr. Edward
Atkinson—to close this list of authorities—says that the cotton crop is
deteriorated ten per cent. at least by being improperly handled from the
field to the factory. It is, of course, equally true that a reform in
this department of the manufacture of cotton would add ten per cent. to
the value of the crop—say $30,000,000—and that, too, without cost to the
consumer. Much of the work now done in the mills of New England is
occasioned by the errors committed in ginning and packing. Not only
would the great part of the dust, sand, and grit that get into cotton
from careless handling about the gin-house be kept out if it were
properly protected, but that which is in the fibre naturally could be
cleaned out more efficiently and with one-third the labor and cost, if
it were taken before it has been compressed and baled. Beyond this, the
excessive beating and tearing of the fibre necessary to clean it after
the sand has been packed in, weaken and impair it, and the sand injures
the costly and delicate machinery of the mills.
The capital available to the farmers of any neighborhood in the South is
entirely adequate to make thorough reform in this most important,
safest, and most profitable department of the manufacture of cotton. A
gin-house constructed on the best plan, supplied with the new roller
gins lately invented in England, that guarantee to surpass in quantity
of cotton ginned as well as quality of lint our rude and imperfect saw
gins, having automatic feeders to pass the picking to the gin, and an
apron to receive the lint as it comes from the gin and carry it to the
beater, or cleaner, where all the motes and dust can be taken from the
freshly ginned fibre and then, instead of rolling this fleecy mass on a
dirty floor, where it would catch every particle of dust and grit, to
carry it direct to a Dedrick press that would compress forty pounds
within a cubic foot, and reduce the little bale of one hundred and
twenty pounds to the consistency of elm-wood, and as little liable to
soak water or catch dirt—an establishment of this sort would add one
cent per pound to every pound of cotton put through it, and would be
worth more as an example than a dozen cotton factories. Annexed to this
gin-house should be a huller to take the hulls from the seed and to this
huller the seed should be taken as it comes from the gins. Once hulled,
the hulls should be fed to the stock, restored to the soil, or sold, and
the kernels sent to the nearest oil mill, the oil sold, and the meal fed
to sheep or stock, or used as a fertilizer. These improvements, costing
little, and within the skill of ordinary laborers, would bring as good a
profit as could be realized by a factory involving enormous outlay,
great risk, and the utmost skill of management. The importance of reform
here will be seen when we state that there is half as much capital—say
$70,000,000—invested in machinery for baling, pressing, and ginning
cotton as there is invested in the United States in machinery for
weaving and spinning it. So great has been the progress in invention,
and so sluggish the cotton farmer to reform either his methods or his
machinery, that experts agree that the ginning, pressing, and baling of
the crop could be done with one-half or possibly one-third of the labor
and cost of the present, and done so much better that the product would
be worth ten per cent. more than it now commands, if the best machinery
were bought, and the best methods employed.
The urgency and the magnitude of the reforms needed in the field and
about the gin-house have not deterred the South from aspiring to spin
and weave at least the bulk of the cotton crop. Indeed, there is nothing
that so appeals to Southern pride as to urge the possibility that in
time the manufacture of this crop as well as the crop itself shall be a
monopoly of the cotton belt. As the South grows richer and the
conditions of competition are nearer equal, there will be a tendency to
place new machinery intended for the manufacture of cotton near the
field in which the staple is growing; but the extent to which this
tendency will control, or the time in which it will become controlling,
is beyond the scope of this article. We shall rather deal with things as
they are, or are likely to be in the very near future. We note, then,
that in the past ten years the South has more than doubled the amount of
cotton manufactured within her borders. In 1870, there were used
45,032,866 pounds of cotton; in 1880, 101,937,256 pounds. In 1870, there
were 11,602 looms and 416,983 spindles running; in 1880, 15,222 looms
and 714,078 spindles. This array of figures hardly indicates fairly the
progress that the South will make in the next ten years, for the reason
that the factories in which these spindles are turned are experiments in
most of the localities in which they are placed. It is the invariable
rule that when a factory is built in any city or country it is easier to
raise the capital for a subsequent enterprise than for the first one. At
Augusta, Georgia, for instance, where the manufacture of cloth has been
demonstrated a success, the progress is remarkable. In the past two
years two new mills, the Enterprise and Sibly, with 30,000 spindles
each, have been established; and a third, the King, has been organized,
with a capital of $1,000,000 and 30,000 spindles. The capital for these
mills was furnished about one-fourth in Augusta, and the balance in the
North. With these mills running, Augusta will have 170,000 spindles, and
will have added about 70,000 spindles to the last census returns. In
South Carolina the same rapid growth is resulting from the establishment
of one or two successful mills; and in Columbus, Georgia, the influence
of one successful mill, the Eagle and Phœnix, has raised the local
consumption of cotton from 1927 bales in 1870 to 19,000 bales in 1880.
In Atlanta, Georgia, the first mill had hardly been finished before the
second was started; a third is projected; and two companies have secured
charters for the building of a forty-mile canal to furnish water-power
and factory fronts to capital in and about the city. These things are
mentioned simply to show that the growth of cotton manufacture in the
South is sympathetic, and that each factory established is an argument
for others. There is no investment that has proved so uniformly
successful in the South as that put into cotton factories. An Augusta
factory just advertises eight per cent. semi-annual dividend; the Eagle
and Phœnix, of Columbus, earned twenty-five per cent. last year; the
Augusta factory for eleven years made an average of eighteen per cent.
per annum. The net earnings of the Langley Mills was $480,000 for its
first eight years on a capital of $400,000, or an average of fifteen per
cent. a year. The earnings of sixty Southern mills, large and small,
selected at random, for three years, averaged fourteen per cent. per
annum.
Indeed, an experience varied and extended enough to give it authority
teaches that there is absolutely no reason why the South should not
profitably quadruple its capacity for the manufacture of cotton every
year in the next five years except the lack of capital. The lack of
skilled labor has proved to be a chimerical fear, as the mills bring
enough of skilled labor to any community in which they are established
to speedily educate up a native force. It may be true that for the most
delicate work the South will for a while lack the efficient labor of New
England that has been trained for generations, but it is equally true
that no factory in the South has ever been stopped a week for the lack
of suitable labor. The operatives can live cheaper than at the North,
and can be had for lower wages. As sensible a man as Mr. Edward Atkinson
claimed lately that in the cotton country proper a person could not keep
at continuous in-door labor during the summer. The answer to this is
that during the present summer, the hottest ever known, not a Southern
mill has stopped for one day or hour on account of the heat, and this,
too, when scores of establishments through the Western and Northern
cities were closed. One of the strongest points of advantage the South
has is that for no extreme of climate, acting on the machinery, the
operatives, or the water-supply, is any of her mills forced to suspend
work at any season. Beyond this, Southern water-powers can be purchased
low, and the land adjacent at a song; there are no commissions to pay on
the purchase of cotton, no freight on its transportation, and it is
submitted to the picker before it has undergone serious compression. Mr.
W. H. Young, of Columbus, perhaps the best Southern authority, estimates
that the Columbus mills have an advantage of nine-tenths of a cent per
pound over their Northern competitors, and this in a mill of 1600 looms
will amount to nine per cent. on the entire capital, or $120,099. The
Southern mills, without exception, pulled through the years of
depression that followed the panic of 1873, paying regular dividends of
from six per cent. to fifteen, and, it may be said, have thoroughly won
the confidence of investors North and South. The one thing that has
retarded the growth of manufacturing in the Cotton States, the lack of
capital, is being overcome with astonishing rapidity. Within the past
two years considerably over $100,000,000 of Northern capital has been
subscribed, in lots of $1,000,000 and upward, for the purchase and
development of Southern railroads and mining properties; the total will
probably run to $120,000,000. There is now being expended in the
building of new railroads from Atlanta, Georgia, as headquarters,
$17,800,000, not one dollar of which was subscribed by Georgians or by
the State of Georgia. The men who invest these vast amounts in the South
are interested in the general development of the section into which they
have gone with their enterprise, and they readily double any local
subscription for any legitimate local improvement. By the sale of these
railroad properties to Northern syndicates at advanced prices the local
stockholders have realized heavily in cash, and this surplus is seeking
manufacturing investment. The prospect is that the next ten years will
witness a growth in this direction beyond what even the most sanguine
predict.
The International Cotton Exposition, opening October 5, of the present
year, in Atlanta, must have a tremendous influence in improving the
culture, handling, and manufacture of the great staple of the South. The
Southern people do not lack the desire to keep abreast with improvement
and invention, but on the contrary have shown precipitate eagerness in
reaching out for the best and newest. Before the war, when the Southern
planter had a little surplus money he bought a slave. Since the war, he
buys a piece of machinery. The trouble has been that he was forced to
buy without any guide as to the value of what he bought, or its
adaptability to the purposes for which he intended it. The consequence
is that the farms are littered with ill-adapted and inferior implements
and machines, representing twice the investment that, intelligently
placed, would provide an equipment that with half the labor would do
better work. It is the purpose of the exposition to bring the farmers
face to face with the very best machinery that invention and experience
have produced. The buildings themselves will be models each of its kind,
and will represent the judgment of experts as to cheapness, durability,
safety and general excellence. The past and present will be contrasted
in the exhibition. The old loom on which the rude fabrics of our
forefathers were woven by hands gentle and loving will be put against
the more elaborate looms of to-day. The spinning wheel of the past, that
filled all the country-side with its drowsy music, as the dusky spinner
advanced and retreated, with not ungraceful courtesy and a swinging
sidewise shuffle, will find its sweet voice lost in the hum of modern
spindles. The cycle of gins and ginning will be there completed,
invention coming back, after a half-century of trial with the brutal
saw, to a perfected variation of the patient and gentle roller with
which the precious fleece was pulled from the seed years upon years ago.
There are the most wonderful machines promised, including a half-dozen
that claim to have solved the problem—supposed to be past finding out—of
picking cotton by machinery. Large fields flank the buildings, and on
these are tested the various kinds of cotton seed, fed by the various
kinds of fertilizers, each put in fair competition with the others.
One of the most important special inventions at the exposition will be
the Clement attachment—a contrivance for spinning the cotton as it comes
from the gin. The invention is simply the marriage of the gin to the
spindle. These are joined by two large cards that take the fibre from
the gin, straighten it out, and pass it directly to the spinning boards,
where it is made into the best of yarns. The announcement of this
invention two years ago created very great excitement. If it proved a
success, the whole system of cotton manufacture was changed. If the
cotton could be spun directly from the gin, all the expense of baling
would be eliminated, and four or five expensive steps in the process of
cotton from field to cloth would be rendered unnecessary. Better than
all, the South argued, the Clement attachment brought the heaviest part
of manufacturing to the cotton field, from which it could never be
divorced. By the simple joining of the spindles to the gin, the cotton,
worth only eight or nine cents as baled lint, in which shape it had been
shipped North, became worth sixteen to eighteen cents as yarns. The home
value of the crop was thus to be doubled, and by such process as New
England could never capture. Several of the attachments were put to
work, and were visited by thousands. They produced an excellent quality
of yarns, and made a clear profit of two cents per pound on the cotton
treated. The investment required was small, and it was held that $5000
would certainly bring a net annual profit of $2200. Many of these little
mills are still running, and profitably; but difficulties between the
owner and his agents, and a general suspicion raised by his declining to
put the machine on its merits before certain agricultural associations,
prevented its general adoption. That this attachment, or some machine of
similar character for spinning the cotton into yarns near the field
where it is grown, will be generally adopted through the South in the
near future, I have not a particle of doubt; that the exposition with
its particular exhibits on this point will hasten the day, there is
every reason to hope. There are many yarn mills already scattered
through the South, but none of them promise the results that will be
achieved when the spindles are wedded to the gin, and the same motive
power drives both, carrying the cotton without delay or compression from
seed to thread.
Such, then, in brief and casual review, is King Cotton, his subjects,
and his realm. Vast as his concerns and possessions may appear at
present, they are but the hint of what the future will develop. The
best authority puts the amount of cotton goods manufactured in America
at about fourteen pounds per head of population, of which twelve
pounds per capita are retained for home consumption, leaving only a
small margin for export. On the Continent there is but one country,
probably—Switzerland—that manufactures more cotton goods than it
consumes; and the Continent demands from Great Britain an amount of
cotton cloth that, added to its own supply, exhausts nearly one-half
the product of the English mills. It is hardly probable that, under
the sharp competition of American mills, the capacity of either
England or the Continent for producing ordinary cotton cloths will be
greatly increased. But, with the yield of the English and Continental
mills at least measurably defined and now rapidly absorbed, there is
an enormous demand for machine-made cotton fabrics springing from new
and virtually exhaustless sources. The continents of Asia, Africa,
South America, Australia, and the countries lying between the two
American continents, contain more than 800,000,000 people, according
to general authority. This immense population is clothed in cotton
almost exclusively, and almost as exclusively in hand-made fabrics.
That the cheap and superior products of the modern factory will
displace these hand-made goods as rapidly as they can be delivered
upon competing terms, cannot be doubted. To supply China alone with
cotton fabrics made by machine, deducting the 35,000,000 people or
thereabout already supplied, and estimating the demand of the
remainder at five pounds per capita, would require 3,000,000
additional bales of cotton and 30,000,000 additional spindles. The
goods needed for this demand will be the lower grades of cottons, for
the manufacture of which the South is especially adapted, and in which
there is serious reason to believe she has demonstrated she has
advantages over New England. The demand from Mexico, Central and South
America, will grow into immense proportions as cotton and its products
cheapen under increased supply, and improved methods of culture and
manufacture. The South will be called upon to furnish the cotton to
meet the calls of the peoples enumerated. That she can easily do so
has been made plain by previous estimate, but it may be added that
hardly three per cent. of the cotton area is now devoted to cotton,
and that on one-tenth of a single Cotton State—Texas—double the
present crop might be raised. Whether or not she will do this
profitably, and without destroying the happiness and prosperity of her
former population, and building up a land-holding oligarchy, depends
on a reform in her system of credit and her system of planting. The
first is being effected by the introduction of capital that recognizes
farming lands as a safe risk worthy of a low percentage of interest;
the latter must depend on the intelligence of her people, the force of
a few bright examples, and the wisdom of her leaders. She will be
called upon to supply a large proportion of the manufactured goods for
this new and limitless demand. It has already been shown that she has
felicitous conditions for this work.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IN PLAIN BLACK AND WHITE.[2]
Footnote 2:
Reprinted from The Century, April, 1885.
-------
A REPLY TO MR. CABLE.
IT is strange that during the discussion of the negro question, which
has been wide and pertinent, no one has stood up to speak the mind of
the South. In this discussion there has been much of truth and more of
error—something of perverseness, but more of misapprehension—not a
little of injustice, but perhaps less of mean intention.
Amid it all, the South has been silent.
There has been, perhaps, good reason for this silence. The problem under
debate is a tremendous one. Its right solution means peace, prosperity,
and happiness to the South. A mistake, even in the temper in which it is
approached or the theory upon which its solution is attempted, would
mean detriment, that at best would be serious, and might easily be
worse. Hence the South has pondered over this problem, earnestly seeking
with all her might the honest and the safe way out of its entanglements,
and saying little because there was but little to which she felt safe in
committing herself. Indeed, there was another reason why she did not
feel called upon to obtrude her opinions. The people of the North,
proceeding by the right of victorious arms, had themselves undertaken to
settle the negro question. From the Emancipation Proclamation to the
Civil Rights Bill they hurried with little let or hindrance, holding the
negro in the meanwhile under a sort of tutelage, from part in which his
former masters were practically excluded. Under this state of things the
South had little to do but watch and learn.
We have now passed fifteen years of experiment. Certain broad principles
have been established as wise and just.
The South has something to say which she can say with confidence. There
is no longer impropriety in her speaking or lack of weight in her words.
The people of the United States have, by their suffrages, remitted to
the Southern people, temporarily at least, control of the race question.
The decision of the Supreme Court on the Civil Rights Bill leaves
practically to their adjustment important issues that were, until that
decision was rendered, covered by straight and severe enactment. These
things deepen the responsibility of the South, increase its concern, and
confront it with a problem to which it must address itself promptly and
frankly. Where it has been silent, it now should speak. The interest of
every American in the honorable and equitable settlement of this
question is second only to the interest of those specially—and
fortunately, we believe—charged with its adjustment. “What will you do
with it?” is a question any man may now ask the South, and to which the
South should make frank and full reply.
It is important that this reply shall be plain and straightforward.
Above all things it must carry the genuine convictions of the people it
represents. On this subject and at this time the South cannot afford to
be misunderstood. Upon the clear and general apprehension of her
position and of her motives and purpose everything depends. She cannot
let pass unchallenged a single utterance that, spoken in her name,
misstates her case or her intention. It is to protest against just such
injustice that this article is written.
In a lately printed article, Mr. George W. Cable, writing in the name of
the Southern people, confesses judgment on points that they still
defend, and commits them to a line of thought from which they must
forever dissent. In this article, as in his works, the singular
tenderness and beauty of which have justly made him famous, Mr. Cable is
sentimental rather than practical. But the reader, enchained by the
picturesque style and misled by the engaging candor with which the
author admits the shortcomings of “We of the South,” and the kindling
enthusiasm with which he tells how “We of the South” must make
reparation, is apt to assume that it is really the soul of the South
that breathes through Mr. Cable’s repentant sentences. It is not my
purpose to discuss Mr. Cable’s relations to the people for whom he
claims to speak. Born in the South, of Northern parents, he appears to
have had little sympathy with his Southern environment, as in 1882 he
wrote, “To be in New England would be enough for me. I was there once,—a
year ago,—and it seemed as if I had never been home till then.” It will
be suggested that a man so out of harmony with his neighbors as to say,
even after he had fought side by side with them on the battle-field,
that he never felt at home until he had left them, cannot speak
understandingly of their views on so vital a subject as that under
discussion. But it is with his statement rather than his personality
that we have to deal. Does he truly represent the South? We reply that
he does not! There may be here and there in the South a dreaming
theorist who subscribes to Mr. Cable’s teachings. We have seen no signs
of one. Among the thoughtful men of the South,—the men who felt that all
brave men might quit fighting when General Lee surrendered,—who,
enshrining in their hearts the heroic memories of the cause they had
lost, in good faith accepted the arbitrament of the sword to which they
had appealed,—who bestirred themselves cheerfully amid the ruins of
their homes, and set about the work of rehabilitation,—who have patched
and mended and builded anew, and fashioned out of pitiful resource a
larger prosperity than they ever knew before,—who have set their homes
on the old red hills, and staked their honor and prosperity and the
peace and well-being of the children who shall come after them on the
clear and equitable solution of every social, industrial, or political
problem that concerns the South,—among these men, who control and will
continue to control, I do know, there is general protest against Mr.
Cable’s statement of the case, and universal protest against his
suggestions for the future. The mind of these men I shall attempt to
speak, maintaining my right to speak for them with the pledge that,
having exceptional means for knowing their views on this subject, and
having spared no pains to keep fully informed thereof, I shall write
down nothing in their name on which I have found even a fractional
difference of opinion.
A careful reading of Mr. Cable’s article discloses the following
argument: The Southern people have deliberately and persistently evaded
the laws forced on them for the protection of the freedman; this evasion
has been the result of prejudices born of and surviving the institution
of slavery, the only way to remove which is to break down every
distinction between the races; and now the best thought of the South,
alarmed at the withdrawal of the political machinery that forced the
passage of the protective laws, which withdrawal tempts further and more
intolerable evasions, is moving to forbid all further assortment of the
races and insist on their intermingling in all places and in all
relations. The first part of this argument is a matter of record, and,
from the Southern stand-point, mainly a matter of reputation. It can
bide its time. The suggestion held in its conclusion is so impossible,
so mischievous, and, in certain aspects, so monstrous, that it must be
met at once.
It is hard to think about the negro with exactness. His helplessness,
his generations of enslavement, his unique position among the peoples of
the earth, his distinctive color, his simple, lovable traits,—all these
combine to hasten opinion into conviction where he is the subject of
discussion. Three times has this tendency brought about epochal results
in his history. First, it abolished slavery. For this all men are
thankful, even those who, because of the personal injustice and violence
of the means by which it was brought about, opposed its accomplishment.
Second, it made him a voter. This, done more in a sense of reparation
than in judgment, is as final as the other. The North demanded it; the
South expected it; all acquiesced in it, and, wise or unwise, it will
stand. Third, it fixed by enactment his social and civil rights. And
here for the first time the revolution faltered. Up to this point the
way had been plain, the light clear, and the march at quick-step. Here
the line halted. The way was lost; there was hesitation, division, and
uncertainty. Knowing not which way to turn, and enveloped in doubt, the
revolutionists heard the retreat sounded by the Supreme Court with small
reluctance, and, to use Mr. Cable’s words, “bewildered by complication,
vexed by many a blunder,” retired from the field. See, then, the
progress of this work. The first step, right by universal agreement,
would stand if the law that made it were withdrawn. The second step,
though irrevocable, raises doubts as to its wisdom. The third, wrong in
purpose, has failed in execution. It stands denounced as null by the
highest court, as inoperative by general confession, and as unwise by
popular verdict. Let us take advantage of this halt in the too rapid
revolution, and see exactly where we stand and what is best for us to
do. The situation is critical. The next moment may formulate the work of
the next twenty years. The tremendous forces of the revolution, unspent
and still terrible, are but held in arrest. Launch them mistakenly,
chaos may come. Wrong-headedness may be as fatal now as
wrong-heartedness. Clear views, clear statement, and clear understanding
are the demands of the hour. Given these, the common sense and courage
of the American people will make the rest easy.
Let it be understood in the beginning, then, that the South will never
adopt Mr. Cable’s suggestion of the social intermingling of the races.
It can never be driven into accepting it. So far from there being a
growing sentiment in the South in favor of the indiscriminate mixing of
the races, the intelligence of both races is moving farther from that
proposition day by day. It is more impossible (if I may shade a
superlative) now than it was ten years ago; it will be less possible ten
years hence. Neither race wants it. The interest, as the inclination, of
both races is against it. Here the issue with Mr. Cable is made up. He
denounces any assortment of the races as unjust, and demands that white
and black shall intermingle everywhere. The South replies that the
assortment of the races is wise and proper, and stands on the platform
of equal accommodation for each race, but separate.
The difference is an essential one. Deplore or defend it as we may, an
antagonism is bred between the races when they are forced into mixed
assemblages. This sinks out of sight, if not out of existence, when each
race moves in its own sphere. Mr. Cable admits this feeling, but doubts
that it is instinctive. In my opinion it is instinctive—deeper than
prejudice or pride, and bred in the bone and blood. It would make itself
felt even in sections where popular prejudice runs counter to its
manifestation. If in any town in Wisconsin or Vermont there was equal
population of whites and blacks, and schools, churches, hotels, and
theaters were in common, this instinct would assuredly develop; the
races would separate, and each race would hasten the separation. Let me
give an example that touches this supposition closely. Bishop Gilbert
Haven, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, many years ago came to the
South earnestly, and honestly, we may believe, devoted to breaking up
the assortment of the races. He was backed by powerful influences in the
North. He was welcomed by resident Northerners in the South (then in
control of Southern affairs) as an able and eloquent exponent of their
views. His first experiment toward mixing the races was made in the
church—surely the most propitious field. Here the fraternal influence of
religion emphasized his appeals for the brotherhood of the races. What
was the result? After the first month his church was decimated. The
Northern whites and the Southern blacks left it in squads. The dividing
influences were mutual. The stout bishop contended with prayer and
argument and threat against the inevitable, but finally succumbed. Two
separate churches were established, and each race worshiped to itself.
There had been no collision, no harsh words, no discussion even. Each
race simply obeyed its instinct, that spoke above the appeal of the
bishop and dominated the divine influences that pulsed from pew to pew.
Time and again did the bishop force the experiment. Time and again he
failed. At last he was driven to the confession that but one thing could
effect what he had tried so hard to bring about, and that was
miscegenation. A few years of experiment would force Mr. Cable to the
same conclusion.
The same experiment was tried on a larger scale by the Methodist
Episcopal Church (North) when it established its churches in the South
after the war. It essayed to bring the races together, and in its
conferences and its churches there was no color line. Prejudice
certainly did not operate to make a division here. On the contrary, the
whites and blacks of this church were knit together by prejudice, pride,
sentiment, political and even social policy. Underneath all this was a
race instinct, obeying which, silently, they drifted swiftly apart.
While white Methodists of the church North and of the church South,
distant from each other in all but the kinship of race and worship, were
struggling to effect once more a union of the churches that had been
torn apart by a quarrel over slavery, so that in every white conference
and every white church on all this continent white Methodists could
stand in restored brotherhood, the Methodist Church (North) agreed,
without serious protest, to a separation of its Southern branch into two
conferences of whites and of blacks, and into separate congregations
where the proportion of either race was considerable. Was it without
reason—it certainly was not through prejudice—that this Church, while
seeking anew fusion with its late enemies, consented to separate from
its new friends?
It was the race instinct that spoke there. It spoke not with prejudice,
but against it. It spoke there as it speaks always and everywhere—as it
has spoken for two thousand years. And it spoke to the reason of each
race. Millaud, in voting in the French Convention for the beheading of
Louis XVI., said: “If death did not exist, it would be necessary to-day
to invent it.” So of this instinct. It is the pledge of the integrity of
each race, and of peace between the races. Without it, there might be a
breaking down of all lines of division and a thorough intermingling of
whites and blacks. This once accomplished, the lower and the weaker
elements of the races would begin to fuse and the process of
amalgamation would have begun. This would mean the disorganization of
society. An internecine war would be precipitated. The whites, at any
cost and at any hazard, would maintain the clear integrity and dominance
of the Anglo-Saxon blood. They understand perfectly that the debasement
of their own race would not profit the humble and sincere race with
which their lot is cast, and that the hybrid would not gain what either
race lost. Even if the vigor and the volume of the Anglo-Saxon blood
would enable it to absorb the African current, and after many
generations recover its own strength and purity, not all the powers of
earth could control the unspeakable horrors that would wait upon the
slow process of clarification. Easier far it would be to take the
population of central New York, intermingle with it an equal percentage
of Indians, and force amalgamation between the two. Let us review the
argument. If Mr. Cable is correct in assuming that there is no instinct
that keeps the two races separate in the South, then there is no reason
for doubting that if intermingled they would fuse. Mere prejudice would
not long survive perfect equality and social intermingling; and the
prejudice once gone, intermarrying would begin. Then, if there is a race
instinct in either race that resents intimate association with the
other, it would be unwise to force such association when there are easy
and just alternatives. If there is no such instinct, the mixing of the
races would mean amalgamation, to which the whites will never submit,
and to which neither race should submit. So that in either case, whether
the race feeling is instinct or prejudice, we come to but one
conclusion: The white and black races in the South must walk apart.
Concurrent their courses may go—ought to go—will go—but separate. If
instinct did not make this plain in a flash, reason would spell it out
letter by letter.
Now, let us see. We hold that there is an instinct, ineradicable and
positive, that will keep the races apart, that would keep the races
apart if the problem were transferred to Illinois or to Maine, and that
will resist every effort of appeal, argument, or force to bring them
together. We add in perfect frankness, however, that if no such instinct
existed, or if the South had reasonable doubt of its existence, it
would, by every means in its power, so strengthen the race prejudice
that it would do the work and hold the stubbornness and strength of
instinct. The question that confronts us at this point is: Admitted this
instinct, that gathers each race to itself. Then, do you believe it
possible to carry forward on the same soil and under the same laws two
races equally free, practically equal in numbers, and yet entirely
distinct and separate? This is a momentous question. It involves a
problem that, all things considered, is without a precedent or parallel.
Can the South carry this problem in honor and in peace to an equitable
solution? We reply that for ten years the South has been doing this very
thing, and with at least apparent success. No impartial and observant
man can say that in the present aspect of things there is cause for
alarm, or even for doubt. In the experience of the past few years there
is assuredly reason for encouragement. There may be those who discern
danger in the distant future. We do not. Beyond the apprehensions which
must for a long time attend a matter so serious, we see nothing but
cause for congratulation. In the common sense and the sincerity of the
negro, no less than in the intelligence and earnestness of the whites,
we find the problem simplifying. So far from the future bringing
trouble, we feel confident that another decade or so, confirming the
experience of the past ten years, will furnish the solution to be
accepted of all men.
Let us examine briefly what the South has been doing, and study the
attitude of the races toward each other. Let us do this, not so much to
vindicate the past as to clear the way for the future. Let us see what
the situation teaches. There must be in the experience of fifteen years
something definite and suggestive. We begin with the schools and school
management, as the basis of the rest.
Every Southern State has a common-school system, and in every State
separate schools are provided for the races. Almost every city of more
than five thousand inhabitants has a public-school system, and in every
city the schools for whites and blacks are separate. There is no
exception to this rule that I can find. In many cases the law creating
this system requires that separate schools shall be provided for the
races. This plan works admirably. There is no friction in the
administration of the schools, and no suspicion as to the ultimate
tendency of the system. The road to school is clear, and both races walk
therein with confidence. The whites, assured that the school will not be
made the hot-bed of false and pernicious ideas, or the scene of unwise
associations, support the system cordially, and insist on perfect
equality in grade and efficiency. The blacks, asking no more than this,
fill the schools with alert and eager children. So far from feeling
debased by the separate-school system, they insist that the separation
shall be carried further, and the few white teachers yet presiding over
negro schools supplanted by negro teachers. The appropriations for
public schools are increased year after year, and free education grows
constantly in strength and popularity. Cities that were afraid to commit
themselves to free-schools while mixed schools were a possibility
commenced building school-houses as soon as separate schools were
assured. In 1870 the late Benjamin H. Hill found his matchless eloquence
unable to carry the suggestion of negro education into popular
tolerance. Ten years later nearly one million black children attended
free-schools, supported by general taxation. Though the whites pay
nineteen-twentieths of the tax, they insist that the blacks shall share
its advantages equally. The schools for each race are opened on the same
day and closed on the same day. Neither is run a single day at the
expense of the other. The negroes are satisfied with the situation. I am
aware that some of the Northern teachers of negro high-schools and
universities will controvert this. Touching their opinion, I have only
to say that it can hardly be considered fair or conservative. Under the
forcing influence of social ostracism, they have reasoned impatiently
and have been helped to conclusions by quick sympathies or resentments.
Driven back upon themselves and hedged in by suspicion or hostility,
their service has become a sort of martyrdom, which has swiftly
stimulated opinion into conviction and conviction into fanaticism. I
read in a late issue of _Zion’s Herald_ a letter from one of these
teachers, who declined, on the conductor’s request, to leave the car in
which she was riding, and which was set apart exclusively for negroes.
The conductor, therefore, presumed she was a quadroon, and stated his
presumption in answer to the inquiry of a young negro man who was with
her. She says of this:
“Truly, a glad thrill went through my heart—a thrill of pride.
This great autocrat had pronounced me as not only in sympathy,
but also one in blood, with the truest, tenderest, and noblest
race that dwells on earth.”
If this quotation, which is now before me, over the writer’s name,
suggests that she and those of her colleagues who agree with her have
narrowed within their narrowing environment, and acquired artificial
enthusiasm under their unnatural conditions, so that they must be unsafe
as advisers and unfair as witnesses, the sole purpose for which it is
introduced will have been served. This suggestion does not reach all
Northern teachers of negro schools. Some have taken broader counsels,
awakened wider sympathies, and, as a natural result, hold more moderate
views. The influence of the extremer faction is steadily diminishing.
Set apart, as small and curious communities are set here and there in
populous States, stubborn and stiff for a while, but overwhelmed at last
and lost in the mingling currents, these dissenting spots will be ere
long blotted out and forgotten. The educational problem, which is their
special care, has already been settled, and the settlement accepted with
a heartiness that precludes the possibility of its disturbance. From the
stand-point of either race the experiment of distinct but equal schools
for the white and black children of the South has demonstrated its
wisdom, its policy, and its justice, if any experiment ever made plain
its wisdom in the hands of finite man.
I quote on this subject Gustavus J. Orr, one of the wisest and best of
men, and lately elected, by spontaneous movement, president of the
National Educational Association. He says: “The race question in the
schools is already settled. We give the negroes equal advantages, but
separate schools. This plan meets the reason and satisfies the instinct
of both races. Under it we have spent over five million dollars in
Georgia, and the system grows in strength constantly.” I asked if the
negroes wanted mixed schools. His reply was prompt: “They do not. I have
questioned them carefully on this point, and they make but one reply:
“They want their children in their own schools and under their own
teachers.” I asked what would be the effect of mixed schools. “I could
not maintain the Georgia system one year. Both races would protest
against it. My record as a public-school man is known. I have devoted my
life to the work of education. But I am so sure of the evils that would
come from mixed schools that, even if they were possible, I would see
the whole educational system swept away before I would see them
established. There is an instinct that gathers each race about itself.
It is as strong in the blacks as in the whites, though it has not
asserted itself so strongly. It is making itself manifest, since the
blacks are organizing a social system of their own. It has long
controlled them in their churches, and it is now doing so in their
schools.”
In churches, as in schools, the separation is perfect. The negroes, in
all denominations in which their membership is an appreciable percentage
of the whole, have their own churches, congregations, pastors,
conferences, bishops, and their own missionaries. There is not the
slightest antagonism between them and the white churches of the same
denomination. On the contrary, there is sympathetic interest and the
utmost friendliness. The separation is recognized as not only
instinctive but wise. There is no disposition to disturb it, and least
of all on the part of the negro. The church is with him the center of
social life, and there he wants to find his own people and no others.
Let me quote just here a few sentences from a speech delivered by a
genuine black negro at the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal
Church (South), in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1880. He is himself a pastor of
the African Methodist Church, and came as a fraternal delegate. This
extract from a speech, largely extempore, is a fair specimen of negro
eloquence, as it is a fair evidence of the feeling of that people toward
their white neighbors. He said:
“Mr. Chairman, Bishops, and Brethren in Christ: Let me here
state a circumstance which has just now occurred. When in the
vestry, there we were consulting your committee, among whom is
your illustrious Christian Governor, the Honorable A. H.
Colquitt [applause], feeling an unusual thirst, and expecting in
a few moments to appear before you, thoughtlessly I asked him if
there was water to drink. He, looking about the room, answered,
‘There is none; I will get you some.’ I insisted not; but
presently it was brought by a brother minister, and handed me by
the Governor. I said: ‘Governor, you must allow me to deny
myself this distinguished favor, as it recalls so vividly the
episode of the warrior king of Israel, when, with parched lips,
he cried from the rocky cave of Adullam, ‘Oh! that one would
give me drink of water of the well of Bethlehem that is at the
gate.’ And when three of his valiant captains broke through the
host of the enemy, and returned to him with the water for which
his soul was longing, regarding it as the water of life, he
would not drink it, but poured it out to the Lord.’ [Applause.]
So may this transcendent emblem of purity and love, from the
hand of your most honored co-laborer and friend of the human
race, ever remain as a memorial unto the Lord of the friendship
existing between the Methodist Episcopal Church South and the
African Methodist Episcopal Church upon this the first exchange
of formal fraternal greeting. [Applause.]
“In the name of the African Methodist Episcopal Church,—and I
declare the true sentiments of thousands,—I say, that for your
Church and your race we cherish the kindliest feelings that ever
found a lodgment in the human breast. [Applause.] Of this you
need not be told. Let speak your former missionaries among us,
who now hold seats upon this floor, and whose hearts have so
often burned within them as they have seen the word sown by them
in such humble soil burst forth into abundant prosperity. Ask
the hundred thousand of your laymen who still survive the dead,
how we conducted ourselves as tillers of the soil, as servants
about the dwelling, and as common worshipers in the temple of
God! Ask your battle-scarred veterans, who left their all to the
mercy of relentless circumstances, and went, in answer to the
clarion call of the trumpet, to the gigantic and unnatural
strife of the second revolution! Ask them who looked at their
interests at home [great cheering]; who raised their earthworks
upon the field; who buried the young hero so far away from his
home, or returned his ashes to the stricken hearts which hung
breathless upon the hour; who protected their wives and little
ones from the ravages of wild beasts, and the worse ravages of
famine! And the answer is returned from a million heaving
bosoms, as a monument of everlasting remembrance to the
benevolence of the colored race in America. [Immense applause.]
And these are they who greet you to-day, through their chief
organization, the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the
United States of America. [Loud and continued applause.]
“And now, though the yoke which bound the master and the slave
together in such close and mutual responsibility has been
shivered by the rude shock of war, we find ourselves still
standing by your side as natural allies against an unfriendly
world.” [Applause.]
In their social institutions, as in their churches and schools, the
negroes have obeyed their instinct and kept apart from the whites. They
have their own social and benevolent societies, their own military
companies, their own orders of Masons and Odd Fellows. They rally about
these organizations with the greatest enthusiasm and support them with
the greatest liberality. If it were proposed to merge them with white
organizations of the same character, with equal rights guaranteed in
all, the negroes would interpose the stoutest objection. Their tastes,
associations, and inclinations—their instincts—lead them to gather their
race about social centers of its own. I am tempted into trying to
explain here what I have never yet seen a stranger to the South able to
understand. The feeling that, by mutual action, separates whites and
blacks when they are thrown together in social intercourse is not a
repellent influence in the harsh sense of that word. It is centripetal
rather than centrifugal. It is attractive about separate centers rather
than expulsive from a common center. There is no antagonism, for
example, between white and black military companies. On occasions they
parade in the same street, and have none of the feeling that exists
between Orangemen and Catholics. Of course the good sense of each race
and the mutual recognition of the possible dangers of the situation have
much to do with maintaining the good-will between the distinct races.
The fact that in his own church or society the negro has more freedom,
more chance for leadership and for individual development, than he could
have in association with the whites, has more to do with it. But beyond
all this is the fact that, in the segregation of the races, blacks as
well as whites obey a natural instinct, which, always granting that they
get equal justice and equal advantages, they obey without the slightest
ill-nature or without any sense of disgrace. They meet the white people
in all the avenues of business. They work side by side with the white
bricklayer or carpenter in perfect accord and friendliness. When the
trowel or the hammer is laid aside, the laborers part, each going his
own way. Any attempt to carry the comradeship of the day into private
life would be sternly resisted by both parties in interest.
We have seen that in churches, schools, and social organizations the
whites and blacks are moving along separately but harmoniously, and that
the “assortment of the races,” which has been described as shameful and
unjust, is in most part made by the instinct of each race, and commands
the hearty assent of both. Let us now consider the question of public
carriers. On this point the South has been sharply criticised, and not
always without reason. It is manifestly wrong to make a negro pay as
much for a railroad ticket as a white man pays, and then force him to
accept inferior accommodations. It is equally wrong to force a decent
negro into an indecent car, when there is room for him or for her
elsewhere. Public sentiment in the South has long recognized this, and
has persistently demanded that the railroad managers should provide cars
for the negroes equal in every respect to those set apart for the
whites, and that these cars should be kept clean and orderly. In Georgia
a State law requires all public roads or carriers to provide equal
accommodation for each race, and failure to do so is made a penal
offense. In Tennessee a negro woman lately gained damages by proving
that she had been forced to take inferior accommodation on a train. The
railroads have, with few exceptions, come up to the requirements of the
law. Where they fail, they quickly feel the weight of public opinion,
and shock the sense of public justice. This very discussion, I am bound
to say, will lessen such failures in the future. On four roads, in my
knowledge, even better has been done than the law requires. The car set
apart for the negroes is made exclusive. No whites are permitted to
occupy it. A white man who strays into this car is politely told that it
is reserved for the negroes. He has the information repeated two or
three times, smiles, and retreats. This rule works admirably and will
win general favor. There are a few roads that make no separate provision
for the races, but announce that any passenger can ride on any car. Here
the “assortment” of the races is done away with, and here it is that
most of the outrages of which we hear occur. On these roads the negro
has no place set apart for him. As a rule, he is shy about asserting
himself, and he usually finds himself in the meanest corners of the
train. If he forces himself into the ladies’ car, he is apt to provoke a
collision. It is on just one of these trains where the assortment of the
passengers is left to chance that a respectable negro woman is apt to be
forced to ride in a car crowded with negro convicts. Such a thing would
be impossible where the issue is fairly met, and a car, clean, orderly,
and exclusive, is provided for each race. The case could not be met by
grading the tickets and the accommodations. Such a plan would bring
together in the second or third class car just the element of both races
between whom prejudice runs highest, and from whom the least of tact or
restraint might be expected. On the railroads, as elsewhere, the
solution of the race problem is, equal advantages for the same
money,—equal in comfort, safety, and exclusiveness,—but separate.
There remains but one thing further to consider—the negro in the
jury-box. It is assumed generally that the negro has no representation
in the courts. This is a false assumption. In the United States courts
he usually makes more than half the jury. As to the State courts, I can
speak particularly as to Georgia. I assume that she does not materially
differ from the other States. In Georgia the law requires that
commissioners shall prepare the jury-list for each county by selection
from the upright, intelligent, and experienced citizens of the county.
This provision was put into the Constitution by the negro convention of
reconstruction days. Under its terms no reasonable man would have
expected to see the list made up of equal percentage of the races.
Indeed, the fewest number of negroes were qualified under the law.
Consequently, but few appeared on the lists. The number, as was to be
expected, is steadily increasing. In Fulton County there are
seventy-four negroes whose names are on the lists, and the
commissioners, I am informed, have about doubled this number for the
present year. These negroes make good jurymen, and are rarely struck by
attorneys, no matter what the client or cause may be. About the worst
that can be charged against the jury system in Georgia is that the
commissioners have made jurors of negroes only when they had qualified
themselves to intelligently discharge a juror’s duties. In few quarters
of the South, however, is the negro unable to get full and exact justice
in the courts, whether the jury be white or black. Immediately after the
war, when there was general alarm and irritation, there may have been
undue severity in sentences and extreme rigor of prosecution. But the
charge that the people of the South have, in their deliberate and later
moments prostituted justice to the oppression of this dependent people,
is as false as it is infamous. There is abundant belief that the very
helplessness of the negro in court has touched the heart and conscience
of many a jury, when the facts should have held them impervious. In the
city in which this is written, a negro, at midnight, on an unfrequented
street, murdered a popular young fellow, over whose grave a monument was
placed by popular subscription. The only witnesses of the killing were
the friends of the murdered boy. Had the murderer been a white man, it
is believed he would have been convicted. He was acquitted by the white
jury, and has since been convicted of a murderous assault on a person of
his own color. Similarly, a young white man, belonging to one of the
leading families of the State, was hanged for the murder of a negro.
Insanity was pleaded in his defense, and so plausibly that it is
believed he would have escaped had his victim been a white man.
I quote on this point Mr. Benjamin H. Hill, who has been prosecuting
attorney of the Atlanta, Ga., circuit for twelve years. He says: “In
cities and towns the negro gets equal and exact justice before the
courts. It is possible that, in remote counties, where the question is
one of a fight between a white man and a negro, there may be a lingering
prejudice that causes occasional injustice. The judge, however, may be
relied on to correct this. As to negro jurors, I have never known a
negro to allow his lawyer to accept a negro juror. For the State I have
accepted a black juror fifty times, to have him rejected by the opposing
lawyer by order of his negro client. This has incurred so invariably
that I have accepted it as a rule. Irrespective of that, the negro gets
justice in the courts, and the last remaining prejudice against him in
the jury-box has passed away. I convicted a white man for voluntary
manslaughter under peculiar circumstances. A negro met him on the street
and cursed him. The white man ordered him off and started home. The
negro followed him to his house and cursed him until he entered the
door. When he came out, the negro was still waiting. He renewed the
abuse, followed him to his store, and there struck him with his fist. In
the struggle that followed, the negro was shot and killed. The jury
promptly convicted the slayer.”
So much for the relation between the races in the South, in churches,
schools, social organizations, on the railroad, and in theaters.
Everything is placed on the basis of equal accommodations, but separate.
In the courts the blacks are admitted to the jury-box as they lift
themselves into the limit of qualification. Mistakes have been made and
injustice has been worked here and there. This was to have been
expected, and it has been less than might have been expected. But there
can be no mistake about the progress the South is making in the
equitable adjustment of the relations between the races. Ten years ago
nothing was settled. There were frequent collisions and constant
apprehensions. The whites were suspicious and the blacks were restless.
So simple a thing as a negro taking an hour’s ride on the cars, or going
to see a play, was fraught with possible danger. The larger
affairs—school, church, and court—were held in abeyance. Now all this is
changed. The era of doubt and mistrust is succeeded by the era of
confidence and good-will. The races meet in the exchange of labor in
perfect amity and understanding. Together they carry on the concerns of
the day, knowing little or nothing of the fierce hostility that divides
labor and capital in other sections. When they turn to social life they
separate. Each race obeys its instinct and congregates about its own
centers. At the theater they sit in opposite sections of the same
gallery. On the trains they ride each in his own car. Each worships in
his own church, and educates his children in his schools. Each has his
place and fills it, and is satisfied. Each gets the same accommodation
for the same money. There is no collision. There is no irritation or
suspicion. Nowhere on earth is there kindlier feeling, closer sympathy,
or less friction between two classes of society than between the whites
and blacks of the South to-day. This is due to the fact that in the
adjustment of their relations they have been practical and sensible.
They have wisely recognized what was essential, and have not sought to
change what was unchangeable. They have yielded neither to the fanatic
nor demagogue, refusing to be misled by the one or misused by the other.
While the world has been clamoring over their differences they have been
quietly taking counsel with each other, in the field, the shop, the
street and cabin, and settling things for themselves. That the result
has not astonished the world in the speediness and the facility with
which it has been reached, and the beneficence that has come with it, is
due to the fact that the result has not been freely proclaimed. It has
been a deplorable condition of our politics that the North has been
misinformed as to the true condition of things in the South. Political
greed and passion conjured pestilential mists to becloud what the
lifting smoke of battle left clear. It has exaggerated where there was a
grain of fact, and invented where there was none. It has sought to
establish the most casual occurrences as the settled habit of the
section, and has sprung endless jeremiades from one single disorder, as
Jenkins filled the courts of Christendom with lamentations over his
dissevered ear. These misrepresentations will pass away with the
occasion that provoked them, and when the truth is known it will come
with the force of a revelation to vindicate those who have bespoken for
the South a fair trial, and to confound those who have borne false
witness against her.
One thing further need be said, in perfect frankness. The South must be
allowed to settle the social relations of the races according to her own
views of what is right and best. There has never been a moment when she
could have submitted to have the social status of her citizens fixed by
an outside power. She accepted the emancipation and the enfranchisement
of her slaves as the legitimate results of war that had been fought to a
conclusion. These once accomplished, nothing more was possible. “Thus
far and no farther,” she said to her neighbors, in no spirit of
defiance, but with quiet determination. In her weakest moments, when her
helpless people were hedged about by the unthinking bayonets of her
conquerors, she gathered them for resistance at this point. Here she
defended everything that a people should hold dear. There was little
proclamation of her purpose. Barely did the whispered word that bespoke
her resolution catch the listening ears of her sons; but for all this
the victorious armies of the North, had they been rallied again from
their homes, could not have enforced and maintained among this disarmed
people the policy indicated in the Civil Rights bill. Had she found
herself unable to defend her social integrity against the arms that were
invincible on the fields where she staked the sovereignty of her States,
her people would have abandoned their homes and betaken themselves into
exile. Now, as then, the South is determined that, come what may, she
must control the social relations of the two races whose lots are cast
within her limits. It is right that she should have this control. The
problem is hers, whether or not of her seeking, and her very existence
depends on its proper solution. Her responsibility is greater, her
knowledge of the case more thorough than that of others can be. The
question touches her at every point; it presses on her from every side;
it commands her constant attention. Every consideration of policy, of
honor, of pride, of common sense impels her to the exactest justice and
the fullest equity. She lacks the ignorance or misapprehension that
might lead others into mistakes; all others lack the appalling
alternative that, all else failing, would force her to use her knowledge
wisely. For these reasons she has reserved to herself the right to
settle the still unsettled element of the race problem, and this right
she can never yield.
As a matter of course, this implies the clear and unmistakable
domination of the white race in the South. The assertion of that is
simply the assertion of the right of character, intelligence and
property to rule. It is simply saying that the responsible and steadfast
element in the community shall control, rather than the irresponsible
and the migratory. It is the reassertion of the moral power that
overthrew the scandalous reconstruction governments, even though, to the
shame of the Republic be it said, they were supported by the bayonets of
the General Government. Even the race issue is lost at this point. If
the blacks of the South wore white skins, and were leagued together in
the same ignorance and irresponsibility under any other distinctive mark
than their color, they would progress not one step farther toward the
control of affairs. Or if they were transported as they are to Ohio, and
there placed in numerical majority of two to one, they would find the
white minority there asserting and maintaining control, with less
patience, perhaps, than many a Southern State has shown. Everywhere,
with such temporary exceptions as afford demonstration of the rule,
intelligence, character, and property will dominate in spite of
numerical differences. These qualities are lodged with the white race in
the South, and will assuredly remain there for many generations at
least; so that the white race will continue to dominate the colored,
even if the percentages of race increase deduced from the comparison of
a lame census with a perfect one, and the omission of other
considerations, should hold good and the present race majority be
reversed.
Let no one imagine, from what is here said, that the South is careless
of the opinion or regardless of the counsel of the outside world. On the
contrary, while maintaining firmly a position she believes to be
essential, she appreciates heartily the value of general sympathy and
confidence. With an earnestness that is little less than pathetic she
bespeaks the patience and the impartial judgment of all concerned.
Surely her situation should command this rather than indifference or
antagonism. In poverty and defeat,—with her cities destroyed, her fields
desolated, her labor disorganized, her homes in ruins, her families
scattered, and the ranks of her sons decimated,—in the face of universal
prejudice, fanned by the storm of war into hostility and hatred—under
the shadow of this sorrow and this disadvantage, she turned bravely to
confront a problem that would have taxed to the utmost every resource of
a rich and powerful and victorious people. Every inch of her progress
has been beset with sore difficulties; and if the way is now clearing,
it only reveals more clearly the tremendous import of the work to which
her hands are given. It must be understood that she desires to silence
no criticism, evade no issue, and lessen no responsibility. She
recognizes that the negro is here to stay. She knows that her honor, her
dear name, and her fame, no less than her prosperity, will be measured
by the fulness of the justice she gives and guarantees to this kindly
and dependent race. She knows that every mistake made and every error
fallen into, no matter how innocently, endanger her peace and her
reputation. In this full knowledge she accepts the issue without fear or
evasion. She says, not boldly, but conscious of the honesty and the
wisdom of her convictions: “Leave this problem to my working out. I will
solve it in calmness and deliberation, without passion or prejudice, and
with full regard for the unspeakable equities it holds. Judge me
rigidly, but judge me by my works.” And with the South the matter may be
left—must be left. There it can be left with the fullest confidence that
the honor of the Republic will be maintained, the rights of humanity
guarded, and the problem worked out in such exact justice as the finite
mind can measure or finite agencies administer.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE LITTLE BOY IN THE BALCONY.
-------
MY special amusement in New York is riding on the elevated railway. It
is curious to note how little one can see on the crowded sidewalks of
this city. It is simply a rush of the same people—hurrying this way or
that on the same errands—doing the same shopping or eating at the same
restaurants. It is a kaleidoscope with infinite combinations but the
same effects. You see it to-day, and it is the same as yesterday.
Occasionally in the multitude you hit upon a _genre_ specimen, or an odd
detail, such as a prim little dog that sits upright all day and holds in
its mouth a cup for pennies for its blind master, or an old bookseller
with a grand head and the deliberate motions of a scholar moldering in a
stall—but the general effect is one of sameness and soon tires and
bewilders.
Once on the elevated road, however, a new world is opened, full of the
most interesting objects. The cars sweep by the upper stories of the
houses, and, running never too swiftly to allow observation, disclose
the secrets of a thousand homes, and bring to view people and things
never dreamed of by the giddy, restless crowd that sends its impatient
murmur from the streets below. In a course of several months’ pretty
steady riding from Twenty-third Street, which is the station for the
Fifth Avenue Hotel, to Rector, which overlooks Wall Street, I have made
many acquaintances along the route—and on reaching the city my first
curiosity is in their behalf.
One of these is a boy about six years of age—akin in his fragile body
and his serious mien, a youngster that is very precious to one. I first
saw this boy on a little balcony about three feet by four, projecting
from the window of a poverty-stricken fourth floor. He was leaning over
the railing, his white, thoughtful head just clearing the top, holding a
short round stick in his hand. The little fellow made a pathetic
picture, all alone there above the street, so friendless and desolate,
and his pale face came between me and my business many a time that day.
On going up town that evening just as night was falling, I saw him still
at his place, white and patient and silent. Every day afterwards I saw
him there, always with the short stick in his hand. Occasionally he
would walk around the balcony rattling the stick in a solemn manner
against the railing, or poke it across from one corner to another and
sit on it. This was the only playing I ever saw him do, and the stick
was the only plaything he had. But he was never without it. His little
hand always held it, and I pictured him every morning when he awoke from
his joyless sleep, picking up his plaything and going out to his
balcony, as other boys go to play. Or perhaps he slept with it, as
little ones do with dolls and whip-tops.
I could see that the room beyond the window was bare. I never saw any
one in it. The heat must have been terrible, for it could have had no
ventilation. Once I missed the boy from the balcony, but saw his white
head, moving about slowly in the dusk of the room. Gradually the little
fellow become a burden to me. I found myself continually thinking of
him, and troubled with that remorse that thoughtless people feel even
for suffering for which they are not in the slightest degree
responsible. Not that I ever saw any suffering on his face. It was
patient, thoughtful, serious, but with never a sign of petulance. What
thoughts filled that young head—what contemplation took the place of
what should have been the ineffable upbringing of childish emotion—what
complaint or questioning were living behind that white face—no one could
guess. In an older person the face would have betokened a resignation
that found peace in the hope of things hereafter. In this child, without
hope or estimation, it was sad beyond expression.
One day as I passed I nodded at him. He made no sign in return. I
repeated the nod on another trip, waving my hand at him—but without
avail. At length, in response to an unusually winning exhortation, his
pale lips trembled into a smile—but a smile that was soberness itself.
Wherever I went that day that smile went with me. Wherever I saw
children playing in the parks, or trotting along with their hands
nestled in strong fingers that guided and protected, I thought of that
tiny watcher in the balcony—joyless, hopeless, friendless—a desolate
mite, hanging between the blue sky and the gladsome streets—lifting his
wistful face now to the peaceful heights of the one, and now looking
with grave wonder on the ceaseless tumult of the other. At length—but
why go any further? Why is it necessary to tell that the boy had no
father, that his mother was bedridden from his birth, and that his
sister pasted labels in a drug-house, and he was thus left to himself
all day? It is sufficient to say that I went to Coney Island yesterday,
and forgot the heat in the sharp saline breezes—watched the bathers and
the children—listened to the crisp, lingering music of the waves as they
sang to the beach—ate a robust lunch on the pier—wandered in and out
among the booths, tents, and hubbub—and that through all these manifold
pleasures, I had a companion that enjoyed them with a gravity that I can
never hope to emulate, but with a soulfulness that was touching—and that
as I came back in the boat, the breezes singing through the cordage,
music floating from the fore-deck, and the sun lighting with its dying
rays the shipping that covered the river, there was sitting in front of
me a very pale but very happy bit of a boy, open-eyed with wonder, but
sober and self-contained, clasping tightly in his little fingers a short
battered stick. And finally that whenever I pass by a certain
overhanging balcony now, I am sure of a smile from an intimate and
esteemed friend who lives there.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
POEMS
_BY VARIOUS HANDS._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
GRADY.
-------
I.
SUNS rise and set, stars flash and darken:
To-day I stand alone and hearken
Unto this counsel, old and wise:
“As shadows still we flee.” The blossom
May hide the rare fruit in its bosom,
But in the core the canker lies.
II.
To-day I stand alone and listen—
While on my cheek the teardrops glisten
And a strange blindness veils my sight,
Unto the story of his dying
And how, in God’s white slumber lying,
His laureled brow is lulled to-night.
III.
Dear friends, I would not mock your sorrow
With this poor wreath that ere to-morrow
Shall fade and perish—little worth;
But from the mountains that lament him,
And from these vales whose violets lent him
Their fragrance; from around the earth,
IV.
Wherever Love hath her dominion,
Sorrow hath plumed her shadowed pinion
And paid the tribute of her tears;
And here is mine! In pathways lowly
This man, whose dust ye count as holy
Met me, a traveller of the years,
V.
And reached his strong right hand—a brother,
Saying: “Mankind should love each other,”
And so I shared and felt his love;
And now my heart its grief expresses
As comes from out lone wildernesses
The sad lamenting of the dove.
VI.
Yet while I weep States mourn together
And in the world ’tis rainy weather
And all that bright rain falls for him!
States mourn, and while their voices fame him
The fond lips of the lowly name him,
And little children’s eyes grow dim,
VII.
With tender tears, because they love him;
Their hands strew violets above him:
They lisp his dear name in their dreams.
And in their sorrows and afflictions
Old men breathe dying benedictions
Where on his grave the starlight gleams.
VIII.
He stood upon the heights, yet never
So high but that his heart forever
Was by the lowliest accent thrilled;
He loved his land and sought to save it,
And in that love he freely gave it
The life Death’s hand hath touched and stilled.
IX.
Dear, brave, true heart! You fell as falleth
A star when from far spaces calleth
God’s voice that shakes the trembling spheres;
Fell! Nay! that voice, like softest lyre,
Whispered thee in thy dreams: “Come higher,
Above Earth’s sorrows, hopes and fears.”
X.
I shall not see the dead: Thy living,
Dear face, the gentle and forgiving;
The kindly eyes compassionate;
The rare smile of thy lips—each token
I have of thee must be unbroken—
Death shall not leave them desolate?
XI.
O, Christmas skies of blue December,
This day of earthly days remember—
He loved you, skies! to him your blue
Was beautiful! O, sunlight gleaming
Like silver on the rivers streaming
Out to the sea; and mountain’s dew
XII.
Bespangled—and ye velvet valleys,
Green-bosomed, where the south winds dallies—
He loved you! And ye birds that sing—
Do ye not miss him? Winds that wander,
How can ye pass him, lying yonder,
Now sigh his dirge with folded wing?
XIII.
In dearest dust that ever nourished
The violets that o’er it flourished,
He lies, your lover and your friend!
Thy softest beams, sweet sun, will kiss him;
Sweet, silent valleys, ye will miss him,
Your roses, weeping, o’er him bend.
XIV.
Good-night—Good-bye! Above our sorrow,
Comrade! thine is a fair “good-morrow,”
In some far, luminous world of light,
Yet, take this farewell—Love’s last token:
We leave thee to thy rest unbroken—
God have thee in his care—Good-night!
—F. L. STANTON.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ATLANTA.
-------
We weep with Atlanta!
Her loss is the nation’s!
With deep lamentations
Our grief is revealed;
For her hero so youthful,
So radiant and truthful,
Her loyal defender,
Lies dead on the field.
We weep with Atlanta!
O sore her bereavement!
For he whose achievement
The continent thrilled,
His last word has spoken;
In silence unbroken.
By Death’s cruel mandate,
The proud pulse is stilled.
We weep with Atlanta!
For woe crowds upon her
When the soldier of honor
Death’s countersign gives.
Keep the grasses above him,
And let those who love him
Proclaim beyond doubting
That the hero still lives.
JOSEPHINE POLLARD.
NEW YORK CITY, _Dec. 27, 1889_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
HENRY W. GRADY.
-------
TRUE-HEARTED friend of all true friendliness!
Brother of all true brotherhoods!—Thy hand
And its late pressure now we understand
Most fully, as it falls thus gestureless,
And Silence lulls thee into sweet excess
Of sleep. Sleep thou content!—Thy loved Southland.
Is swept with tears, as rain in sunshine; and
Through all the frozen North our eyes confess
Like sorrow—seeing still the princely sign
Set on thy lifted brow, and the rapt light
Of the dark, tender, melancholy eyes—
Thrilled with the music of those lips of thine,
And yet the fire thereof that lights the night,
With the white splendor of thy prophecies.
JAMES WHITCOMBE RILEY.
In _New York Tribune_, December 23, 1889.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A REQUIEM.
_IN MEMORY OF “HIM THAT’S AWA’”._
-------
BURY him in the sunshine,
Bring forth the rarest flowers
In love to rest above the breast
Of this dead hope of ours!
Let not the strife and pain of life
One ray of joy dispel,
And we’ll bury him in the sunshine,
In the light he loved so well!
Bury him in the sunshine,
All that of earth remains;
Let every tear that damps his bier
Fall warm as April rains
That bring to light the blossoms bright,
And break the wintry spell.
Thus we’ll bury him in the sunshine,
In the light he loved so well!
Bury him in the sunshine,
Where softest breezes blow.
His dear face brought no dismal thought,
To those who love him so.
Let cheerful strains and glad refrains
A joyous requiem swell,
While we bury him in the sunshine,
In the light he loved so well!
Bury him in the sunshine,
While Christmas carols rise
In thankful mirth from smiling earth
To fair sun-litten skies.
Forget the gloom that shrouds the tomb,
And hush the dreary knell,
For we’ll bury him in the sunshine,
In the light he loved so well!
Bury him in the sunshine;
His peerless soul hath flown
To that fair land upon whose strand
No winds of winter moan.
Sublimer heights, purer delights,
Than mortal tongue can tell;
So, we’ll bury him in God’s sunshine,
In the light he loved so well!
MONTGOMERY M. FOLSOM.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
HENRY WOODFIN GRADY.
-------
MUST we concede the life so swiftly flown
That seemed but yesterday to breath our own—
The pulsing stayed that through our land he sent,
In whose one impact North and South were blent—
His cords yet vital stilled with tone abounding,
His heart-strings sundered by their vibrant sounding?
Too well we feel the import of our fears—
The wide-flashed word, “the South is steeped in tears!”
Fitly she weeps for her chivalric son
Who turned to her, in flush of triumph won,
The filial voice to gain her glad applause—
The golden tongue to plead—to gild her cause.
That spirit note—the music of his speech,
Is silenced now in earthly hearing’s reach;
Snapped is the silvern thread—the resonant soul—
Though severed still its pæans reverberant roll—
All hearts their hope-rung—chants in mourning merge,
All joyous dreams translate into a dirge.
Fallen in hero prime of conscious power
His fame lives on and soothes her anguished hour,
Yields to the land of Calhoun and of Clay
His name as heirloom to her later day,—
A legacy by life’s oblation left,
A breathing solace to a home bereft.
That knightly nature’s gift—that intellect’s grace,
Relieved attrition wrought by clash of race,
That reason poised in sympathy supreme,
Revealed translucent pathos in his theme,
Bade clamor cease—taught candor’s part to cure—
Bade truth appear more true, pure thought more pure.
But is the zenith reached—his record done,
His duty closed beneath meridian sun?
Was it for him like meteor flash to sweep
Athwart the heavens, as vaulting lightnings leap—
On living errand our dimmed orbit cleave—
On mission radiate, yet no message leave?
Ah, no! his flame rose not to fall anon;
His words as phrase to glitter and be gone;
Not evanescent in the minds of men,
His ling’ring oratory speaks again—
An era’s nuncio in a Nation’s view,
An envoy of another South, and new:
For now in prescience ’neath his Southern skies
The grander vision greets our Northern eyes;
The proud mirage he conjured up we see—
His picturing of her potency to be,
Her virile wealth of sun and soil and ore,
Her new-born Freedom’s force—far nobler store.
With sectional lines and warring feuds effaced,
Their racial problems solved—their blots erased—
Full in that vision circumfused shall rise
A symbol that his life-rays crystallize,
For all our state-loves lit in him to stand—
For bonds that Georgia’s Genius lent to all our land.
HENRY O’MEARA.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
HENRY W. GRADY.
-------
Upon the winds from shores uncharted blown,
That phantom came, stoled in his trailing mists;
He set his cruel gyves upon thy wrists:—
Thine ear was dulled save to his subtle tone:—
He led thee down where fade the paths unknown
In the deep hollows of the Shadow Land:
Love’s tears,—the tendance of her gentle hand,—
Thou didst remember not: her deepest groan
Stayed not thy feet—thine eyes were fixed away
Upon the mountains of some other clime!
Among the noblest, gathered from all time,
In God’s great universe somewhere to-day
He wanders where the cool all-healing trees
Uplift their fronds in fair Champs Elysées.
HENRY JEROME STOCKARD.
GRAHAM, N.C.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
WHO WOULD CALL HIM BACK?
-------
A LIFE-WORK finished: yet, hardly begun:
A course in which courage cowardice undone:
A leader of battles whose life’s setting sun
Leaves no cause unwon.
The scholar and statesman, dear to us all,
As he sleeps his last sleep, though fateful his fall,
Dreams only of peace—to life’s pain past recall—
That, kindred, is all.
The robe he wore with such marvelous grace,
Will be fitted to shoulders made for his place:
Efforts about which none could selfishness trace
Shall still bless his race.
Deeds he has done in humanity’s name
Will outlive the marble upreared to his fame:
Yet, would any one ask him, even through pain,
To live life again?
BELLE EYRE.
BOSTON, MASS.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
HENRY W. GRADY.
-------
LAMENTED Son of Georgia,
Thou wert New England’s honored guest
In welcome glad, but yesterday,
With charming speech and banquet’s zest.
In glowing life, so recently,
From Plymouth Rock and Bunker’s Hill,
Thy vision swept the Pilgrim’s sea,—
But now in death thy heart is still.
And in thine own dear native clime,
Thou art at rest in early tomb,
Where brightest skies expand sublime,
And choicest flowers forever bloom.
Thy work ere yet at zenith done,
But harvests, o’er thy fertile field,
Are waving in the noonday sun,
Like billows, with abundant yield.
Now fallen, but more glorious,
In peaceful triumph grander far
Than pageant kings victorious,
With bleeding captives, spoils of war.
O, ye bereaved, in mourning bowed,
Around Atlanta’s noble dead!
What woe is in your wailing land;
How hallowed is the ground ye tread!
A joyous home, now desolate,
A circle broken, sad and lone,
A vacant chair in Sable State,
A husband, father, loved one gone.
A widowed mother, mute with grief,
Whose weeping children call in vain,
Their cries and tears bring no relief,
Thou can’st not meet them here again.
And yet, beyond this hour of gloom,
Athwart the sky, the promised bow,
Above these clouds, and o’er thy tomb,
The starry heavens are bending low.
In memory of loving worth,
Sweet thoughts like hidden springs will flow;
Rare flowers in oasis have birth,
As Sorrow’s deserts verdant grow.
With patriotic, burning zeal,
Thy brilliant genius, tongue and pen,
Were wielded for the common weal,
The good of all thy countrymen.
O’er ruins of the effete Old,
Thou wrought to build a better New,
Whose peerless glories might unfold,
As North and South together grew.
Thou longed to note accordant band
Of Sister States through future years,
A Union for the world to stand
With little aid of blood and tears.
Of such a spirit, He who taught
Eternal Truth in Galilee;
The human and divine in-wrought
With perfect love and charity.
And so thy deeds will grow in grace,
They are exalted, wise and pure,
For freedom and the human race,
And in our hearts will long endure.
For thee nor local, fleeting fame,
But for all nations, space and time;
Around thy lofty, shining name,
Unfading laurels we entwine.
G. W. LYON.
CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA, Jan. 18, 1890.
----------------------------
WHAT THE MASTER MADE.
-------
THE Master made a perfect instrument to sound His praise,
It breathed forth glorious notes for many days,—
Chords of great strength, tones of soft melody,
Grand organ anthems—bird-like minstrelsy;
Its final burst of music—the Master’s master-stroke
Fell on the world—and then the spent strings broke.
MEL R. COLQUITT.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IN ATLANTA, CHRISTMAS, 1889.
-------
I.
O PROUD Gate City of the South, reborn,
Risen, a phœnix, from war’s fiery flood—
Why draped in gloom, this precious natal morn
Of Him crowned martyr for earth’s peace and good?
Set in the faces of your old and young,
Is seen the sorrow, ruthless Fate hath sprung!
II.
Your prince lies stark amid the stately towers,
Which he, strong leader in a radiant day,
Had helped to build, when Georgia’s unbound powers
Amazed the world and held majestic sway.
GRADY is gone, like meteor flashing bright
Across the canopy of star-gemmed night!
III.
Lift him, with gentleness, and bear him hence!
Keep slow, deliberate pace unto the grave
Which long must be a spot where reverence,
Halting its footsteps, will his laurel wave!
Impulsive youth, in halls of fierce debate,
His counsels heed, his spirit emulate!
HENRY CLAY LUKENS.
JERSEY CITY HEIGHTS, N. J.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IN MEMORY OF HENRY WOODFIN GRADY.
-------
_From the “West Shore” Portland, Oregon._
I.
AMID the wrecks of private fortunes and
The fall of commonwealths, he saw arise
A stricken people, and, with mournful eyes,
Beheld the smoke of war bedim their land,
And in its folds the fragments of a band
Erst bound, as by grim Fate, to exercise
Their judgments in the wrong and sacrifice
Against the measures Providence had planned.
Unconquered still, he saw the Southern folk,
Though awed and vanquished by the deadly jar
Of war’s deep thunder belching forth, “Ye must!”
In love this Master sought to lift the yoke
Of ignorance from the Southland, and to star
Its night with those same stars trailed in its dust!
II.
Unto the North he, as a brother, came,
And in his heart the great warm South he brought,
And as he stood and oped his mouth he wrought
The miracle of setting hearts aflame,
That leaped to crown him orator of fame,
Since in his own emboldened hand he’d caught
The golden chain of love, by many sought,
To bind our Union something more than name.
But hark! The while his eloquence did charm
The Nation’s ear, the lightnings flashed along
The wires the weeping news, “_He is no more!_”
Brave seer! Thou didst both North and South disarm!
Leap, lightnings, from your wires, the clouds among,
And flash his eulogy the heavens o’er!
LEE FAIRCHILD.
SEATTLE, _January 14, 1890_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_A SOUTHERN CHRISTMAS DAY_.
_Paraphrased from Henry W. Grady’s Editorial._
-------
NO man or woman living now
Shall e’er again behold
A Christmas day so royal clad,
In robes of purpled gold,
As yesterday sank down to rest,
In perfect, rounded triumph in the West.
A winter day it was—yet shot
With sunshine to the core—
Enchantment’s spell filled all the scene
With power unknown before—
And he who walked abroad could feel
Its subtle mast’ry o’er him softly steal.
Its beauty prodigal he saw—
He breathed elixir pure—
Twas bliss to strive with reaching hand
Its rapture to secure,
And bathe with open fingers where
The waves of warmth and freshness pulsed the air.
The hum of bees but underrode
The whistling wings outspread
Of wild geese, flying through the sky,
As Southwardly they sped—
While embered pale, in drowsy grates,
The fires slept lightly, as when life abates.
And people, marveling, out of doors,
Watched in sweet amaze
The soft winds’ wooing of delight,
Upon this day of days—
Their wooing of the roses fair—
Their kissing lilies, with a lover’s air.
God’s benediction, with the day,
Slow dropping from the skies,
Came down the waiting earth to bless,
And give it glad surprise—
His smile, its light—a radiant flood,
That upward bore the prayer of gratitude.
And through and through its stillness all—
And through its beauty too—
To every heart came mute appeal,
To live a life more true—
And every soul invoking then,
With promise—“Peace on earth—good will to men.”
N.C. THOMPSON.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IN MEMORY OF HENRY W. GRADY.
-------
SHALL we not mourn for those who pass
Like meteors from the midnight sky,
From out the gleaming heights of fame,
As those who for their country die?
Who die, and sleep in dreamless slumber,
Where sunbeams like a blessing shed
Their glories, and the rain-drops, falling,
Weep ever o’er our Southern dead.
Of silvery tongue, and heart of fire,
And grace of manhood, what is left?
A voiceless grief—a tear—a sigh,
A nation of her son bereft.
Great soul with eloquence o’erflowing,
In rhythmic measures sweet and grand,
Great heart whose mission was a message
Of peace and good will, thro’ the land.
O tongue of flame by truth inspired!
Tho’ thou art silent, and we never
May hear again thy stirring strains,
They’ll echo in our halls forever.
Thy life was like a rushing river,
That proudly bore upon its breast
Our highest hopes unto a haven,
Where heroes dwell, and patriots rest.
Sleep well! tho’ thou art gone, the grave
Holds but the outward earthly shrine,
That held within its clay-cold breast
The sacred spark of life divine.
Sleep well! immortal, unforgotten,
Where buds and blossoms round thee blow,
And the soft fires of Southern sunsets
In glory gild thy couch below.
ELIZABETH J. HEREFORD.
DALLAS, TEXAS.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
HENRY W. GRADY.
-------
IF Death had waited till the grateful Land
He championed with his life had bent and crowned,
With a proud, civic garland of command
That knightly brow, with laurels freshly bound!
Yet he cared not for crowds—this wrestler strong;
If down the arena swept some warm, wild breath
Of his People’s praise—this bore his soul along,
This came with sweetness in the midst of death,
For love was more to him than crown or wreath.
Ah! half her Sun is stricken from the South,
Since he is dead—her tropic-hearted one,—
Will the pomegranate flower’s vivid mouth
Open to drink the dews when Frost is done?
Will the gay red-bird flash like winged flame,
The mocking-bird awake its thrilling lyre?
Will Spring and Song—will Love ev’n seem the same,
Now he is gone—the spirit whose light and fire
And pulsing sweetness were like Spring to make,
The gray earth young?—will Light and Love awake,
And he still sleep?—and we weep for his sake!
MARY E. BRYAN.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE OLD AND THE NEW.
-------
NOT to the beauteous maid who weeps
And wails in broken numbers,
Where ’neath the solemn cypress sleeps
The brave in dreamless slumbers.
Oh, not to her whose pallid cheeks
With form all bent and broken
An utter loss of promise speaks
And perished hopes betoken.
Ah, not to her!—the sorrowing maid
Who sighs so sad and lowly,
Where our “Lost Cause and Cross” were laid,
Keeping their memories holy.
Ah, not to her whose sons have passed
To rest in peace sedately,
To glory and the grave at last,
In soldier phalanx stately;
That sleep beneath the mountain sod
Or by the murmuring rivers,
Beneath the blooming prairie clod
Or where the sea breeze quivers.
The past is God’s, the future ours,
And o’er our plains and mountains
The young spring comes with thousand flowers
And music in bright fountains.
Oh, let the bugle and the drum
Pass to the halls of glory,
Where time has made our passions dumb
And fame has told its story.
But let no High Priest of despair
Wed us to shades of sorrow,
Or bind our younger limbs and fair
In all our bright to-morrow.
Oh, not for her our younger years
Whose beauty bloomed to perish—
Enough a whole decade of tears,
Sad memories that we cherish.
But thou, sweet maid, whose gentle wand
Doth bring the May-time blossom—
We kiss thy lips and clasp thy hand
And press thy beauteous bosom.
Thou who dost teach us to forgive
The red hand of our brother,
And binds us closer while we live
To Country, as a mother.
Ah, wedded to this Newer South
We’ll find peace, love and glory,
And in some future singer’s mouth
Freedom will boast the story.
J. M. GIBSON.
VICKSBURG, _January 14, 1890_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
HENRY W. GRADY.
-------
_From the “Boston Globe.”_
FAIR brow grief-clouded, blue eyes dark with tears,
The young South sighed above her hero’s bier,
“Wear these my favors in the lists of Death,”
And o’er his calm breast scattered immortelles.
What Launcelot of old in jousts and field
Did bravely for the right with pen and voice,
With mind broad-reaching and with soul intense,
Did this young champion wisely for the truth.
From the loud echoes of rude, hideous war
He caught the murmur of a far-off peace;
Through the fierce hatred of embittered foes
He saw the faint day-star of amity;
O’er the ruin of the things that were
Beheld the shadowy Angel of new life,
And, chosen from the whirl of troublous days,
With soul knit up in valor, mind aflame,
Stood forth the knight and prophet of good will,
Of peace with dignity, of manhood’s strength
Sustaining brother’s love, of industry
That keeps an equal pace with building thought,
Of old things gracious yielding place to new.
And from the mists, responsive to his call,
Came forth in radiance, virgin-robed,
The starry maiden of sweet hope, and smiled—
Put forth her willing palm to meet his own,
And walked with him the valleys of Re-birth,
And where they passed the earth grew musical,
And long-hushed voices from the caves of Doubt
Swelled into melody of joyous faith;
While from the forests of the North swept down
The pæan of the Pines, and from the South
The murmur of the Everglades up stole
The diapason perfecting. Stark fields
That fever had burned out revived; and marts
Where brooded weird decay, and mills at rest,
The forge in blackness rusting, and the shop,
The school, the church, the forum, and the stage
Thrust off their desolation and despair
To feel again the energy of life
And know once more the happiness of man.
Such was his doing who was brave for truth;
Such is the legacy he leaves to pride;
And, though the New South mourn her fallen knight,
His soul and word move ever hand in hand
Adown the smiling valleys of Re-birth,
That still shall bud and flower because of him
And grow fair garlands for man’s Brotherhood.
E. A. B.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
AT GRADY’S GRAVE.
-------
“WE live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breadths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial;
We should count time by heart-throbs; he most lives
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best”—
The Poet, dreaming in divinest mood,
Scanning the future with a Prophet’s eyes,
Beheld the outlines of the Perfect Man
Take shape before the vision of his soul;
And though the beauteous phantom could not stay,
He caught its grace and glory in the song
Wherein he praises the Ideal Man
Of whom he dreamed, and whom the world should know,
When in the teeming womb of Time the years
Had ripened him, mature in every part.
While yet the world, expectant of this man,
Watched, mutely wondering when and whence would come
This radiant one, this full-bloom, fairest flower
Of manhood’s excellence, which Heaven itself
Were fain to keep, to crown the angels with—
God granting unto Earth but one or two
Within the cycle of a century—
Lo! suddenly, from out the realm of Dreams,
The splendid Vision of the musing bard,
His perfect and ideal Man, came forth,
And walked within the common light of day,
A living, breathing Presence—Henry Grady!
Did not this marvelously gifted man,
Who trod with us the old, familiar paths,
And glorified them daily with strange light,
As if a god were dwelling in our midst,
Measure, full-length, the stature of the man
The Poet quarried from the mines of Thought?
What though his years were brief, did he not fill
Their precious brevity with glorious deeds,
Till he outlived the utmost lives of men
Of lesser mold, of feebler fibred souls?
Garnering betwixt his cradle and his grave
The ripened harvests of a century!
Did he not live in thoughts as flowers live
In sunshine, filling the whole world with light,
And the celestial fragrance of his soul!
Did he not live in feelings so refined,
That every heart-string into music woke,
Though touched more lightly than a mother’s mouth
Would touch the sleep-sealed eyelids of her babe!
Ah, were the throbs of his great, loving heart,
Meet as a measure for _his_ span of life?
Would not such measure circle all the world,
And find no end, save in infinity?
If he lives most—(and who shall dare deny
A truth which is as true as God is true?)
If he doth live the most who thinks the most,
Who feels the noblest, and who acts the best,
Thou, O my friend! didst to the utmost mete
Of transitory mortal life live out
Thine earthly span, though to our eyes thy life
Seems like the flashing of a falling star,
Which for a moment fills the heavens with light,
And vanishes forever.
Nay, not so—
The Poet’s words are thy best epitaph!
And though the stone which marks thy grave but tells
The number of the years thy mortal frame
Retained that eagle-wingèd soul of thine,
How long thy all-compassionating heart
Inhabited its clayey tenement,
As one of God’s blest almoners, sent down
To fill the world with light and melody;
Tells when that prophet-tongue of thine was stilled,
Which, touched with inspiration’s sacred fire,
Preached Man’s eternal brotherhood, and led
The battle waged for Justice, Truth, and Right,
Still, and despite the tears that Sorrow woos
From the spontaneous fountains of our hearts,
We know that thou didst come unto thy grave
Brimful of years, if noble deeds and thoughts,
If love to God and Man, be made alone
The measure of thy length of human years;
And that, even as thy soul beyond the stars
Shall live—as God lives—everlastingly,
So shall the memory of thy shining deeds,
Remain forever in the hearts of men;
Nor shall the record of thy fame be touched
By Time’s defacing hand—thou art immortal!
And now, dear friend, farewell to thee! Thine eyes
Have death’s inviolate seal upon their lids;
They cannot see the Season’s glorious shows,
Although, methinks, in memory of thee
The grass grows greener here, and tenderer
The daily benediction of the sun
Falls on thy grave, as if thy very dust
Had sentience still, and, kindling into life
Under the fiery touchings of the sun,
Broke through the turfy barriers of the tomb
To mingle with the light, and mellow it;
There’s not a flower that timidly uplifts
Its smiling face, to look upon the Dawn,
Or bows its head to worship silently
The awful glory of the midnight stars,
But what takes on a gentler grace for thee,
And for thy sake a sweeter incense flings
From out its golden censer.
Nor, my friend,
Will thy dull ears awaken to the songs,
Of jubilant birds, the Summer’s full-voiced choir,
Singing thy praises—for they sing of Love,
And Love was the high choral of thy life,
The swan-song of thy soul; thou canst not hear
The sweetest sounds—made sweeter for thy sake
By the presiding Genius of this place—
The silvery minor-music of the rain,
Those murmurous drops, with iterations soft,
Of every flower, and trembling blade of grass,
A fairy’s cymbal make; the whispering wind,
The sea-like moaning of the distant pines,
The sound of wandering streams, or, sweeter still,
The voice of happy children at their play—
Ah, none of these interminable tones
Of Nature’s many-chorded instrument,
Which make the music of the outward world,
As thou didst make its inner harmony,
Out of the finer love-chords of thy heart,
Shall ever move thee; but a mightier charm
Shall often woo thee from thy heavenly home,
To shed upon thy place of sculpture
The splendor of a Presence from the skies;
For thou shalt see a fairer sight than all
The panoramas of the Seasons bring,
And hear far sweeter music than the sound
Of murmuring waters, or the melody
Of birds that warble in their happy nests:
Yea, thou shalt see how little children come
To deck thy grave with daisies, wet with tears;
See homeless Want slow hither wend his way,
To bless the ashes of “the poor man’s friend,”
And from the scant dole of his wretchedness,
Despite his hunger, lay a liberal gift
Upon thy grave, in token of his love;
And in the pride and glory of her state,
Sceptred and crowned, the Spirit of the South,
Whose Heart, and Soul, and living Voice thou wert,
Will come with Youth and Manhood by her side,
To draw fresh inspirations from thy dust,
And consecrate her children with thy fame,
Till they have learned the lessons of thy life,
And glorify her, too, with noble deeds;
Thou shalt behold here, coming from all lands,
The men who honor Love and Loyalty,
Who glory in the strength of those who scale
The mountain-summits of Humanity,
And from their star-encircled peaks proclaim
The Fatherhood of the Eternal God,
The Brotherhood of Man—both being one
In holy bonds of justice, truth, and love—
Christ’s “Peace on Earth and good-will unto Men”—
That old evangel, preached anew by thee,
Till the persuasion of thy golden tongue
Quickened and moved the world with mighty love,
As if a god had come to earth again!
CHARLES W. HUBNER.
ATLANTA, GA.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
MEMORIAL MEETINGS.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE ATLANTA MEMORIAL MEETING.
-------
_From the “Constitution,” December 21._
THE overflowing hearts of a sorrowing people found expression in words
yesterday.
Memorial services to the memory of the dead Grady were held in DeGive’s
Opera House, and for three hours eulogies were pronounced on his name.
Loving lips and dewy eyes told the sorrow of a bereaved people gathered
to pay the last public tribute to their departed friend.
The service began at 11 o’clock, and continued until 2.
At half-past ten the various escorts assembled at the Chamber of
Commerce. There they formed and marched to the Opera House in a body.
General Clement A. Evans, D.D., and Rev. Dr. J. W. Lee, D.D., headed the
procession. Following them were the speakers of the occasion,
pallbearers, honorary escort and members of the Chi Phi Fraternity,
headed by Mayor John T. Glenn.
At the Opera House the delegations were ranged on the stage. They were
Dr. J. B. Hawthorne, Dr. H. C. Morrison, Dr. N.C. Barnett, General
Clement A. Evans, Judge W. R. Hammond, Judge W. T. Newman, Mayor John T.
Glenn, Hon. John Temple Graves, Prof. H. C. White, of Athens; Hon.
Patrick Walsh, of Augusta; Julius L. Brown, W. A. Hemphill, Dr. J. W.
Lee, Charles S. Northen, Louis Gholstin, T. L. Meador, B. B. Crew,
Donald Bain, Hon. N. J. Hammond, Captain J. W. English, Governor Gordon,
John C. Calhoun, of New York; Judge Howard Van Epps, Patrick Calhoun,
Albert H. Cox, W. R. Joyner, C. A. Collier, John Colvin, Porter King,
Captain Everett, S. M. Inman, Professor Bass, Major Jno. A. Fitten,
Captain R. I. Lowry, L. J. Hill, W. H. Thompson, J. A. Wright, H. C.
White, W. P. Hill, Arnold Broyles, and other members of the Chi Phi; W.
J. Garrett, W. W. Boyd, W. L. Calhoun, Hon. T. H. Mustin, of Madison; R.
D. Spalding, M. C. Kiser, J. J. Griffin, J. R. Wyly, H. B. Tompkins, L.
B. Nelson, Charles Keith, Judge George Hillyer, Gus Long, Dr. Crawford,
J. G. Oglesby, J. J. Spalding, John J. Falvey, Clark Howell, Jr., F. M.
O’Bryan, C. A. Fouche, of Rome, and others.
The Opera House, inside and out, was draped in sable and white, and on
the stage, forming a fragrant background, was a mass of beautiful
flowers and floral pieces. In the center of the group was the lovely
offering of the dead man’s associates and employés, standing out from a
setting of palms and roses. To the right of this central piece was the
crown from the people of Boston, and to the left the tribute from the
Virginia Society.
To the front and at each side of the stage was a life-size crayon
portrait of Mr. Grady, heavily draped, and resting on a gilded easel.
Round the base of the easel were flowers and plants of delicate foliage,
perfuming the air with their fragrant breath, and seeming to send sweet
messages to the loved face above.
The galleries and boxes were all hung in mourning.
General CLEMENT A. EVANS opened the service with prayer, full of words
of sweetness and comfort, and of grateful thanks for the good already
accomplished by the one that is gone, even in so short a sojourn on the
earth. General Evans prayed calmly and simply, concluding with the
invocation of God’s blessing to those left behind, and an inspiration to
those who were to speak of the departed soul.
Mayor GLENN, who presided over the service, then arose and announced the
order of exercises. He said he was too sick of heart to attempt to offer
a tribute to the memory of his dead friend, and contented himself with a
few simple words of preface.
* * * * *
Judge W. R. HAMMOND was introduced, and read the following tribute of
the Chi Phi Fraternity, of which Mr. Grady was one of the charter
members at the State University:
THE CHI PHI MEMORIAL.
The following memorial and resolutions were prepared by a committee
appointed by a number of members of the Chi Phi Fraternity, who
assembled in Atlanta upon the announcement of the death of Henry W.
Grady, who was a member of that Fraternity, and were read by Judge W. R.
Hammond:
It is sad beyond the power of expression to be compelled to-day,
and from this time henceforth, to speak of Henry W. Grady as
dead. But it is with the profoundest pleasure that we take
occasion to give utterance to our appreciation of his virtues,
and bear testimony to those high qualities in him that marked
him in many respects, not only as one of the leading men of his
State and section, but as one of the foremost men of his times.
It is peculiarly appropriate that his club-mates of the Chi Phi
Fraternity should perpetuate his memory, because he was one of
its charter members at the State University, and always gave to
it a place of unusual warmth in his affections, ever
manifesting, in his attachment to its principles and to its
members, that freshness of enthusiastic ardor which so
strikingly characterized him in his college days. How well do we
remember him—those of us who were accustomed to be with him in
those days—as, with buoyant tread and sparkling eye and merry
smile, he went out and came in amongst us, ever bearing in his
frank, generous, hearty manner, the cheeriest good will to all,
and the unmistakable evidence of malice and ill-will toward
none. Easily and quickly did he win the hearts of all his club
and college-mates, and it was their delight to do him honor
whenever occasion permitted.
As it was then among the boys, so it was afterwards among men.
He wore his heart upon his sleeve, and gave it to all without
reserve. In some this characteristic would have been weakness,
but in him it was a chief element of strength because of the
very fact that he possessed it in such a marked and striking
degree. Even those who were his enemies were won to him when
they came into his presence, and had their dislikes charmed away
by the magnetism of his manner and his open and unreserved
frankness.
Henry Grady had eminent characteristics which made him great,
and it is proper and right that we should place upon record our
estimate of them, and cannot but be highly beneficial to us to
thoughtfully consider some of them.
His mind was exceedingly subtle, and his perceptible powers
unusually and remarkably keen. He comprehended at a glance, and
discriminated as if by intuition. It was this, doubtless, that
gave him that wonderful expressiveness of speech which so
completely captivated all who ever heard him. He saw
clearly—therefore he had power to make others see.
We all have within us at times vague and inexpressible thoughts,
and we feel a desire for some one who can interpret them for us,
and give utterance and expression to that which we cannot even
put into the form of a suggestion. We feel the need of a Daniel
who can tell us the dream, and then give us the interpretation
of it. Who that has listened to the magic of Grady’s speech, or
gathered the subtle thought from his well-chosen words, has not
found in them the expression of that which seemed to lie
slumbering in his own bosom, only to be awakened by the touch of
his master hand! Such is the service which genius renders to
humanity, and such did he render for us with a power that was
almost matchless and unapproachable.
But, superb as were his mental gifts, it was not this alone, or
even chiefly, that made him great and gave him power such as few
ever possessed to attract men to him. There have been those who
equaled if they did not surpass him here, but who yet have
failed to impress themselves upon humanity with a tithe of the
force exerted by him. It was his great heart that endeared him
to us all and made us love him and rejoice in his success, with
a feeling that knew no jealousy, and ever prompted us to bid him
God-speed in his onward and upward career to the high destiny
which seemed to await him.
True love is unmistakable in its manifestations. He who really
and truly loves his fellows need not fear that they will fail to
find it out. It will manifest itself, not in the arts and wiles
of the demagogue, but in a thousand ways which need not be
premeditated, and cannot be misjudged or misunderstood.
Grady loved humanity, and love with him was not weak
sentimentality, but strong, over-mastering passion. He loved
humanity, not in the abstract, but in the person of those
members of it who came within reach of him. And this love to
them was not a mere sentiment, but a real passion, to which he
gave expression in his never-tiring acts of devotion and his
ceaseless efforts to aid them in every way and by every means
that lay in his power. It was thus that he grappled his friends
to him with hoops of steel and held them in a grasp which
nothing could loosen.
It was Grady’s strong emotional nature that gave wings to his
words and carried them so deep into the hearts of his fellow
men. Thought must have feeling back of it before it can have
power to stir men’s blood and move them to action. The twain
must be married together as one, and from their union springs a
light and power which are potent factors in the redemption of
humanity. In Grady they were united, and hence his words burnt
their way into the souls of men. The magnificence of his
thoughts, and the untold wealth of feeling which sprang from his
great heart, were not to be resisted, and easily won and held
the admiration and homage of his fellow men.
But the deep pathos of Grady’s heart, so often stirred into
those grand utterances which made him famous, seems now to
have been but the prophecy of the far deeper pathos of his
untimely death. Oh how sad it was to see him lying there upon
his bier mute and motionless, when but yesterday the nation
hung upon his words, and men of all sections and political
parties delighted to do him honor. Oh how strong in our
breasts is the wish that he might have lived, not only for
himself, his family and friends, but also for the sake of his
country, and especially his beloved Southland, just beginning
to feel the disenthrallment from her bonds, and to realize
that one had arisen who seemed to have the power to place her
before the Nation and the world in her rightful position, and
claim for her that sympathy and forbearance which she so much
needs in the solution of the great problem which has been
thrust upon her.
But he is gone, and we can only mourn his loss, and indulge the
hope that the good he has done may live after him, and that even
the sad bereavement of his death may do much to help seal the
truth of his last public utterance upon the hearts of the people
of this great country, and ultimately bring them together as one
in a union of fraternal fellowship and love.
_Resolved_, That in the death of our brother, Henry W. Grady,
our Fraternity has lost one of its most honored and devoted
members.
_Resolved_, That we tender to his bereaved family our sincere
and heartfelt sympathy.
_Resolved_, That a copy of this memorial and resolutions be sent
to his family.
_Resolved_, That the city papers be requested to publish these
proceedings, and that a copy be sent to the national organ of
the Chi Phi Fraternity.
J. W. LEE, }
J. T. WHITE, }
B. H. HILL, }
ANDREW CALHOUN, } _Committee_.
W. H. HILL, }
JACK M. SLATON, }
W. R. HAMMOND, }
Hon. Patrick Walsh was introduced by Mayor Glenn, and said:
ADDRESS OF HON. PATRICK WALSH.
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Fellow-Citizens: We are here to pay a
tribute to the worth and greatness of the departed—to him who
did so much for the prosperity of the great and goodly city of
Atlanta; to him who did so much for Georgia and the South, and
to him who did so much for the restoration of peace and good
will among the people of all sections of our common country.
The most gifted and useful public man of his day has passed away
in the person of Henry W. Grady. I will refer briefly to him as
an editor before he electrified the country, and won plaudits
from his countrymen by the magic of his winsome eloquence.
I met him for the first time about twenty years ago at a meeting
of the Georgia Press Association in the city of Augusta.
Although he had not reached his majority, he was the proprietor
and editor of the Rome _Commercial_, which was his first
newspaper venture. He was then a striking and manly youth, and
gave promise of a career of prominence and usefulness in the
field of journalism. He moved from Rome to Atlanta and was
engaged for a few years in editing the _Herald_, one of the
brightest and most enterprising newspapers in the State. He
acquired reputation as a correspondent during the period of
reconstruction, and subsequently represented one of the leading
journals of the North as its special representative in Florida
during the memorable campaign of 1876, when the returning board
of that State negatived the will of the people. Mr. Grady gave
the country graphic and truthful pictures of the evils which the
South endured. He strikingly depicted the wrongs imposed upon
our people and exposed the usurpation of those placed in
authority by the aid of the general Government. During that sad
period of the South’s eventful history, he rendered signal
service to the people, and the principles which he advocated,
with a steadfast devotion and an exalted patriotism.
His reputation as a journalist is identified with the growth and
prosperity of that great newspaper, in the upbuilding of which
he took such a conspicuous part. The _Constitution_ stands as a
monument to his ability as an editor. His versatility as a
writer was something phenomenal. There was no subject within the
range of the press that he did not discuss with a grace and
facility that were captivating and with a clearness and vigor
that were convincing. His imagination glowed with luminous
thoughts which were clothed in the diction of polished rhetoric.
Without disparagement to the living or the dead, he won the
first place in the ranks of Southern journalists.
I speak of Mr. Grady as an editor. Others will speak of him as
an orator. Oratory was a natural gift with him. It was born in
him. Where others struggle to win success, he, by reason of his
genius, reached the mountain top, and from this great eminence
spoke to the ear of the Nation and captured the hearts of the
people. He achieved greatness by reason of his vigorous
mentality, and his fame as an editor and as an orator is voiced
by the sentiments of admiring but sorrowing friends in all
sections of the Union. He has been stricken before his time.
Already the first of his generation, if his life had been spared
his opportunity for greatness would have broadened and given him
in “the applause of listening senates” a field for the exercise
of those great gifts with which he was so richly endowed. He
died too soon for his people and for his country. But his name
and his fame will be an example and an inspiration to practice
and perpetuate the principles of government in the advocacy of
which he yielded up his life.
“With charity for all and malice toward none,” he went about
among his countrymen doing good. It was his mission to help the
poor and to aid the deserving. Every good work received the
support of his impulsive heart and noble soul. His last speech
was an impassioned and eloquent plea for a peaceful solution of
that great problem which the South and the South alone can
solve. It was not to oppress, but to elevate the colored man—to
enable both races to live in peace, and work out their mission
in the regeneration of the South. What he so eloquently said in
Boston represents the firm conviction of his Southern
countrymen, and his death but emphasizes the truth and force of
his position. The South is free and the intelligence and courage
of her people will preserve her and her institutions for all
time from hostile and inferior domination.
The South mourns the untimely death of Georgia’s brilliant son.
The North deeply sympathizes with us in the death of him whose
last public utterance so feelingly touched the patriotic heart
of the people, and the response comes back from all sections of
a re-united people and a restored Union. Few men have
accomplished so much for the unification of public sentiment on
questions of grave import, and there is no one who has
accomplished more for the material development of his beloved
South. He is dead, but his works will live after him. His name
is enshrined in the hearts of his grateful countrymen, who are
saddened and bowed down with unspeakable sorrow.
Henry W. Grady had the zeal of a martyr and valor of a patriot.
If it be permitted to mortals who have put on immortality to
look upon this world from their celestial home, the incense of
praise which ascends from our stricken hearts will be grateful
to the soul of Henry Grady. God has set his seal upon his silver
tongue, and no more forever will his eloquent voice, stimulating
his fellow-countrymen to deeds of noble enterprise, be heard on
earth. Matchless the fertility of his mind, matchless the magic
and power of his presentation, matchless his power of
organization, matchless his power of accomplishment. Truly,
indeed, can it be said of him, there is no man left to fill his
place.
May his golden soul rest in the bosom of the God that gave it,
is the humble but heartfelt prayer of one who admired and
respected him living, and who mourns and reveres him dead.
ADDRESS OF HON. B. H. HILL.
I cannot speak in studied phrase of my dead friend. The few
simple words I can trust my faltering lips to utter will come
from a heart burdened with grief too deep for language to
express. A grief whose crushing weight, outside of my own home
circle, has taken away from life its brightest hopes and its
highest inspiration.
In the summer of 1866 I first met Henry Grady, even then giving
promise of marvelous gifts of mind and heart. From that summer
evening, remembered now as though it were but yesterday, I have
loved him with all a brother’s devotion and tenderness. During
all these years there has been no shadow on our friendship and
no secrets in our hearts. In prosperity he has rejoiced with me,
and when sorrow and trouble came no voice was as cheering, no
sympathy was as sweet as his. Only a year ago, when death came
into my home and took the one little blossom that had bloomed in
my heart as my own, he wrote to my mother words of tenderest
comfort for her and of love for me—words that are inexpressibly
precious to me now. Out of my life into the beautiful beyond
have passed the two friends I loved best on earth—the chivalrous
Gordon, the peerless Grady. God keep my friends and lead them
gently through the meadow-lands where the river flows in song
eternal. I know that near its crystal banks, where the birds
sing sweetest and flowers bloom brightest, they have clasped
hands in blessed and happy reunion. The love with which Henry
Grady inspired his friends has never been surpassed by mortal
man. Beautiful and touching have been the expressions of
devotion that have come to his family. I believe that there are
hundreds all over this State who would gladly take his place in
yonder silent tomb, if by so doing they could restore him to the
people who loved him and who need him so greatly. It is not his
great genius, unrivaled as it was; not his fervent patriotism,
unselfish as it was; not his wonderful eloquence, matchless as
it was; not his public spirit, willing as it was—these are not
the recollections that have moved the people as they have never
been moved before.
But it was the great heart of the man beating in loving sympathy
with suffering, touching with sweetest encouragement the lowly
and struggling, carrying the sunshine of his own radiant life
into so many unhappy lives, that now bow down the hearts of the
people under the weight of a personal loss.
Henry Grady lived in an atmosphere of love. In him there was
greatness—greatness unselfish—unconscious—gentle as the heart of
a child. In him there was charity—charity white and still as the
moonlight that shines into the shadows of night. In him there
was heroism—the heroism of the knight that drew no sword, but
waved in his hand, high above his white plumed brow, the sacred
wand of peace, of love, of fraternity. In him there was
patriotism, but a patriotism as pure and steadfast as a flame
burning as a passion for the people he loved. As I contemplate
this life through the years that I have known him so well, I
feel as one who has seen the sun rise in the cloudless spring
time, warming into beauty all the flowers of the earth, and
winning into praise all the songsters of the air, at noonday,
when all earth was rejoicing in its light and growing in its
strength, suddenly fade away, leaving the land in darkness.
Henry Grady was the great sun of the Southland, under whose
fervid eloquence the cold heart of the North was melting into
patience, confidence, justice, sympathy and love. It is no
exaggeration to say that he was the great hope of the country.
The eyes of the South were looking toward him with hope. The
ears of the North were listening to him with faith. Inscrutable,
indeed, are the ways of a Providence that demanded a life so
richly endowed, so potential for good. And yet it is the finite
mind that would question either the mercy or wisdom of the
Infinite. Our hero could not have died at a time when he was
dearer to his people. His last brave, eloquent message will find
its way, has found its way, to the hearts and consciences of his
countrymen. His death is a sacrificial offering from whose altar
rises even now the incense of perpetual peace and a perfect
union of brotherly love. The lessons of his life will ripen with
the passing years. Ages yet to come will compass the fullness of
his fame and time will consecrate the patriotic martyrdom of his
death. He sang like one inspired with the sacred memories of the
past and the glorious hopes of the future. His works and his
noble qualities will expand and multiply from his tomb as the
sweet spice rushes from the broken alabaster vase. His name will
become the synonym for friendship, charity, wisdom, eloquence,
patriotism and love, wherever these virtues are known and
treasured among men.
To use his own beautiful words, written of another: “Those who
loved him best will find him always present. They will see him
enthroned in every heart that kindles with sympathy to others.
They will feel his kindly presence in the throb of every hand
that clasps their hands in the universal kinship of grief. They
will see his loving memory beaming from every eye as it falls on
theirs.” So he shall live in Georgians and with Georgians
forever and forever. On the monument which loving hands will
erect to his memory let the inscription be written: “At all
times and everywhere he gave his strength to the weak—his
sympathy to the suffering—his life to his country and his heart
to God.” Our hearts go out to-day in tenderest sympathy to the
loved ones at home. Those alone who have had the privilege of
entering the charmed circle can know the void left there.
To the mother who idolized this noble son—and he never forgot
her, for did he not turn aside from questions of state to tell
the Nation that her knees were the truest altar he had ever
found, and her hands the fairest and strongest that had ever led
him; to the sweet and loving sister, the companion of his
boyhood; to the heart-broken wife always worthy of his love,
devoted to him, ever dear to him; to the sweet and gentle
daughter, the idol of his heart and household; to the noble and
manly son—these were his jewels. And as we loved him so shall we
love them. I have seen a picture with a shaft of light reaching
from earth to heaven. Up the long, white rays, dazzling in glory
and transcendent in beauty, an immortal soul is ascending to the
illumined heights—ascending to meet its God. I think that if
there ever was a soul borne upward upon rays of glory it was the
beautiful soul of this friend we loved. The golden beams of this
earthly glory shining into the pure light of heaven wove his
radiant pathway to the stars. What an ascension for an immortal
soul! Earth’s glory under his feet; Heaven’s glory upon his
brow. So he, our immortal, becomes God’s immortal. Oh, thou
bright, immortal spirit! Thou standeth this day in the presence
of the angels. The King, in his beauty, hath greeted thee with
the welcome: Well done, well done good and faithful servant; the
great and good that have passed from earth are thy companions,
and thy ears have heard music sweeter far than all earthly
plaudits. Yet we miss thee; we mourn thee; through the rifted
heavens we greet thee with grateful tears and undying love.
MR. JULIUS L. BROWN’S SPEECH.
Again we are assembled in the house of mourning. Our homes and
public buildings are yet black with the symbols of our grief for
him who went before.
“One woe doth tread upon another’s heel, so fast they follow.”
Two short weeks ago, while we were assembled in our capital
covered with the insignia of grief, to do honor to the memory of
one who had been our chief when the storm of war raged, we
received a telegram, mingling his grief with ours, from him,
then on his journey of duty to Boston, whose sad death we have
met this day to mourn.
Jefferson Davis and Henry Grady are dead. To-day their souls
commune, and we are left to weep. In their deaths the South has
lost two of her noblest sons. One was gathered to his fathers
full of years and rich in honor. He had served his country well.
He had been the chosen leader of our people, when the storms of
war were raging. He, as our representative, had been subjected
to insults and to indignities by the Government he had honored,
and in whose service he had spent the best years of his life. He
passed away, and the sunset of his life was glorious and
beautiful.
We have not yet put aside the sables of grief we wear for
Jefferson Davis, and yet in two short weeks we have met to mourn
the death of him whom we hold dearer; our townsman, our daily
associate and friend.
Henry W. Grady has gone to his last home.
One was an old man, ready and waiting to be called. His day was
over, his work was done, and he was waiting for his rest. His
sun had risen, past its meridian in glory and was sinking in
honor. For him the night in due time had come. The other, was a
young man, full of hope and rich in promise. His sun had just
arisen and it gave promise that before him was yet a glorious
day.
One was the chosen representative of our people before the
storms of war had swept over us. He was the representative of
the South under its old system. The other was the acknowledged
exponent of the South under its altered condition of affairs.
We weep for him to-day.
Of all the young men in America none had such power for good.
None had the ear of the public so completely as he to be heard.
None had so eloquent a tongue to produce conviction. None had so
magnetic a bearing to induce followers. He was ambitious, yes,
but for what? Not for the spoils of office, not for command of
his fellow-man, not for himself, but for his people. Years ago
when his friends all over Georgia urged him to allow his name to
be presented for a post of honor in the counsels of the Nation
he refused. His letter of declination was so strong, so
patriotic, and so unselfish that it commanded the admiration of
the world. I know that even far-off New Zealand published his
words and did him honor. His eloquent speech in New York
completed the structure of his national fame. From the night of
its delivery the whole country ranked him among its foremost
citizens. Even in down-trodden and oppressed Cuba his eloquent
words were translated into the Spanish tongue and read with
delight while I was there. The echoes of his last eloquent,
matchless defense of the South yet linger in Faneuil Hall, and
so long as its historic walls shall stand they will be classed
with the best efforts of Everett and of Webster. His friends all
over the country read his words, and wondered that he was so
great. Ambitious; yes, ambitious to be able to present the cause
of the South in such a manner as to produce conviction in the
minds and in the hearts of its most ultra defamers, that our
people now in good faith accept as final the construction placed
upon the Constitution of this country by the victors, and that
they are as absolutely loyal and devoted, as are the people of
the North, to that Union against which his father had fought.
With no apologies for the past; with no recantation of the
belief that they were patriots, without in any way casting
reproach upon our dead, with a nature grand enough to admire
Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, he had taken for his high
mission on this earth, the task of reconciling the people of the
sections. Until this great mission was accomplished, he had no
time to devote to the narrow duties of a public office. Office,
therefore, he did not seek. Office he would not have. There was
but one office in this land great enough for him. Had he lived
until his sun had reached its meridian splendor there would have
been a complete reconciliation between the sections. Partisan
malignity would not have sought to enact laws aimed at only a
part of this grand country. Soon would there have been a
complete union of hearts between those who had been engaged in
fratricidal strife, which the most ultra partisanship could not
have severed. Too young himself to be in the war, but the son of
a gallant Confederate soldier, killed upon the field of battle,
he, more than any one of older years, could by his chosen
profession bear the messages of peace to the North, and by his
mighty pen, by his eloquent tongue, by his melodious voice, and
by his commanding presence could he procure a hearing from an
audience of strangers and produce conviction. If it be true
that,
The tongues of dying men
Enforce attention like deep harmony,
then his last words, uttered in behalf of his people, will not
have been spoken in vain.
In his death the South has lost its most eloquent advocate and
its most powerful defender. America weeps for one of her noblest
sons. Who is there to finish this work? God grant that there may
rise some one to complete his mission!
He was a man full of impulse and a quick reader of the popular
mind. Well do we all remember the time when the result of a
presidential election became certainly known, how his heart,
wild with joy at what he believed to be the beginning of better
days for the South, organized a street procession and proceeded
to the legislative halls of this State, and with his followers
entered the house, and in his clear, ringing voice announced,
“Mr. Speaker: A message from the American people,” and adjourned
it. ’Tis said that history shows that there have been but two
men who have ever adjourned a parliament without a vote, Oliver
Cromwell and Henry Grady. One was an act of tyranny—the other
the expression of the desire of every member of the house.
A citizen of Atlanta, he loved Georgia; a Georgian, he adored
the South; a Southerner, he worshipped the whole Union. He was
an American in the fullest sense of that term. There was no work
of public or private charity among us which he did not aid by
his tongue, his pen, his head or his purse, whether that work
was to procure the pardon of an abandoned young girl confined in
the chain-gang with criminals, or canvassing the streets of
Atlanta through snow and ice, accompanied with a retinue of
wagons and drays, to accumulate fuel and provisions to prevent
our poor from freezing and from starving. It was in response to
his appeals, more than to all else combined, that a home is now
being erected within sight of the dome of yonder capitol for the
aged and infirm veterans of the Lost Cause. It was to him more
than to all others that our Piedmont Expositions, designed to
show to the world the wealth of our undeveloped mineral,
agricultural and other resources, were carried to a successful
end. It was through his persuasive power that the Chautauqua
Association, designed to more thoroughly educate our people, was
established.
But in the limited time allotted to me, I cannot go into further
details. If you seek his monuments, look around. They are in
every home and every calling of life. In all that which has
tended to develop the material resources of the country, to
enrich his people, to encourage education and a love of the
arts, to relieve suffering, to provide for the poor, and to make
our people better and nobler, he devoted his life, unselfishly
and without hope of other reward than the approval of his
conscience.
He was a model citizen. As a member of society, he was welcomed
to every fireside. He was the center of every group. His doors
were open always to strangers. He was given to hospitality. He
was the life, the soul of every enterprise with which he was
connected. As a patriot, his heart was bowed down with grief
that his countrymen should be estranged. As a humanitarian, his
great heart wept at the suffering of the poor, and his voice was
ever raised in behalf of the afflicted and oppressed. As a
friend, he was devoted, unselfish and loyal. Now, that he is
gone, we know how dear he was to us. We have awakened to the
full appreciation of his great worth, and of the calamity which
has befallen us.
Yesterday we stood by his tomb. No private citizen in this
country ever had such a pageant. For miles the streets were
lined with people. We saw the aged and the young, the rich and
the poor, the white and the black, with eyes dimmed by tears,
with hearts bowed down with sorrow at loss of him. They had left
their homes upon our greatest festal day to pay him the homage
of their tears. To each of them his loss was a personal sorrow.
I knew Henry W. Grady well, and I loved him. To me his death is
a personal grief. He had been my friend for more than
twenty-three years. Well do I remember the day I joined his
class in our University. Well do I picture his friendly presence
as he bade me welcome and invited me to his home. Well do I
recall our meeting in our college societies. Our plans, our
struggles, our defeats and our triumphs there. Since that time,
I have sat with him around social boards. He has been time and
again an honored and a welcomed guest in my house. I shall miss
him there. We have been together in public enterprises, we have
met in the busy marts of men. We have worked side by side, and
we have differed upon questions of policy, but in all these
differences he has been my friend. I loved him, and deplore his
death.
We shall erect in this city a monument to commemorate his many
virtues, and to hold him up as an example before the young and
those who come after us; but however exalted that monument may
be, and however near the skys it may reach, the greatest and
best monument to us who knew him will be the memory of his many
virtues which we shall always treasure in our hearts.
Sink, thou of nobler light.
The land will mourn thee in its darkening hour;
Its heavens grow gray at thy retiring power;
Thou stirring orb of mind, thou beacon power,
Be thy great memory still a guardian might,
When thou art gone from sight.
Judge Emory Speer was on the list of speakers to follow Mr.
Brown, but did not reach the city in time to take part in the
exercises.
SPEECH OF HON. ALBERT COX.
Twenty-three years ago, poor and painfully uncertain of even a
broken part of education, but shortly from farm and camp and
captivity, broken-hearted and distrusting all things, lonesome
in a strange place, two companions met me at Athens and made me
feel at home. One of them mourns to-day with me the death of the
other.
I look across the many years as across a wide and misty river
made up of many streams, and recall the sunny face, the glowing
eye, the engaging smile, the warm hand formed; it seemed to
assure a friend of love with its very clasp—the happy-hearted,
the happy-making Henry Grady.
Treasured by his companions are traditions that his generous
hands were helpful even then. It is known that his appeal to the
“Great Old Commoner” kept a child of the State to the breast of
its own Alma Mater. It is known that he led the relief corps of
kindness to the aid of maimed veterans shivering in bitter
winter at the old rock college. To suggest such deeds seemed
natural to his heart, and to do them nobly seemed inherent to
his hand.
His was the versatile genius of our class. Never fenced in to
his text-books, apparently careless of mere curriculum, he
roamed the fields of literature more than he tramped the
turnpike of studies. Sparkling and popular, genial and beloved,
his mind moved like a stream of poetry, cascading and flashing,
banked in sweet flowers, and singing to sweet meadows made happy
by its song.
His address as final orator of his society, fairly represents
the mind of the man when launched. It was an exquisite fiction
of ideal life. He painted in words an island of beauty; in the
sweetness of his sentences the fragrance of flowers sweeter than
nature’s own seemed to be wafted to rapt listeners; the
loveliness of his creation stood out so vividly to the eye of
intellect that no one view of any grace in statuary or beauty in
picture of any artist would be remembered better. It was an
island worthy to lay in the same sea with Tennyson’s Island of
Avilion, where Knight and King Arthur was to rest his soul, and
I would wish the soul of my class-mate the sweet and eternal
rest of his own happy island, embowered in the beauties of his
own sweet fancies forever, did I not believe that he has touched
the pearl-strewn shore of a better and lovelier land than even
this, or even that of which he dreamed; that he “rests in the
balm-breathing gardens of God!”
Who would dream that such ideality of mind would be composed
with such powers of business as he had? It is wonderful that the
versatile course of his life, while adding to his breadth, did
not lessen his depth. To but few, indeed, is it endowed to be
both versatile and profound. His varied experience, like
tributes, added to the brightness and to the breadth, and to the
depth of his intellect, until before touching the sea it rolled
in majestic splendor, wide and clear as the Potomac, deep and
burden-bearing as the Ohio. He had great opportunities. He
worked and won them. Starting without them, he created them by
deserving them. That great journal, through whose columns he and
his associates have done so much to rebuild the fortunes and
hopes of our people, did not make Henry Grady. The Lord made
him. But his bereaved associates there did all that men can do
in the moulding of other men. They recognized him for what he
was and for what he could become. They participated in the
glorious work, They surrendered him, and he surrendered himself
to his country. The first duty of the Southern patriot—a
national duty also—was to recuperate this section. In that duty,
no man out of office, perhaps no man at all, has labored with
more credit and with better result than Henry W. Grady. For the
complete reconciliation of the sections of this Union every
patriot ought to strive and every Christian ought to pray.
Sectional jealousies and angers are the only enemies of the
Union, and those who claim to place the preservation of the
Union above all other duties, ought to be the foremost
forwarders of the fraternity of the American people. They who
love the Union should help to heal its wounds.
Strange spectacle! Noble culmination of a noble life! From the
midst of those charged with hate toward the Union, Henry W.
Grady went forth a minister to plead for love to all its parts.
“Blessed is the peacemaker.”
His voice was for that peace in our country made perpetual by
justice to all and respect for the sacred things of earth. His
voice was for building an American temple of peace, not upon the
quicksands of comparative power, subject to the shift from one
section to the other, but upon the everlasting foundations of
right to all, respect to all, liberties and liberality to all!
Oh, what a cause he had! If successful, unfolded glories of the
Union of future times; the sweet and swelling harmonies of the
ever-increasing choir of free and happy States; the grand ideals
of the venerable fathers all realized, and every bloom of
American hope fruited in happiness, in love, in liberty, in
enduring peace!
And if unsuccessful! If he and those to come must plead in vain
for the unity as well as union of the country, then the dread
doubt whether all peace is to be only preparation for deadly
grapplings; the dread doubt whether, as in England and Scotland,
these feuds are to harry our homes and our hearts for hundreds
of years!
What a cause! and, thank God, what an advocate! It would seem
that our own Southern sun had warmed and sweetened him for the
work. He exactly fitted the culmination and mission of his life.
His noble soul propelled his thoughts. His eloquence rushed from
mountain-side fountains, pure and bold and free. His reasoning
was so blended with appeal that the one took the shape of
stating truths in sequence, and his appeal seemed responsive to
the heart-beats of his listeners.
Thus the cause, the advocate and the occasion met, and once more
in New England a Southern man was applauded as an American
patriot. With the triple levers of his great soul and mind and
tongue he moved two mighty sections, with all their weights of
passions of victory and passions of defeat, with all their
weights of misconceptions and misjudgments. With his hands he
moved these mighty bodies nearer each to the heart of the
other—nearer to that true Union for which the real heart of this
country, in every part of it, beats with the pulses of a devoted
love, never entirely to be stilled.
Oh, how nobly he must have been inspired as he felt the
“rock-ribbed and iron-bound” prejudice of New England quiver to
the touch of his magic hand; and as her snow began to melt under
the warmth of his great heart, surely he was the sunshine of
this great land!
But, oh, the grief of it—the bitter, bitter grief of it! Just as
we knew how noble and great he was, he sank below the horizon of
life, never to rise again!
I shall always recall him as dying like that lad from Lombardy,
pictured by Browning. I shall think that the South, decked like
a queen in all her jewels of glory and of love, came to his
dying couch and said:
“Thou art a Lombard, my brother! Happy art thou,” she cried,
And smiled like Italy on him. He dreamed in her face and died!
ADDRESS OF WALTER B. HILL, OF MACON, GA.
Love was the law of Henry Grady’s life. His splendid eminence
among his fellows teaches once again that “he who follows love’s
behest far exceedeth all the rest.” Its strongest throbs beat in
the inner circle of the home; but in widening waves they expand
first into friendship, then into public spirit, then into
patriotism, then into philanthropy. When it rises above these
forms of human affection in the incense of worship—we give it
once more the sacred name of love, which it bore at its fireside
shrine. From Henry Grady’s heart, that first and best and truest
and most of all was the home-fond heart, there flowed out in all
the prodigality of his generous soul, and yet with the perfect
adjustment of due degree, all those currents of feeling which
bear so many names and yet are one. And as he loved, so is he
mourned—from the hearth of a desolated home to the borders of a
mighty nation.
What was he to his friends? I dare not answer except to muffle
my own heart in borrowed words—the words of Carlyle over the
bier of the gifted Edward Irving—“His was the bravest, freest,
brotherliest human soul mine ever came in contact with.”
What was he to Atlanta? More than any other man, he built this
city which he rightly loved as he loved no other. Although the
feudal independence of the old Southern life was distinctly
promotive of individualism—yet it was reserved for this young
leader—but one remove from that past generation, to give to our
common country the finest and most conspicuous type which
American citizenship has yet produced of that high civil
virtue—public spirit. It is a virtue untaught in the schools—a
grace and a duty not preached from the pulpit: and yet, as I
study its manifestations in this marvelous man whose suggestion
and sagacity planted the cornucopias of plenty amid industrial
desolation and agricultural poverty—to me it seems far more in
touch with the brotherhood of man and the helpfulness of Christ
than the benevolence which so often degrades the recipient and
the zeal which burns so fiercely for the conversion of opinions.
If the Church does not claim it as the fruit of religion, the
State may be proud to own it as the patriotism of peace.
What was he to Georgia? We naturally think of the material
progress which he inspired throughout the State, and all due
emphasis has been accorded to it. But we must not forget the
other forms of progress to which he was devoted. What a
many-sided man he was! He spent himself to the utmost of his
wonderful resources in behalf of the intellectual culture of the
State—in the earnest but sweet-spirited championship of that
moral issue which he declared was “the most hopeful experiment
ever undertaken in any American city,” in that magnificent
tribute to the value of her young men, which Atlanta has “writ
large” in the stately Association Building. And thus he, whose
pen seemed like the touch of Midas turning to the gold of
material wealth every interest to which it pointed, he teaches
also that imperative lesson of our needy time—that to know and
to be are greater things than to get and to have.
What was he to the South? Let the laureate answer:
The voice of any people is the sword—
The sword that guards them or the sword that beats them down.
More than any other public man, he was the voice of his people.
His eloquence in magnetic speech, and that new art his genius
had created—the oratory of the editorial!—along with the voices
in literature of Joel Chandler Harris, Thomas Nelson Page and
Harry Stillwell Edwards, have conquered a hearing at the North.
In glowing utterance and moving story, they have set forth the
true and tender pictures of the old Southern life, the sincere
and single-hearted heroism of the Confederate soldier, the
cordial but self-respecting loyalty of the South of to-day to
the restored Union. They have brought it to pass that in the
contemporary fiction of English-speaking peoples the favorite
scene is amid the old plantations, and the popular hero is the
boy that wore the gray. By these subtle forces of genius,
results have been achieved which no forensic advocacy or party
zeal could ever have accomplished. Old verdicts of condemnation
and prejudice have been reversed; and in their stead,
comprehension has come, patience is coming, confidence will
come.
For the sole but sufficient reason that the whole truth demands
it, I ought to say, that from what seemed to me some of the
implications of his public utterances I had urged upon him my
own dissent; and his letter in reply, permitting me to differ
without a discount in his sincere esteem, is now, more than
ever, one of the treasures of my life.
His work for his people could not have been so adequately done
had office crowned his worth. His advocacy would then have
seemed professional and political. Public station would have put
limitations on him—would have narrowed his audience. A rare
lesson of his life is here—a lesson needed especially among us
whose habit has been to associate official distinction too
exclusively with public service. The people are greater than
Senate or Congress. The official in Washington can speak only to
his party. But the audiences which Grady and his generous
eulogist, Depew, commands show that a man uncrowned with public
office can be great in public life, and perhaps thereby do a
greater work.
What was he to the Nation? Compelled by the limitations of the
hour to answer in one word, I choose this: He it was who first
taught the rising generation of the South to bind the name of
Lincoln with that of Washington “as a sign upon their hand and a
frontlet on their brow.”
We stand face to face with a great mystery. It is the tragedy of
early death, like that of Arthur Henry Hallam, which wrung from
the sweetest singer of our time the noblest poem of sorrow, a
poem whose pages have been for three days past luminous to me
with new and richer meaning. Accepting the evidence of
consciousness in its report of the hopes and aspirations of the
human soul, there can be but two rational hypotheses for this
mystery of an unfinished life. One has been phrased by Renan in
words like this: “There is at the heart of the universe, an
infinite fiend who has filled the hearts of his creatures with
delusions, in order that in awful mockery he may witness the
discomfiture of their despair.” The other theory has been
phrased by Martineau in words like these: “The universe, which
includes and folds us round, is the life-dwelling of an eternal
mind and an infinite love; and every aspiration is but a
prophecy of the reality in that overarching scene where one
incompleteness is rounded out in the greatness of God.” I need
not tell you which of these faiths Henry Grady accepted, or I
accept. I envy not the man who can think that there are in this
universe any shadows dark enough to quench his sunny spirit. I
believe (turning to his picture, on the stage) oh friend of
mine! that I shall look again into that love-lit eye—that I
shall clasp once more thy generous hand!
A poet sings of the echoes of the bugle from cliff and scar as
contrasted with the impact of human influence:
Oh, love, _they_ die on your rich sky,
_They_ faint on hill and field and river;
_Our_ echoes roll from soul to soul
And grow forever and forever!
In all gratitude we can say that we are happier because he
lived; in all humility that we are better because his life
touched ours. And because this is true our children and our
fellow men shall be made happier and better; and so the echoes
of his soul, reduplicated in ten thousand hearts, shall abide, a
gladdening and beneficent force—
Until the stars grow old,
And the suns grow cold,
And the leaves of the judgment book unfold!
SPEECH OF JUDGE HOWARD VAN EPPS.
Ladies and Gentlemen: The lightning brought this message to
Atlanta:
“Henry Grady spends Christmas in heaven.”
Who doubts it? What creature whom the Creator has loved enough
to suffer him to hold a Christian’s faith will question that he
is at this moment in company with the good and great and
virtuous who have preceded him? I looked upon his face, the
pitifulness of death sealed upon it, and as I turned away with
swimming eyes, I saw hidden in a mass of flowers that loving
hands had placed by his side, these words:
O, stainless gentleman!
True man, true hero, true philanthropist!
Thy name was “Great Heart,” honor was thy shield,
Thy golden motto, “Duty without fear!”
And the fragrant breath around him seemed vocal with triumphant
voices, singing, “Reward without stint!” In Athens, the home of
his boyhood, a few months ago, he said, “I am going to
Sunday-school. I want to feel that I am a boy again.” When
seated there the children sang, “Shall we gather at the river?”
and he sank his face in both his hands, and tears flooded
through his fingers. O, “Great Heart,” we know that when your
eyes closed upon the weariness of the terrestrial, they opened
fearless upon the glories of the celestial. I fancy Mr. Hill
sought him without delay, fixing upon him the earnest,
penetrating glance we know so well, but out of which the pained
seriousness has been washed away forever, exclaiming, “Why,
Henry! You? And so soon! Welcome home to our Father’s house!”
Judge Lochrane has doubtless already repaired to his side and
regaled him with a bit of celestial humor that set the seraphs
ashout with laughter. Perhaps he has encountered by this time
Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Davis with arms interlocked, their
differences all adjusted, in wider wisdom, and has been startled
to hear them say: “We were but just now speaking of you and of
the future destiny of the American Republic. Mr. Lincoln had
just remarked that the United States were on the threshold of a
more cordial understanding and a closer union than ever before,
and Mr. Davis has just quoted your prophetic invocation: ‘Let us
resolve to crown the miracles of the past with the spectacle of
a Republic compact, united, indissoluble in the bonds of
love—loving from the Lakes to the Gulf—the wounds of war healed
in every heart as on every hill—serene and resplendent at the
summit of human achievement and earthly glory—blazing out the
path, and making clear the way, up which all the nations of the
earth must come in God’s appointed time!’”
Oh, that he who alone knew how to describe “a perfect
Christmas day,” could come back to his beloved Atlanta and
make it all clear to us—the recognitions, the employments, the
conversations, the blessedness of the redeemed. What sort of
goblet of immortal nectar—of commingled “musk of yellow grain,
of flavor of ripening fruits, fragrance of strawberries,
exquisite odor of violets, aroma of all seasons” of the
celestial year, did the angels brew out of the material of
yesterday to pledge the never-ending fellowships of Heaven in?
What sort of hug of odorous shine did Henry get armsful of
yesterday, when he flung his hands wide apart in the presence
of that Being whom he was wont to call always in his reverent
speech “the Lord God Almighty.”
Oh, well enough for Henry! but for us only the pain of it all,
the bitter pain. I look abroad and Atlanta’s business men seem
grown suddenly older. The cry of the newsboys—“Paper, sir?”—is
almost a sob. I went late at night into the _Constitution_
building and the editors’ faces were graver than they should be,
and the composing-room was heavy with suggestions of widowhood
and orphanage.
I went into a store Christmas eve (for Henry would not have the
children neglected) and the merchant couldn’t find anything he
sought for, and said, apologetically, “I haven’t had any sense
to-day.” The pity of it! We are bereft. Our city is desolate. We
had some great public enterprises in view, that is, Henry had,
and we were going to follow him, and overwork him, as usual.
We are disheartened—almost discouraged. Atlanta is so young and
fiery, almost fierce in her civic energy, and pulls so hard on
the reins. Who will drive for us now?
We will see more clearly after a little, when our grief is
calmer, but now as we see it through our tears, the face and
body of the times are out of joint.
I do not care, in this place and under present limitations, to
speak of his kittenish boyhood; of his idyllic home-life; of his
rollicsome and irresistible humor; of his sympathy and
prodigality of self-sacrifice; of his boundless love to his
fellow men; of his ability as a writer and super-eminence as an
orator; of his pride in Atlanta and services in aid of her
material progress; of his patriotic devotion to the South and to
the Union. I want to ask indulgence to say one thing, which, as
I believe, were he here to prescribe my course and dictate my
utterances, he would have me say. I want to say to noble men of
all parties, north and east and west, speaking here from Grady’s
bier, that the South is no more hostile to the Union than is New
England, and that her love, and sympathy, and desire to help the
dependent class in her midst is deeper, if possible, than the
treason of political agitators who seek to foment race prejudice
to secure party supremacy. “We pledge our lives, our property,
and our sacred honor,” that we will bring wisdom and humanity to
the solution of the grave problem in government which confronts
us, and that we “will carry in honor and peace to the end.” We
repeat again and again, in our sadness, with the sacredness of
our grief for his loss around us, the plea of Georgia’s son, for
patience, for confidence, for sympathy, for loyalty to the
Republic, devoid of suspicion and estrangement, against any
section.
We send greeting to generous New England. They loved him and we
love them for it. We have even forgiven them for being
Republicans. We throw his knightly and Christian gauntlet at
their feet. We challenge her business men, in the name of our
champion of the doctrine of the brotherhood of men and of
Americans, to the national glory-fields of the future—to
fraternal love that will forgive errors of judgment seven times,
and seventy times seven; and to a patriotic pride in and
devotion to every foot of the soil of our magnificent Republic,
that will brook no suspicions and no wrath in all her borders
except when directed against a foreign enemy.
* * * * *
Professor White’s address was delivered under very trying
conditions. He had been suffering from a severe headache all
morning and, in fact, he has been unwell for several days past.
During his speech he suffered painfully, and immediately at its
conclusion he was so much overcome as to be almost completely
prostrated. He was led from the stage to the office of Judge
Will Haight, where he remained until he recovered, leaving for
home later in the afternoon.
The address was delivered with pathos and emotion, and that part
which bore on his close relations with the dead man touched a
responsive chord in every heart in the vast audience that sat in
listening attention to the words of love.
REMARKS OF PROF. H. C. WHITE.
My friends—companions in a common grief: My heart is yet too
full of sorrow’s bitterness to frame in fitting terms the
tribute I would wish to pay the gracious memory of our beloved
dead. Save she who bears my name, he whom we buried yesterday
was my dearest friend on earth. Our friendship, born of close
companionship amid academic groves where we together caught the
inspirations that come to wakening intellects, and nursed the
high resolves that budding youth projects as guides along the
future pathway of the man, was nourished as we grew to man’s
estate, and in these latter years so closely knit by constant
intercourse, reciprocal respect each for the other’s judgment,
wishes and desires, and mutual confidences of hopes and fears,
of sacred interests and fond ambitions, that when he died a
great and fervent glow seemed gone from out of my life, and
desolation laid its icy touch upon my heart.
In recognition of these sacred ties that closely bound our
lives, I am bidden here to-day to join my grief to yours and say
a word of him who was as dear to me as man may be to man.
How can I speak at Henry Grady’s funeral! What may I say that
others have not said; that will not, in our history, be written;
for a Nation mourns him and a continent deplores his untimely
taking off, as the passing of the brightest hope that cheered
the future of our common country’s rehabilitated life.
That he was worthy all the homage cultured men may pay to
genius, talent, intellect, and wit, his works and reputation
that survive beyond the grave will abundantly attest. That he
was worthy all the plaudits honest men accord to truth and
justness, integrity and honor, none dare stand here and
interpose the faintest shadow of a doubt. That he was worthy all
the sacred tears that gentle women and blessed little children
may not refrain from showering on his grave as tribute to his
tenderness, his gentleness, his abounding love for all things
human, we, who knew him best, who shared the golden flood of
sunshine his personality evoked and the sweetest, softest
harmonies of the music of his life, we come, a cloud of
witnesses, to testify.
He was truly great if earthly greatness may be measured by the
lofty aspirations men conceive for bettering their fellow men’s
estate, or by the success with which they realize ideals. His
ambition was of the sort that makes men kings—not petty
officers—and led him to aim to teach a mighty Nation how best
its glorious destiny might be achieved. His ample view looked
far beyond the narrow policies of strife and selfishness and
partisan contentions that mark the statesmanship of lesser men,
and counseled the broader, more effective lines of peace and
love, of patience and forbearance. Had he but lived who may
doubt but that his counsels would have prevailed? This city,
which he loved so well and which he builded, stands, in its fair
proportions, the peer of any on the earth in good and equitable
government, the prosperous home of happy, cultured freemen, as a
type of what he wished his neighbors and his fellow-countrymen
might strive to make themselves in contrast with their fellow
men; worthy to stand among the bravest and the best. Its massive
walls stand witness to his energy, his skill and his success.
He was wise, and thousands came to him for counsel. The
University—his loved and loving Alma Mater—whose smiles had
brightened the endeavors of his youth, called him to her
councils in his maturer years, and to-day she sits upon her
classic hills, a Niobe, in tears and clad in mourning for
him—chiefest among her brilliant sons; foremost among her
guardians and advisers.
He was good; and for all the thousand chords of human emotions
he played upon with facile pen and tongue of matchless
eloquence, he ever held a heart in tender sympathy with
childhood’s innocence, the mother’s love, the lover’s passion,
the maiden’s modesty, the sinner’s penitence and the Christian’s
faith.
One consolation comes to us, his sorrowing friends to-day.
Around his bier no fierce contentions wage unseemly strife for
offices left vacant by his death. He held no place that may be
filled by gift of man. He filled no office within the power of
governments or peoples to bestow. He served the public but was
no public servant. He was a private citizen and occupied a
unique position in the commonwealth, exalted beyond the meed of
patronage, won by virtue of his individual qualities and held at
pleasure of his genius and by the grace of God.
Full well I know that, in God’s providence, no one man’s death
may halt the march of time to ultimate events or change the
increasing purpose that through the ages runs, but this I do
believe, that this man’s death has slowed the dial of our
country’s progress to full fruition of its happiness,
prosperity, and peace. To those of us who stand in history
midway between a national life our fathers founded and wrecked
in throes of revolution and of war, and another in the future,
bright with fair promises but ill-defined as yet in form, with
darkling clouds casting grim shadows across the lines along
which it must be achieved, he was our chosen leader and our
trusted champion. No one of us will be tardy in acknowledgment
that he stood head and shoulders above us all and towered at the
very front. That time will bring a successor in the leadership
we reverently pray and confidently hope, but meanwhile our
generation is camped in bivouac by the path of history awaiting
the birth and training of another chief.
Of all his usefulness to nation, state and town; of all that he
contributed to the glory of our country’s history—the brave
defense of its unsullied past; the wise direction of its present
purposes; the high ideals of its future progress—of these,
others with equal knowledge, may speak with greater eloquence
than I. I come especially to pay a simple tribute (time and
occasion serve for nothing more) to the man himself—my
boyhood’s, manhood’s companion, friend and lover. When on the
day he died I nursed my selfish grief within the sacred
precincts of a home which he had often beautified and rendered
joyous by his presence; in the city of his birth, among the
lanes his boyish feet had trod; amid scenes where his genius had
first been plumed to flight; where he had felt the first touch
of manhood’s aspirations and ambitions; where he had pressed his
maiden suit of sacred love; where his dead hero-father lay at
rest, and where the monumental shaft is reared to the base of
which it was his ardent hope that he might bring his son to
anoint him with the glories and the graces of a hero race—I
thought no other’s sorrow could be as keen as mine. But lo! my
neighbors shared an universal grief and draped their homes with
sable tokens of their mourning hearts; the very children in the
streets stopped in their Christmas play and spoke in whispers as
in the presence of a dread calamity; and here, I find myself but
one among a multitude to whom that great and noble heart had
given of its gracious bounty and drawn them to himself by bonds
of everlasting love that caused their tears to flow as freely as
my own, in tribute to the sweetness, gentleness, magnetic
joyousness of him that we have lost.
He was the very embodiment of love. A loving man; a man most
lovable. Affection for his fellows welled from out his heart and
overwhelmed in copious flood all brought within its touch. His
love inspired counter-love in men of all degree. The aged marked
his coming with a brightening smile; the young fell down and
worshiped him. Unselfishness, the chiefest virtue men may
claim—it carries all the others in its train—was possessed by
him in unsurpassed degree. His generosity passed quick and far
beyond the lines marked out by charity and overflowed the limits
fixed by prudence. In fine, the gentler graces all were his:
His gentleness, his tenderness, his fair courtesy,
Were like a ring of virtues ’bout him set,
And God-like charity the center where all met.
Science and religion alike declare that force is indestructible.
Some catch from one and some the other the inspiration that
gives them faith and blessed hope that that great thing we call
the Soul may live and work beyond that accident which we call
Death, which comes with all the terrors of unfathomable mystery
to free the fretting spirit from its carnal chains.
He had no special knowledge—nor cared for none—of scientific
theory or philosophic speculation, but he had gained from deep
religious thought—not technical theology perhaps, but true
religion, the same that taught him to “visit the widows and
fatherless in their affliction and to keep himself unspotted
from the world”—he had gained from this a deep, abiding
conviction in a life beyond the grave. That this was true I
know; for often we have talked of these great mysteries and,
closeted together, have weighed the doubts the increasing
knowledge of the centuries has brought, and I have never known a
man whose convictions were as firm, and who, frankly and
squarely meeting every doubt, retained unshaken faith with all
his heart, soul and mind.
He held it truth with him who sings,
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men _must_ rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.
How far this faith held him in loyalty to churchly creed—the
necessary corollary of such faith as his—others are more
competent than I to tell.
Great Spirit—that which was loose but yesterday from mortal
tenement we sadly laid to rest—thy sorrowing friends send after
thee, along the shimmering lines that guide thy flight from
earth to glory, this fervent prayer—tempering our agony and
comforting our desolation—that God, in His infinite wisdom, may
count thy faith deserving such reward in Heaven as we would
measure to thy works on earth.
God rest thee, princely gentlemen! God keep thee, peerless
friend!
When Mr. Graves was introduced, the audience broke into applause. His
fame as an orator, and his intimate friendship with Mr. Grady were
known, and his eloquent tribute to his dead friend moved the hearts of
his hearers as they had seldom by words been moved before. Upon being
introduced by Mayor Glenn, Mr. Graves said:
SPEECH OF HON. JOHN TEMPLE GRAVES.
I am one among the thousands who loved him, and I stand with the
millions who lament his death.
I loved him in the promise of his glowing youth, when, across my
boyish vision he walked with winning grace, from easy effort to
success. I loved him in the flush of splendid manhood when a
Nation hung upon his words—and now, with the dross of human
friendship smitten in my soul—I love him best of all as he lies
yonder under the December skies, with face as tranquil and with
smile as sweet as patrial ever wore.
In this sweet and solemn hour all the rare and kindly adjectives
that blossomed in the shining pathway of his pen, seem to have
come from every quarter of the continent to lay themselves in
loving tribute at their master’s feet; but rich as the music
that they bring, all the cadences of our eulogy
Sigh for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still.
And here to-day, within this hall glorified by the echoes of his
eloquence, standing to answer the impulse of my heart in the
roll-call of his friends, and stricken with my emptiness of
words, I know that, when the finger of God touched his eyelids
into sleep, there gathered a silence upon the only lips that
could weave the sunbright story of his days, or mete sufficient
eulogy to the incomparable richness of his life.
I agree with Patrick Collins that he was the most brilliant son
of this Republic. If the annals of these times are told with
truth, they will give him place as the phenomenon of his period,
the Admirable Crichton of the age in which he lived. No
eloquence has equaled his since Sargent Prentiss faded from the
earth. No pen has plowed such noble furrow in his country’s
fallow fields since the wrist of Horace Greeley rested; no age
of the Republic has witnessed such marvelous conjunction of a
magical pen with the velvet splendor of a mellow tongue, and
although the warlike rival of these wondrous forces never rose
within his life, it is writ of all his living, that the noble
fires of his genius were lighted in his boyhood from the gleam
that died upon his father’s sword.
I have loved to follow, and I love to follow now the pathway of
that diamond pen as it flashed like an inspiration over every
phase of life in Georgia. It touched the sick body of a desolate
and despairing agriculture with the impulse of a better method,
and the farmer, catching the glow of promise in his words, left
off sighing and went to singing in his fields, until at last the
better day has come, and as the sunshine melts into his harvests
with the tender rain, the heart of humanity is glad in his hope
and the glow on his fields seems the smile of the Lord. Its
brave point went with cheerful prophecy and engaging manliness
into the ranks of toil, until the workman at his anvil felt the
dignity of labor pulse the somber routine of the hours, and the
curse of Adam softening in the faith of silver sentences, became
the blessing and the comfort of his days. Into the era of
practical politics it dashed with the grace of an earlier
chivalry, and in an age of pushing and unseemly scramble, it
woke the spirit of a loftier sentiment, while around the glow of
splendid narrative and the charm of entrancing plea there grew a
goodlier company of youth, linked to the Republic’s nobler
legends and holding fast that generous loyalty which builds the
highest bulwark of the State.
First of all the instruments which fitted his genius to
expression was this radiant pen. Long after it had blazed his
way to eminence and usefulness, he waked the power of that
surpassing oratory which has bettered all the sentiment of his
country and enriched the ripe vocabulary of the world. Nothing
in the history of human speech will equal the stately steppings
of his eloquence into glory. In a single night he caught the
heart of the country into its warm embrace, and leaped from a
banquet revelry into national fame. It is, at last, the crowning
evidence of his genius, that he held to the end, unbroken, the
high fame so easily won, and sweeping from triumph unto triumph,
with not one leaf of his laurels withered by time or staled by
circumstance, died on yesterday—the foremost orator of all the
world.
It is marvelous, past all telling how he caught the heart of the
country in the fervid glow of his own! All the forces of our
statesmanship have not prevailed for union like the ringing
speeches of this bright, magnetic man. His eloquence was the
electric current over which the positive and negative poles of
American sentiment were rushing to a warm embrace. It was the
transparent medium through which the bleared eyes of sections
were learning to see each other clearer and to love each other
better. He was melting bitterness in the warmth of his patrial
sympathies, sections were being linked in the logic of his
liquid sentences, and when he died he was literally loving a
Nation into peace.
Fit and dramatic climax to a glorious mission, that he should
have lived to carry the South’s last and greatest message to the
center of the Nation’s culture, and then, with the gracious
answer to his transcendent service locked in his loyal heart,
come home to die among the people he had served! Fitter still,
that, as he walked in final triumph through the streets of his
beloved city, he should have caught upon his kingly head that
wreath of Southern roses—richer jewels than Victoria
wears—plucked by the hands of Georgia women, borne by the hands
of Georgia men, and flung about him with a loving tenderness
that crowned him for his burial, that, in the unspeakable
fragrance of Georgia’s full and sweet approval, he might “draw
the drapery of his couch about him, and lie down to pleasant
dreams.”
If I should seek to touch the core of all his greatness, I would
lay my hand upon his heart. I should speak of his humanity—his
almost inspired sympathies, his sweet philanthropy and the noble
heartfulness that ran like a silver current through his life.
His heart was the furnace where he fashioned all his glowing
speech. Love was the current that sent his golden sentences
pulsing through the world, and in the honest throb of human
sympathies he found the anchor that held him steadfast to all
things great and true. He was the incarnate triumph of a
heartful man.
I thank God, as I stand above my buried friend, that there is
not one ignoble memory in all the shining pathway of his fame!
In all the glorious gifts that God Almighty gave him, not one
was ever bent to willing service in unworthy cause. He lived to
make the world about him better. With all his splendid might he
helped to build a happier, heartier and more wholesome sentiment
among his kind. And in fondness, mixed with reverence, I believe
that the Christ of Calvary, who died for men, has found a
welcome sweet for one who fleshed within his person the golden
spirit of the New Commandment and spent his powers in glorious
living for his race.
O brilliant and incomparable Grady! We lay for a season thy
precious dust beneath the soil that bore and cherished thee, but
we fling back against all our brightening skies the thoughtless
speech that calls thee dead! God reigns and his purpose lives,
and although these brave lips are silent here, the seeds sown in
this incarnate eloquence will sprinkle patriots through the
years to come, and perpetuate thy living in a race of nobler
men!
But all our words are empty, and they mock the air. If we would
speak the eulogy that fills this day, let us build within this
city that he loved, a monument tall as his services, and noble
as the place he filled. Let every Georgian lend a hand, and as
it rises to confront in majesty his darkened home, let the widow
who weeps there be told that every stone that makes it has been
sawn from the solid prosperity that he builded, and that the
light which plays upon its summit is, in afterglow, the sunshine
that he brought into the world.
And for the rest—silence. The sweetest thing about his funeral
was that no sound broke the stillness, save the reading of the
Scriptures and the melody of music. No fire that can be kindled
upon the altar of speech can relume the radiant spark that
perished yesterday. No blaze born in all our eulogy can burn
beside the sunlight of his useful life. After all there is
nothing grander than such living.
I have seen the light that gleamed at midnight from the
headlight of some giant engine rushing onward through the
darkness, heedless of opposition, fearless of danger, and I
thought it was grand. I have seen the light come over the
eastern hills in glory, driving the lazy darkness like mist
before a sea-born gale, till leaf and tree, and blade of grass
glittered in the myriad diamonds of the morning ray; and I
thought it was grand.
I have seen the light that leaped at midnight athwart the
storm-swept sky, shivering over chaotic clouds, mid howling
winds, till cloud and darkness and the shadow-haunted earth
flashed into mid-day splendor, and I knew it was grand. But the
grandest thing, next to the radiance that flows from the
Almighty Throne, is the light of a noble and beautiful life,
wrapping itself in benediction ’round the destinies of men, and
finding its home in the blessed bosom of the Everlasting God!
SPEECH OF GOVERNOR GORDON.
Mr. Chairman and Fellow-Citizens: The news of Henry Grady’s
death reached me at a quiet country retreat in a distant section
of the State. The grief of that rural community, as deep and
sincere as the shock produced by his death was great and
unexpected, told more feelingly and eloquently than any words of
mine possibly can, the universality of the love and admiration
of all her people for Georgia’s peerless son.
It is no exaggeration to say that the humblest and the highest,
the poorest and richest—all classes, colors and creeds, with an
unspeakable sorrow, mourn his death as a public calamity. It is
no exaggeration to say that no man lives who can take his place.
It is no extravagant eulogy to declare that scarcely any
half-dozen men, by their combined efforts, can fill in all
departments the places which he filled in his laborious and
glorious life.
His wonderful intellect, enabling him, without apparent effort,
to master the most difficult and obtuse public questions, and to
treat them with matchless grace and power; his versatile genius,
which made him at once the leader in great social reforms, as
well as in gigantic industrial movements—that genius which made
him at once the eloquent advocate, the logical expounder, the
wise organizer, the vigorous executive—all these rich and
unrivaled endowments, justify in claiming for him a place among
the greatest and most gifted of this or any age.
But splendid as were his intellectual abilities, it is the
boundless generosity of his nature, his sweet and loving spirit,
his considerate and tender charity, exhaustless as a fountain of
living waters, refreshing and making happy all hearts around
him, these are the characteristics on which I love most to
dwell. It is no wonder that his splendid genius attracted the
gaze and challenged the homage of the continent. It is perhaps
even a less wonder that a man with such boundless sympathies for
his fellow men and so prodigal with his own time and talent and
money in the service of the public, should be so universally and
tenderly loved.
The career of Henry Grady is more than unique. It constitutes a
new chapter in human experience. No private citizen in the whole
eventful history of this Republic ever wore a chaplet so
fadeless or linked his name so surely with deathless
immortality. His name as a journalist and orator, his brilliant
and useful life, his final crowning triumph, especially the
circumstances of martyrdom surrounding his death, making it like
that of the giant of holy writ, as we trust, more potential than
ever in intellectual prowess of magic of the living man—all
these will conspire not more surely to carry his fame to
posterity, than will his deeds of charity and ready responses to
those who needed his effective help, serve to endear to our
hearts and memories, as long as life shall last, the memory of
Henry W. Grady.
* * * * *
Governor Gordon’s tribute was the last of the sad occasion.
At its conclusion Dr. H. C. Morrison pronounced the benediction, and the
curtain was drawn on the final public exercises of the most memorable
funeral service the South has ever known.
But the memory of the loved and illustrious dead will linger long with
his bereaved people.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
MEMORIAL MEETING AT MACON, GA.
-------
A GRADY Memorial Meeting was held at Macon, Ga., on the evening of
Thursday, December 26, 1889. The Academy of Music was filled with an
assemblage of citizens of all classes. The meeting was called to order
by Mr. F. H. Richardson, and the exercises were opened with an
impressive prayer by Rev. T. R. Kendall, pastor of Mulberry Street
Church. In announcing the object of the meeting, Mr. Richardson, who
presided, said:
ADDRESS OF MR. RICHARDSON.
Fellow-Citizens: We have assembled to-night to honor the memory
of a good and useful man; to express our sincere regrets that
death has closed a high career in the meridian of its splendor;
to voice our sympathy with the grief which this public loss has
carried to every part of our State.
This is an occasion without precedent in the history of Macon.
Never before have its people given such tribute to the memory of
a private citizen. But when has such a private citizen lived,
when has such a one died in Georgia? In speaking of my dear,
dead friend I trust I do not pass the bounds of exact and proper
statement when I say that there was not within the limits of
these United States any man unburdened by office, unadorned by
the insignia of triumphs in the fields of war, or the arena of
politics, whose death would have been so generally deplored as
is that of Henry W. Grady. It will be our privilege and pleasure
to hear testimony of his genius and his virtues from the
representatives of five organizations; the Press, the Chamber of
Commerce of Macon, the resident alumni of the State University,
the City Government, and the Chi Phi Fraternity. Each of these
has good reason to honor the memory of Henry Grady. The press
can fashion no eulogy richer than his desert, for his was the
most illustrious pen that has flashed in Southern journalism
during this generation. The Chamber of Commerce cannot accord
him too much praise, for, though himself unskilled in the
science of trade, he was the chief promoter of public enterprise
in his city and set an example worthy the emulation of any man
whose ambition looks to the promotion of commercial and
industrial progress. Surely the Alumni of the State University
should honor him, for he was the most famous man who has left
the classic halls of Athens in many a year. It is well that the
City Government joins in this general tribute to the lamented
dead. He led his own city to high ideals and to large
achievements. He preached the gospel of liberality as well as
the creed of progress. While his devotion to his own city was
supreme, from his lips there fell no word of scorn or malice for
any other community. Let us emulate the catholicity of his
patriotism. Atlanta was its central force and fire, but it
extended to all Georgia, to all these States and, passing beyond
the boundaries of his own county, was transformed into a love
for all mankind. The Chi Phi Fraternity had much cause to love
Henry Grady. Only those of us who know the full meaning of the
mystic bonds of that brotherhood can appreciate the ardor and
enthusiasm of his devotion to it. There was that in him which
was nobler and worthier of commemoration than even his radiant
genius. Powerful as he was with the pen, persuasive as he was in
his masterful control of the witchery of eloquence, fascinating
as was his personality, he had a still better claim to honor
than could be founded on these distinctions. After all, the best
fame is that which, though not sought, is won by goodness,
charity, and brotherly love. Leigh Hunt’s Abou Ben Adhem is
lovelier than the mightiest of the Moorish Kings. Henry Grady
concerned himself to do good unto others. He kindled the fire on
cold hearth stones, he cared for the sick and the forsaken, he
visited the prisoner, he carried consolation to the desolate.
His works of mercy, tenderness, and love do live after him, and
they are the crowning beauty of his work in this world. The tear
of gratitude that trickles down the cheek of the orphan is a
purer jewel than ever sparkled in the crown of political fame.
The simple thanks of the friendless and oppressed make sweeter
music to the soul than the applause of senates. These priceless
rewards were showered upon him in recognition of many an untold
deed of charity and grace. His life has been concluded when,
according to human wisdom, it seemed most desirable that he
should linger among the walks of men. Silence has set its seal
on his eloquent lips when their words seemed sweetest. His
great, tender heart has been hushed forever, when from the life
it quickened there were going forth influences of large and
increasing beneficence.
* * * * *
Capt. J. L. HARDEMAN was then introduced, and he read the following
resolutions framed by the committee from the meeting of the various
bodies held last Tuesday:
RESOLUTIONS.
The death of Henry Grady is a great blow to the hopes of the
South. He had become one of the foremost men of the day in her
behalf. His leadership was as unique as it was controlling. He
held no office, he sought no preferment, and yet he was a
leader. History furnishes but few examples like this, none that
can excel him in the sublime usefulness of his career. His
patriotism was so lofty that one cannot measure it by the
standards of the hour. His soul was filled to running over with
a deep love for his people and the sufferings they had endured,
and those to which fanaticism might expose them. This love was
his inspiration. It moved, it commanded the largest exercise of
his versatile genius under an infinite variety of circumstances.
And in all of these, whether as editor, writer, orator or
citizen, he buried far out of sight every consideration of self
and wrought for the people’s good. And his work was on a plane
as exalted as his highest aspirations. No taint of gain ever
touched his hand; no surrender of principle ever marred the
colors of the banner he bore. What though in a passing moment he
may have differed with others upon minor matters, yet in all the
great and burning questions which so vitally concern the people
of the South and of the Union, he was abreast and ahead of
nearly all others. In his life every element of success was
materialized, an energy as untiring as the tides of the sea; a
courage like the eagle’s that gazes with eye undimmed upon the
glare of the noonday sun; a genius so comprehensive that it
grasped with equal facility the smallest detail and the broadest
of human issues, and above all, a patriotism pure, heroic,
unsectional, drawing its inspiration from the sacred fountain
head of American liberty, and spreading its benign influence
wherever the Constitution is obeyed and the rights of mankind
respected. And thus he worked in the fore front till death
overtook him. In this hour of mourning, how heavily do we feel
his loss. The great purpose of life was just planned out. The
certainty of its fulfillment could rest alone with him. To lead
his people onward and upward through all the harassing
difficulties which beset them to the full fruition of
constitutional liberty in its widest meaning, was his purpose.
Not alone by his splendid oratory did he seek to attain this
end; to this end he devoted his pen as an editor, and to this
end he also devoted those beautiful traits of his private
character, which made him loved by all who knew him. His
unfinished work is yet to be accomplished. The young Moses of
the Southland is gone, and may the people not wander from his
teachings. The people of Macon assembled to do honor to the
illustrious dead
_Resolve_, That in the death of Henry W. Grady, the State of
Georgia has lost one of her noblest sons, the Union a man who
was a patriotic lover of constitutional liberty.
_Resolve_, That in the death of Henry W. Grady, the city of
Atlanta has been deprived of a noble, energetic and unselfish
citizen, who was devoted to her interests.
_Resolve_, That we tender our sympathies as a people to the
family of the deceased, and that a copy of these resolutions be
forwarded to them.
JOHN L. HARDEMAN, }
W. W. COLLINS, } _Committee_.
WASHINGTON DESSAU, }
In moving the adoption of the resolutions, he said:
Mr. Chairman: In moving the adoption of this, the report of your
committee, I can but say that to-night emphasizes the words of
Jerusalem’s King: “A good name is better than precious ointment, and the
day of death than the day of one’s birth.” Death came to him as a
benediction that followed a sacrifice. Warned by his physician that he
was ill, cavalier of the South alone he marched to battle for her,
uninspired by the enthusiasm of a battle array, yet within cannon shot
of Bunker Hill, and where he could feel the spray from Plymouth Rock, he
fought a gallant fight for us, and leaving the field victor, amidst the
plaudits of those he had conquered, he hastened home to complete his
sacrifice; and the same angel that bade him leave this world spoke not
only to the soul of Henry W. Grady, but to all the people North and
South: “Peace, be still.”
The resolutions were unanimously adopted by a rising vote.
* * * * *
Professor G. R. GLENN was then introduced and read the following
preamble and resolution on the part of the committee of alumni:
ALUMNI RESOLUTIONS.
It is no ordinary occasion that calls us together. That was no
ordinary light that went out in the gray mists of early dawn. It
was no ordinary life that has so suddenly and so strangely come
down to its close. To those of us who were University students
with him, who knew his University career, the story of his
splendid accomplishments has more than ordinary significance,
and the heart-breaking tragedy of his sudden taking off a
profound meaning.
We had a personal sympathy in every stride of his struggling
manhood: we carried a personal pride to every wonderful
achievement of his growing genius: we hailed with fraternal joy
every popular triumph of his intellectual prowess; we joined in
every glad shout that told how victoriously his unselfish love
was commanding sway over the American heart; and when he is
stricken down we bow our heads in sorrow, as only those can who
know the sources from which he drew the inspirations of his
life.
He came from the University of Georgia in those palmy days from
’66 to ’72, when Lipscomb and Mell and W. L. Brown and Waddell
and Rutherford and Charbonnier and Jones and Smead—names that
some of us will teach our boys to pronounce tenderly and
reverently—were at their greatest and best. In this company
gathered here are those who know the meaning and the moulding
power of great character builders like these. The great soul of
the venerable Chancellor Lipscomb, that grand arch priest of
higher learning, made its impress on the soul of the young man
at Athens. Some of us can trace that impress, and the impress of
the University of those days, through all his after life down to
that Boston speech, aye, even to the delirium of that last
sickness, when his thought was for others rather than of
himself.
Moulded to be generous, broad-minded, tolerant, unselfish,
magnanimous, aspiring, noble, who may tell us what climax this
divinely gifted, sunny soul might not have reached if his rich
and kingly life might have been spared to his race. The
education that he received was an evolution of the best and most
royal in manhood. It was fashioned on this pattern—the germ
thoughts of his life took root in his home and branched out to
his friends, overshadowed this city, sent their far-reaching and
strengthening arms over every portion of his State, and then
towered grandly above his section. Yea, and had began to bear
fruit for the healing of the nation, when alas, alas, an
inscrutable Providence cuts him down. But, thank God, that
matchless tongue, now silent forever, was not hushed till, above
Atlanta, above Georgia, above the South, above the whole
country, the undying eloquence of that Boston speech rose in
majestic waves over city, state, section and country, and sent
the far-thrilling echoes into the eternal depths of our common
humanity. There it is—from his home, through the university
life, through the splendid work in his editorial chair, on the
rostrum, in every forward movement of his soul to that last
grand plea to the national heart, and down into the delirium of
the death chamber, it is the evolution of the noblest and the
best. The heart that made the sunniest home in Atlanta warmed
everything it touched, from the son of the Puritan on Plymouth
Rock, to the grey-haired old freedman that goes with tottering
step and slow to join old master and old missus behind the
sunset hills.
The University has sent out many sons who have honored her in
filling large places in the history of our State and country.
Hill and Stephens and Toombs, the Cobbs, and Jacksons, and
Lumpkins, and Crawfords, and Gordons, and a long line of
immortal names, have illustrated her worth in the professions,
in the field, and in the forum. Of the many bright and
brightening names of her younger sons, the name of Grady easily
led all the rest, and now that he is gone, the almost universal
cry is, who among those that are left is great enough to fill
his place. In the words of one who had much to do in moulding
his intellectual life: “Ulysses is away on his wandering and
there is none left in Ithaca strong enough to bend his bow.”
_Resolved_, That in the death of Henry W. Grady the Alumni of
the University of Georgia have lost from their ranks a man who
illustrated the best that comes from University education.
_Resolved_, That his career furnishes to our young men a shining
example of one who, choosing his life-work, loved it with an
unwavering love, believed in it with an unalterable and tireless
devotion and reached success and eminence before he had rounded
two-score years.
_Resolved_, That we recognize and commend the unselfish and
generous love of our brother for his own race and for the human
race—a love that was so warm and genial that it won men to him
as if by magic. Here was the motive power that developed and
drove his great brain. Here was the “open sesame” that unlocked
for him those treasure-houses of grand thoughts for humanity
that are forever barred to cold-hearted and self-seeking men.
_Resolved_, That we very tenderly and lovingly commend to our
Heavenly Father the loved ones about his own hearthstone. We
cannot understand this blow, but we bow in submission to the
Judge of all the earth, who will do right.
_Resolved_, That copies of this preamble and resolutions be
furnished to his family, and to the Macon and Atlanta papers for
publication.
G. R. GLENN, }
W. B. HILL, } _Committee_.
WASHINGTON DESSAU, }
These resolutions were also unanimously adopted.
* * * * *
Mr. John T. Boifeuillet, representing the press of Macon, spoke as
follows:
ADDRESS OF MR. BOIFEUILLET.
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: The silver cord is loosed,
the golden bowl is broken, and the most brilliant light in
American journalism is veiled in darkness. The crystal spirit
has returned to the bright realm from whence it came, as an
evangel of peace, hope and mercy.
The star was rapidly ascending to the zenith of its greatest
brilliancy and magnitude when suddenly it disappeared below the
horizon, but across the journalistic firmament of the country it
has left an effulgent track whose reflection illuminates the
world.
Henry Grady’s sun-bright intellect shone with a splendor that
dazzled the eyes of men, and made luminous the pages traced by
his magnetic pen. The cold type sparkled with the fires of his
genius. His writings breathed a spirit of sweetness and
good-will. They were inspired by lofty purposes and earnest
endeavor, free from all suspicion of selfishness or insincerity.
No shadow of doubt fell across the sunshine of his truth.
Wherever a sunbeam wandered, or a tear-drop glistened; wherever
a perishing life trod upon the ebbing tide; wherever beauty sat
garlanded, or grief repined, there Grady was, singing his loves
and binding rainbow hopes around the darkest despair. His harp
was strung in harmony with the chords of the human heart.
When God in his eternal council conceived the thought of man’s
creation, he called to him the three ministers who wait
constantly upon the throne, Justice, Truth, and Mercy, and thus
addressed them: “Shall we make man?” Then said Justice: “O God,
make him not, for he will trample upon the laws.” Truth made
answer also: “O God, make him not, for he will pollute the
sanctuaries.” But Mercy, dropping upon her knees, and looking up
through her tears, exclaimed: “O God, make him—and I will watch
over him with my care through all the dark paths which he may
have to tread!” Then God made man, and said to him: “O man, thou
art the child of Mercy; go and deal with thy brother.”
So, Henry Grady, a ministering angel of mercy on earth,
faithfully tried, throughout his life, in his conduct toward his
fellow-man, to follow the Divine injunction given at man’s
creation morn. His pen was never dipped in malice or bitterness,
but was always lifted in behalf of charity, love and kindness;
in behalf of progress, industry and enterprise; in behalf of the
South and her institutions—his State and her people.
For every heart he had a tone,
Could make its pulses all his own.
Some men burst to shatters by their own furious notion, others
in the course of nature simply cease to shine; some dart through
the period of their existence like meteors through the sky,
leaving as little impression behind and having with it a
connection equally as slight, while others enter it so
thoroughly that the time becomes identified with them. To this
latter class belonged Henry Grady.
His pen improved the agriculture of the South; it advanced the
material interest and substantial growth of Georgia; it
advocated industrial training for the youths and maidens of the
land; it developed the poetry of the State; it elevated the
morals of men and purified their character; it created noble
aspirations in the human heart; it implanted seeds of
benevolence, charity and liberality; it taught the lesson of
self-abnegation and forgiveness; it inculcated principles of
patriotism and love of country; it softened animosities between
the North and South, and clasped the hands of the two sections
in fraternal greeting. His pen built Atlanta, it aided in
building up Georgia; it established expositions that were a
credit to the State and a glory to her people; it accumulated by
one editorial $85,000 for the erection of a Y. M. C. A.
building; it collected the fund for the erection of the
Confederate soldiers’ home, which will ever stand as a monument
to his patriotism and fidelity. When winter clasped Atlanta in
its icy embrace, and the poor were suffering from hunger and
cold, his pleading pen made the God-favored people of that city,
who sat within places of wealth and comfort, by glowing fires
and bountifully laden tables, hear the wail of the orphan and
the cry of the widow; purse-strings were unfastened, cold hearts
thawed under the magnetic warmth of his melting pathos, and in a
few hours there was not an empty larder or a fireless home among
the poor of Georgia’s great capital. Whether engaged in making
governors and senators, or preparing a Christmas dinner for
newsboys, whether occupied in building a church or forming a
Chautauqua; whether constructing a railroad or erecting some
eleemosynary institution, his pen was powerful and his influence
potent. It has left its impress upon the tablets of the world’s
memory, and the name of Henry Grady, the great pacificator, will
live in song and story until the sundown of time.
According to a contemporary, Henry Grady, while a beardless
student at college, wrote a letter to the Atlanta
_Constitution_, which was his first newspaper experience. The
sparkle and dash of the communication so pleased the editor of
the paper, that when the first press convention after the war
was tendered a ride over the State road, the editor telegraphed
his boyish correspondent, who had then returned to his home in
Athens, that he wished to have him represent the _Constitution_
on that trip, and write up the country and its resources along
the line of the road. Mr. Grady accepted the commission, and of
all the hundreds of letters written on the occasion, his, over
the signature of “King Hans,” were most popular and most widely
copied. He became editor and one of the proprietors of the Rome
_Daily Commercial_, a sprightly, newsy, and enterprising
journal. Rome, however, was at that time too small to support a
daily paper on such a scale, and in 1872 Mr. Grady purchased an
interest in the Atlanta _Herald_. Here he found room and
opportunity for his soaring wings, and the _Herald_ became one
of the most brilliant papers ever published in Georgia. In 1876
he became connected with the _Constitution_. By this time his
editorial abilities had made him many friends at home and
abroad, and James Gordon Bennett at once made him the Southern
representative of the New York _Herald_. On this journal Mr.
Grady did some of the best work of his life. He rapidly regained
all that he had lost in his ventures, and in 1880 purchased a
fourth interest in the _Constitution_, taking the position of
managing editor, which he held at the time of his death. His
career in that capacity is a matter of proud and brilliant
history. He had just commenced an interesting series of valuable
letters to the _New York Ledger_ when he was stricken down with
fatal sickness, even while the plaudits of the admiring
multitude were ringing in his ears and the press of the country
was singing his praises.
The last editorial Grady wrote was the beautiful and soulful
tribute on the death of Jefferson Davis; and on the eve of Mr.
Grady’s departure from Atlanta for Boston he sounded the
bugle-call for funds to help erect a monument to the peerless
champion of the “Lost Cause.” How strange, indeed, that the
illustrious leader and sage of the Old South and the brilliant
and fearless apostle of the New South, should pass away so near
together. Ben Hill died, and his place has never been supplied
in Georgia. Mr. Grady approached nearer to it than any other
man. Now Grady is gone, and his duplicate cannot be found in the
State. Society was blessed by his living and his State advanced
by his usefulness and excellence.
Like the great Cicero, who, when quitting Rome, took from among
his domestic divinities the ivory statue of Minerva, the
protectress of Rome, and consecrated it in the temple, to render
it inviolable to the spoilers, so Henry Grady, when leaving his
college halls to enter upon a brilliant life in the journalistic
world, took with him to the oracles the statue of pure thought,
and after its consecration, to protect and preserve it in his
bosom, it became to him a shield and buckler. Thus armed he went
forward to the battle of life, determined to do his whole duty
to his country, his God and truth. How well he succeeded, the
voice of admiring humanity proclaims, and the angels of heaven
have recorded. He vanquished all opposition and waved his
triumphant banner over every field of conflict.
His thoughts were sparks struck from the mind of Deity, immortal
in their character and duration. They were active, energizing,
beautiful, and refined. His mind was like a precious bulb,
putting forth its shoots and blooming its flowers, warmed by the
sunshine and watered by the showers. It was like a beautiful
blade, burnished and brightened, and as it flashed in the
sunlight it mirrored his kingly soul and knightly spirit.
Looking back at the ages that have rolled by in the revolutions
of time, what have we remaining of the past but the thoughts of
men? Where is magnificent Babylon with her palaces, her
artificial lakes and hanging gardens that were the pride and
luxury of her vicious inhabitants; where is majestic Nineveh,
that proud mistress of the East with her monuments of commercial
enterprise and prosperity? Alas! they are no more. Tyre, that
great city, into whose lap the treasures of the world were
poured, she too is no more. The waves of the sea now roll where
once stood the immense and sumptuous palaces of Tyrian wealth.
Temples, arches and columns may crumble to pieces and be swept
into the sea of oblivion; nature may decay and races of men come
and go like the mists of the morning before the rising sun, but
the proud monuments of Henry Grady’s mind will survive the
wrecks of matter and the shocks of time.
On the Piedmont heights peacefully sleeps the freshness of the
heart of the New South, cut down in the grandeur of his fame and
in the meridian of his powers, in the glory of his life and in
the richest prime of his royal manhood. His brow is wreathed
with laurel. Costly marble will mark the place of his head, and
beautiful flowers bloom at his feet. There the birds will carol
their vespers, and gentle breezes breathe fragrance o’er his
grave. The sun in his dying splendor, ere sinking to rest amid
the clouds that veil the “golden gate,” will linger to kiss the
majestic monument reared by loving hearts, and with a flood of
beauty bathe it in heavenly glory. And then the blush fades,
even as it fades from the face of a beautiful woman. Shadows
begin to climb the hillside, and nature sleeps, lulled by the
soft music of the singing wind. The stars, the bright
forget-me-nots of the angels, come out to keep their vigils o’er
the sleeping dust of him whose soul hath gone
To that fair land upon whose strand
No wind of winter moans.
* * * * *
Major J. F. Hanson, as the representative of the Chamber of Commerce,
said:
ADDRESS OF MAJOR HANSON.
It would be impossible at this short distance in point of time
from the final struggle in which Mr. Grady yielded up his life,
to form a just estimate of his character, his attainments and
his work. These have passed into history, and will survive the
mournful demonstrations of his people, because of their loss in
his sudden and unexpected death.
To many of you he was personally known, while, with the people
of Georgia, his name was a household word. In his chosen
profession he will rank with Lamar and Watterson. With these
exceptions, in the field of Southern journalism, he was without
a rival or a peer, while, as an orator, his brilliant efforts
had attracted the attention and won the plaudits of the entire
country.
His speeches before the New England Society, at Dallas, Texas,
Augusta, Georgia, the University of Virginia, and finally at
Boston, constitute the record upon which must rest his claim to
statesmanship.
While the people of the South, with one voice, approve the
purpose manifested in these matchless efforts to maintain the
supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon in the public affairs of this
section, there are differences of opinion with reference to the
methods, which, by implication at least, he was supposed to have
approved, for the accomplishment of this purpose. If, at this
point, there was real or apparent conflict with the broad spirit
of nationalism, for which at other times he pleaded so often and
so eloquently, it is but fair to attribute it to the supreme
conviction on his part that, through white supremacy in the
South, by whatever means maintained, this end was to be secured.
However we may differ with reference to the methods which, as a
last alternative, he would have employed, or their final effect
upon the institutions of our country, we recognize the great
purpose which inspired his efforts in our behalf. Because this
is true, the people of the South will keep his memory green,
whatever the opinion of the world may be with reference to this
question.
In the material development of the South, and her future
prosperity, power and glory, his faith was complete. He labored
without interruption during his entire career to promote these
great results, and impressed himself upon his section in its new
growth and new life, more than any man of his time. The
wonderful growth of his own city was due to the broad liberality
and supreme confidence in its future with which he inspired the
people of Atlanta.
Phenomenal as his career has been during the past few years, he
had not reached the zenith of his powers, and what he
accomplished gave promise of greater achievements which the
future had in store for him, of increasing fame, and for his
State a richer heritage in his name. It is doubtful if he fully
understood, or had ever tested to the limit his power as an
orator. As occasion increased the demand upon him, he measured
up to its full requirements, until his friends had grown
confident of new and greater triumphs.
We shall miss him much. His faults (and faults he had like other
men) are forgotten in view of his service to his friends, his
home, his State and his country, and of his untimely death, when
the highest honors which his people could bestow were gathering
about him.
If he had not reached the meridian of his powers, he died in the
fullness of a great fame, and we turn from his grave sorrowing,
but not without hope, for we leave him in the hands of that
Providence which knoweth best, and doeth all things well.
* * * * *
Judge Emory Speer, for the resident alumni of the University of Georgia,
said:
JUDGE SPEER’S ADDRESS.
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: It is instinctive with
civilized humanity to honor the illustrious dead. This animating
impulse is as practical and beneficent in its results to the
living, as it is righteous and compensating to those glorious
natures who have consecrated their lives to the service of their
country and of mankind.
The youthful Athenian might contemplate the statue to
Demosthenes, and with emulation kindled by the story of his
eloquence and his courage, might resolve that his own lips shall
be touched as with the honey of Hybla, and that he will, if
needful, lead the people against another Phillip. The Switzer
lad, bowed before the altar in the chapel of William Tell, will
unconsciously swear forever to defend the independence of his
mountain home. The American youth, standing where the monument
to the Father of his Country throws its gigantic shadow across
the tranquil bosom of the Potomac, with elevation of soul and
patriotic animation will exclaim: I, too, am an American and a
freeman. And, sir, this characteristic of a generous and great
people finds unexampled expression in the conduct of our country
towards the memory of its soldiers, its statesmen, its patriots,
its philanthropists. They are enshrined in the hearts of a
grateful people.
Their deeds, as they deserve,
Receive proud recompense. We give in charge
Their names to the sweet lyre. The historic muse,
Proud of the treasure, marches with it down
To latest times; and sculpture, in her turn,
Gives bond in stone and ever-during brass
To guard them and immortalize her trust.
In obedience to this vitalizing and commanding influence of a
noble people, in deference to the designation of his brothers
and mine, in the beautiful association and sacred memories of
alma mater, I come to place a simple chaplet upon the grave of
Henry Grady, an humble votive offering at the shrine he has
merited and won in the Valhalla of the American people. Perhaps,
sir, in all this vast congregation there is not one man who knew
as I knew our dead brother in the happy and halcyon days of our
childhood. Thirty years ago we were boys together. Together we
attended the little school in the shadow of the great university
buildings, taught by a noble woman, the daughter of the
venerable Dr. Church, the president of Franklin College. Henry
was then remarkable for his sunny nature, his generous
disposition, his superabundant flow of good-humor and spirited
energy. Beautifully proportioned, agile, swift of foot, sinewy
and strong for his age, he was easily the leader of our childish
sports. Among his young companions he was even then the popular
favorite he has ever been. In the revolution of the “Great Iron
Wheel,” (an allusion which all good Methodists will understand),
I was borne away at the end of the year, and Henry Grady for
years went out of my life. A year later the dun clouds of war
enveloped the country. Five years elapsed, and when I returned
to Athens in September, 1866, to enter the sophomore class at
the University, there was Grady rising junior. The beautiful boy
had become a beautiful youth. His sunny nature had become even
brighter. His generosity had become a fault. When I had known
him in ’59, his father was perhaps the most successful and
enterprising merchant of Northeast Georgia. He was a sturdy
North Carolinian with that robustness and shrewd vigor of
intellectuality which, with men from that section, has seemed,
in many instances, to dispense with the necessity of elaborate
culture. A soldier and officer of the confederacy, he had fallen
at the head of his regiment, in one of the desperate battles on
the lines at Petersburg, when the immortal army of Northern
Virginia had, in the language of the gallant Gordon, been
“fought to a frazzle.” The brave soldier and thrifty merchant
had left a large estate. Grady was living with his mother, in
that lovely, old-fashioned home of which, in Boston, he caught
the vision, “with its lofty pillars, and white pigeons
fluttering down through the golden air.”
His college life was a miracle of sweetness and goodness; never
did a glass of wine moisten his lips. Never did an oath or an
obscene word defile that tongue whose honeyed accents in time to
come were to persuade the millions of the fidelity and
patriotism of the people he loved. Well do I remember the look
of amazement, of indulgent but all intrepid forbearance, which
came into his face when one day a college bully offered to
insult him. In those days of innumerable college flirtations he
had but one sweetheart, and she the beautiful girl who became
his wife and is now the mother of his children, and his bereaved
and disconsolate widow.
This sweetness of disposition ran through his whole life. If the
great journal of which he became an editor was engaged in an
acrimonious controversy, some other writer was detailed to
conduct it. Grady had no taste for controversy of any acrid
sort, and I recall but perhaps one exception in his whole
editorial life. But while he would never quarrel, I had the best
right to know, when the emergency came, he had the intrepidity
of a hero. Well do I remember the outcome of a thoughtlessly
cruel practical joke, which resulted in showing me and many
others the splendid fire of his courage. Early in my college
life, as Grady and I were walking in a dark night on the lonely
streets of Cobham to a supposed meeting of the Chi Phi
Fraternity we were waylaid by a number of our college-mates. I
was in the secret, Grady was not. A huge navy revolver, with
every cylinder loaded with blank cartridges, had been thrust
upon him as a means of defense from a band of mythical outlaws,
who had made purely imaginary threats of the bloodiest
description against everybody in general and the students of the
university in particular. Grady put the revolver in his pocket
and promised to stand by me, and well did he redeem the promise.
We started and as we passed a dark grove near the residence of
General Howell Cobb the band of supposed assassins rushed upon
us with demoniac yells, and firing a veritable _mitraille_ of
pistol shots with powder charges. Thoughtless boy that I was. I
shouted a defiance to the assassins and called to Grady to stand
by me, and I gave shot for shot as fast as I could pull the
trigger. The dear fellow had not the slightest doubt that we
were assailed by overwhelming odds by armed desperate foes, but
he stood by my side, firing straight at the on-rushing foe,
until, and not until, after several volleys I was shot dead and
dropped to the ground; when, being overpowered by numbers, and
his ally killed, he made a masterly retreat. Dear, kindly,
gallant nature, little didst thou deem that this boyish prank,
practiced by those whose familiar love embolden them, and all in
the riotous exuberance of careless youth would so soon be
recalled when thou wert gone, recalled with sighs and tears to
testify that thy gentle life had under its kindly surface a soul
as fearless as ever “swarmed up the breach at Ascalon.”
Grady, as a writer and orator, was surpassed by no student of
the University, although he was doubtless the youngest member of
his class. Always, however, more successful in his efforts to
advance the political fortunes of others than of himself, he was
defeated for anniversarian of the Phi Kappa society by one vote;
but, as I remember, he bore off the equal distinction of
commencement orator, each society, at that time, having the
right to elect one of its members to that position. He did not
graduate with class honor, and perhaps fortunately. It is too
often true that honor men mistake the text-books which are
merely the keys to the understanding, for objects worthy of
ultimate pursuit and mastery, and we sometimes find these
gentlemen grubbing for Greek roots and construing abstruse
problems, while the great, busy, throbbing world is passing them
by, and has forgotten their existence. From the University of
Georgia, Grady went to the University of Virginia. Great tidings
of his success came back to us; we did not doubt that in any
contest which would try the temper of the man he would roll the
proud scions of the first families of Virginia in the
humiliating dust of defeat. Sore indeed were the lamentations,
vociferous our denials of a free ballot and a fair count, when
we learned that he had been defeated in the society contest
there; again, as I remember, by one vote. He came back to
Georgia and to journalism, and from that moment his history is
common property. Others have spoken, or will speak, of his
accomplishments in turning the Pactolian streams of capital into
the channels of Southern investment, of the numberless
enterprises to which he brought his lucidity of statement, his
captivating powers of argumentation, his magnetic methods for
the inspiration of others. The monuments of the vast and
far-reaching designs stand out all over this broad land;
gigantic factories, their tall chimneys towering toward the sky,
mighty railroads stretching through the mountains of Georgia,
where Tallulah and Tugalo rush downward toward the sea, where
hard by Toccoa dashes its translucent waves to spray. Others,
far away toward the shore of the Mexican Gulf, whose languid
waves, impelled by the soft winds of the tropics, cast the sea
foam on the snowy blossoms of the magnolia and the golden
fruitage of the orange, mines have been opened and earth made to
surrender from subterranean stores her hidden wealth at the
touch of his magical wand. Unnumbered beneficent projects attest
his genius and his philanthropy. But, not content to evolve the
treasures of physical nature, he labored incessantly to provide
methods to develop the mentality of the youth of the State. As a
trustee of the University, and an active member of its Alumni
society; as one in control of that mighty engine of public
thought, the great paper of which he was an editor, his
influence was looking and moving ever toward the light. He knew
that popular ignorance was the greatest danger to liberty, the
greatest foe to national prosperity. He knew that if the
terrible potency of its groping in darkness and prejudice could
but once, like the blind Samson, grasp the pillar of society in
its muscular arms, it would put forth its baleful strength and
whelm every social interest in crushing, appalling disaster and
irremediable ruin.
The most tolerant of men, the life of our dear brother was one
of long protest against the narrowness of partisanship and
sectional bigotry. He was the most independent of thinkers.
He demonstrated to the people of both sections of our once
divided country, that we might love and honor the traditions of
our Confederacy, and with absolute loyalty and devotion to the
Union as restored. He made it plain to the minds of the Northern
people that while it was impossible for an ex-Confederate
soldier or the children of his blood, to recall without a
kindling eye and a quickening pulse the swift march, the
stubborn retreat, the intrepid advance, the charging cry of the
gallant gray lines as they swept forward to the attack, the
red-cross battle-flags as their bullet-torn folds were borne
aloft in the hands of heroes along the fiery crest of battle.
But he made it plain also that these are but the emotions and
expressions of pride that a brave people cherish in the memories
of their manhood, in the record of their soldierly devotion. Are
we less imbued with the spirit of true Americanism on this
account? No, forever, no! Are the sons of Rupert’s cavaliers, or
Cromwell’s Ironsides less true to England and her constitution,
because their fathers charged home in opposing squadrons at
Edgehill and Naseby? Do not Englishmen the world over cherish
the common heritage of their common valor? Have Scotchmen, who
fought side by side with the English in the deserts of the
Soudan, or the jungles of Burmah, forgotten the memories of
Bannockburn, of Bruce, and of Wallace?
The time will come—aye, it is present—when the heroism of the
gray and of the blue, is a common element of America’s military
power. I repeat, it is now. There is not a war officer in the
civilized world in comparing the power of his own country with
that of ours, who does not estimate man for man as soldiers of
the Union, the fighting strength of the Confederacy.
The statesmen of the Old World know that underlying all of the
temporary questions of the hour—underlying all the resounding
disputes, whether in the language of Emerson, “James or Jonathan
shall sit in the chair and hold the purse,” the great patriotic
heart of the people is true to the constitution of the fathers,
true to republican government, true to the sovereignty of the
people, true to the gorgeous ensign of our country.
In the presence of this knowledge, in the presence of that
mighty mission which under the providence of God has grown and
expanded day by day and century by century since Columbus, from
his frail caravel, beheld rising before his enraptured vision
the nodding palms and gleaming shores of another continent, the
mission to confer upon humanity the power and privilege of
government by the people and for the people, should be the
chiefest care of our countrymen. Of this mission Grady spoke
with an eloquence so elevated and so inspired that it seemed as
if the voices of the waiting angels were whispering to his
prophetic intelligence messages of peace, joy and gladness to
his countrymen. He said:
“A mighty duty, and a mighty inspiration, impels every one of us
to-night to lose in patriotic consecration whatever estranges,
whatever divides. We, sir, are Americans—and we fight for human
liberty! The uplifting force of the American idea is under every
throne on earth. France, Brazil—these are our victories. To
redeem the earth from kingcraft and oppression—this is our
mission! And we shall not fail. God has sown in our soil the
seed of His millennial harvest, and He will not lay the sickle
to the ripening crop until His full and perfect day has come.
Our history, sir, has been a constant and expanding miracle from
Plymouth Rock and Jamestown all the way—aye, even from the hour
when, from the voiceless and trackless ocean, a new world rose
to the sight of the inspired sailor. As we approach the fourth
centennial of that stupendous day—when the old world will come
to marvel and to learn, amid our gathered treasures—let us
resolve to crown the miracles of our past with the spectacle of
a Republic compact, united, indissoluble in the bonds of
love—loving from the Lakes to the Gulf—the wounds of war healed
in every heart as on every hill—serene and resplendent at the
summit of human achievement and earthly glory—blazing out the
path and making clear the way, up which all nations of the earth
must come in God’s appointed time!”
We may imagine that this inspired utterance completed, there
came to his glorious mentality another thought, another vision.
Again he exclaims as once before to a mighty throng, and now to
his own people:
“All this, my country, and no more can we do for you. As I look
the vision grows, the splendor deepens, the horizon falls back,
the skies open their everlasting gates, and the glory of the
Almighty God streams through, as He looks down on His people who
have given themselves unto Him, and leads them from one triumph
to another until they have reached a glory unspeaking, and the
whirling stars, as in their courses through Arcturus they run to
the Milky Way, shall not look down on a better people or a
happier land.”
Thus saying, his work was ended—his earthly pilgrimage was o’er.
He went to sleep
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch about him
And lays him down to pleasant dreams.
* * * * *
Mr. Hugh V. Washington, representing the City Government, said:
ADDRESS OF MR. WASHINGTON.
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: There is a songster peculiar
to Southern woodland, who is without a rival. I have heard his
song on a still summer night, and when it died away, the silence
seemed deeper and more impressive. Georgia has given to the
country an orator whose eloquence was peculiar to himself, and
charmed every audience North, South and West, but that which
made him dearest to Southern hearts was the theme he delighted
to present; that voice was never raised except in behalf of the
honor, the interest and the prosperity of his people, and
to-night we know that that voice is silent forevermore. I have
no words to measure the profound sorrow I feel for the death of
Henry Grady; to say that his loss to the country cannot be
estimated, and that there is no one to take his place, is but to
express a thought common to all. His career as an orator dawned
as that other great Georgian, Benn Hill, passed away. The first
time I ever looked upon Jefferson Davis was when he stood in
Atlanta amid a vast concourse to honor the memory of the
eloquent and faithful Hill. I shall never forget that scene:
there stood before me two types of Southern manhood, the one of
the old, the other of the new; the venerable ex-president came
upon the platform, and a glad shout arose from thousands of
voices,—he stood the emblem and personification of all we held
most dear in the past, but he belonged to the past. There arose
to welcome him a young Georgian; his speech of welcome was a
masterpiece, every nerve in that vast audience vibrated, and
every voice was raised in deafening applause when Mr. Grady
declared that the rising of that morning’s sun, bringing with it
our beloved ex-president, brought greater joy to Southern hearts
than any since the resurrection morn. Mr. Grady, cherishing in
his heart of hearts the history of the Confederacy, seemed an
inspiration of hope and promise; he seemed to stand for the
Present and Future; and now within a few days of each other
these noble men have gone to their rest, and the close of a
joyous year finds our people bowed in sorrow over their graves.
Mr. Grady’s mission in life traveled beyond State bounds. He was
too big, too broad, too patriotic to be narrow or partisan; but
he was a Georgian to the core,—he sprung from the red hills of
classic Athens; he drank at the fountain of knowledge at the
State University; what was nearest to Georgia was nearest to
him, and he gave his life that the position of Georgia and her
sister States of the South might be made clear to our brethren
at the North; and to-night, by strange providence, his great
work is closed, and he is sepulchered in the bosom of his native
State, in Atlanta, whose greatness is due more to his efforts
than to any other man.
The life of Henry Grady was like a rare and beautiful gem whose
every side was resplendent with light; as a son he was what
every mother might hope for in her boy; as a father he was
tender and true; as a friend he was open-hearted and generous as
the day; as a member of his old college fraternity none exceeded
him in zeal and generosity; as an alumnus of the State
University his fertile pen and brain were tireless in promoting
its interests; as a writer he was at once forcible and
fascinating in the highest degree; in journalism he disregarded
old methods, and set a higher standard for American journalism;
as an orator he had the force of Northern logic, and the beauty
of Southern diction; but as much as we may admire him for these
noble traits, yet it is in the life of Henry Grady, as a private
citizen, that he reached the highest points of his character. I
know of no other American citizen in the private walks of life
comparable to him. He never sought or held public office; he had
no record of a hundred battle-fields to make him famous; his
life was filled with private charities, and every enterprise of
his native State or city found a willing and powerful
sympathizer in him. The many charitable institutions of Atlanta
are before us as monuments to his zeal and generosity in behalf
of the poor, the needy, and the forsaken. After twenty-five
years, when the ranks of the Confederate veterans had been
decimated to a handful by the hand of time, and our State was
unable to provide a home for the scattered remnant, he conceived
the plan of building in our capital city, by private
benefaction, the Confederate Home. Wherever there is a man who
wore the gray, there will his name be honored and revered. But
it is useless to attempt an enumeration of the many enterprises
which he fostered; wherever there was work to be done to promote
the interest of his city, his State, or his country, he was
ready to give his time, his labor, and his money. But there is
another feature in the life of Henry Grady of which I would
speak,—he was pre-eminently a man of the times and for the
times, and in this critical juncture of our history he seemed to
have been raised up by a special providence to carry the message
of the South to the people of our common country; his
aspirations were not only for the success and prosperity of his
native section, but he desired to see all the States combined
together in a community of interest, of prosperity, of thought,
of aim, and of destiny; he brought to the attention of the
country the most gigantic problem of this or any other time; he
declared to the people of the North that the white people of the
South were one people with those of the North; that they had the
same traditions; the same blood; the same love of freedom, and
the same lofty resolve to preserve their race unpolluted and
free; and he brought to the discharge of this duty such
masterful eloquence, such sincerity of conviction, such kindness
of heart and liberality of thought, as to gain for him not only
the applause, but the admiration and sympathy and attention of
the whole country. Though the matchless orator lies still in
death, the South owes to him a debt of gratitude, which could
not be paid though a monument were erected to his memory higher
than that which rises in the sunlight above Potomac’s wave.
Though his voice be still, his words, his example, and his
patriotism shall be cherished in the hearts of many generations.
If I was asked to point to a man whose life should stand as a
model to the young men of the South, I would point to that of
the young Georgian, who has but so lately passed from among us.
The city of Macon, which I have the honor to represent, may well
sorrow with our sister city of Atlanta, and we tender to his
bereaved people our heartfelt sorrow and sympathy. Henry Grady
stood as a prophet on the verge of the promised land, bidding
the Southland leave the desert of reconstruction, of gloom and
poverty behind it, and to enter with hope, and courage, and
cheerfulness upon the rich inheritance that the future holds in
store for us; and wherever truth, and courage, and unselfish
performance of duty are appreciated, there will his name find an
honored place on the roll of our country’s great names. And
turning our thoughts and hearts toward his new-made grave, let
us say, “Peace to his ashes, and honor to his memory.”
* * * * *
The Hon. R. W. Patterson spoke as follows for the members of the Chi Phi
Fraternity residing in Macon:
ADDRESS OF MR. PATTERSON.
Ladies and Gentlemen: When Death like Nature’s chastening rod
hath smitten our common humanity, we realize the eternal truth
that “silence is the law of being, sound the breaking of the
rule.” Standing here as the representative of those who were
knit to the distinguished dead by as close a tie as that of
natural brotherhood, while a continent is yet vocal with the
echoes of his eloquence, my heart tells me that the infinite
possibilities of silence constitute the only worthy tribute
which I can pay to the memory of Henry Grady. The most
distinguished member of our fraternity is lost to us forever. O,
Death, there is thy sting; O, Grave, there is thy victory.
Though our ranks are full of gifted and famous men, in all the
tribes of our Israel, there is no Elisha upon whom the mantle of
this translated Elijah can descend.
My fellow Georgians, how shall I speak to you of him? It is meet
that sympathy should veil her weeping eyes, when she mourns the
darling child who bore her gentle image ever mirrored in his
life. As well may the tongue speak when the soul has departed,
as Southern oratory declaim when Southern eloquence is buried in
the grave of Grady. Even American patriotism is voiceless as she
stands beside the coffined chieftain of her fast-assembling
host. Was he good? Let his neighbors answer. To-night Atlanta is
shrouded in as deep a pall as that which wrapped Egypt in gloom
when the angel of the Lord smote the first-born in every house.
In the busiest city of the State the rattle of commerce to-day
was suspended, the hum of industry was hushed, and in that gay
capital bright pleasure hath stayed her shining feet to drop a
tear upon the grave of him the people loved so well. Was he
great? From the pinnacle of no official station has he fallen;
the pomp and circumstance of war did not place him upon a
pedestal of prominence; no book has he given to the literature
of the nation; no wealth has he amassed with which to
crystallize his generosity into fame; and yet to-night a
continent stands weeping by his new-made grave, and as the waves
come laden with the message of the Infinite to the base of the
now twice historic Plymouth Rock, the sympathetic sobbing of the
sea can only whisper to the stricken land, “Peace, be still; my
everlasting arms are round you.”
His greatness cannot be measured by his speeches, though they
were so masterful that they form a portion of his country’s
history. It will rather be gauged by that patient, brilliant
daily work, which made it possible for him to command the
nation’s ear, that power of which these public utterances were
but the exponents; his daily toil in his private sanctum in the
stately building of the _Constitution_, that magnificent
manufactory of public thought, which he wielded as a weaver does
his shuttle. A small and scantily furnished room, with nothing
in it save Grady, his genius and his God,—and yet thus
illumined, it warmed with the light of fraternal love both
sections of a Republic, compared to which that of historic
Greece was but as a perfumed lamp to the noontide splendor of
the sun. As a journalist Mr. Grady had no superior in America.
As a writer he exercised the princely prerogative of genius
which is to create and not obey the laws of rhetoric. As well
attempt to teach the nightingale to sing by note, or track the
summer lightning as we do the sun, as measure Grady’s style by
any rhetorician’s rule. I have thought that Mr. Grady was more
of an orator than a writer, and brilliant as his success in
journalism was, it was but the moonlight which reflected the sun
that dawned only to be obscured by death. Certainly no man in
any country or in any age, ever won fame as an orator faster
than he. With a wide reputation as a writer, but scarcely any as
a speaker, even in his own State, he appeared one night at a
banquet in New York, made a speech of twenty minutes, and the
next day was known throughout the United States as the foremost
of Southern orators. No swifter stride has been made to fame
since the days of David, for like that heroic stripling, with
the sling of courage and the stone of truth, he slew
Sectionalism, the Goliath which had so long threatened and
oppressed his people.
Since Appomattox two historic speeches have been made by
Southern men; the one was that delivered in the Congress of the
United States upon the proposition to strike from the general
amnesty of the government the name of Jefferson Davis, when
Benjamin H. Hill broke the knightliest lance ever shivered in a
people’s honor, full on the haughty crest of the plumed knight;
the other was the Boston speech of Mr. Grady which, like a magic
key, will yet unlock the shackles that have so long manacled a
people who, strangest paradox in history, were enslaved by the
emancipation of their slaves. The logic of Hill was powerful as
the club of Hercules; the eloquence of Grady was irresistible as
the lyre of Orpheus.
My countrymen, if it shall be written in the history of America
that by virtue of the genius of her Toombs and Cobb and Brown,
on the breast of our native State was cradled a revolution which
rocked a continent, upon another page of that history it will be
recorded that Georgia’s Grady was the Moses who led the Southern
people through a wilderness of weakness and of want at least to
the Pisgah whence, with prophetic eye, he could discern a New
South true to the traditions of the past as was the steel which
glittered on the victorious arm, at Manassas, but whose hopeful
hearts and helpful hands shall transform desolation into wealth
and convert the defeat of one section of our common country into
the haughty herald of that country’s future rank in the
civilization of the world.
Even, when prompted by the tender relations of the fraternity
which I represent, I cannot trust myself to speak of Mr. Grady’s
private and social life. He was my friend. Nearly ten years
since his kindly glowing words revealed to me an ambition, which
I had scarcely dared to confess unto myself. As the summer days
still linger with us, so does the daily intercourse which it was
my fortune to enjoy with him some three months since—seem yet to
“compass me about.” By the royal right of intellect he commanded
the homage of my admiration; with the clarion voice of
patriotism he challenged my reverence, but with the magnetism of
his munificent manhood he bade Confidence, that sentry which
guards the human heart, surrender this citadel at discretion. I
trust that it will not be deemed inappropriate for me, man of
the world as I am, to bear my public testimony to the power of
Christianity illustrated in his life. Familiar in his youth with
every phase of pleasure, with the affluent blood of early
manhood yet running riot through his veins, with the temptations
of a continent spread like a royal feast, to which his talent
and his fame gave him easy access, yet when he bowed his head in
reverence to the meek and lowly Nazarene, his life was the
unimpeachable witness of his creed. A thousand sermons to me
were concentrated in the humanized Christianity of his faith and
his works. And God was good to him.—The magnificent success of
the Piedmont Exposition was to him the exponent of that
industrial progress which he had labored to establish. The
bountiful harvest of this closing year had seemed to set the
seal of God’s commendation upon his labors for the agricultural
interests of the South. Such was his fame that sixty million
Americans revered him as a patriot. With a wife beautiful and
brilliant, adoring him as only a woman can love a genius whom
she comprehends; with two children just verging into
adolescence, and reverencing him as an neophyte does his faith;
with the highest official station within his grasp; with the
curule chair of the Governorship already opening its arms to
receive him; with the future lifting the senatorial toga to
drape his eloquence; with possibilities of the White House
flashing through the green vista of the coming years,—with all
of these he made no murmur at the summons of his God.
A widow weeps where yesterday a wife adored. Two orphans mourn
to-day where yesterday two children leaned upon a father’s arm.
A nation’s hope is turned to mourning. It needed the great heart
of Grady to gently murmur, “Thy will, not mine, be done.”
But by all that he has accomplished, and by all that he has
projected, which the coming years will yet work out, I tell you
to-night, my fellow Georgians, that Henry Grady still lives an
abiding influence in the destinies of his country. Greatest
enemy of monopoly while he lived, the grandest of all monopolies
shall be his after death, for every industrial enterprise
hereafter inaugurated in the South must pay its royalty of fame
to him. Sleep on, my friend, my brother, brilliant and beloved;
let no distempered dream of unaccomplished greatness haunt thy
long last sleep. The country that you loved, that you redeemed
and disenthralled, will be your splendid and ever growing
monument, and the blessings of a grateful people will be the
grand inscription, which shall grow longer as that monument
rises higher among the nations of the earth. Wherever the peach
shall blush beneath the kisses of the Southern sun, wherever the
affluent grape shall don the royal purple of Southern
sovereignty, a votive offering from the one and a rich libation
from the other, the grateful husbandman will tender unto you.
The music of no machinery shall be heard within this Southland
which does not chant a pæan in your praise. Wherever Eloquence,
the deity whom this people hath ever worshiped, shall retain a
temple, no pilgrim shall enter there, save he bear thy dear name
as a sacred shibboleth on his lips. So long as patriotism shall
remain the shining angel who guards the destinies of our
Republic, her starry finger will point to Grady on Plymouth
Rock, for Fame will choose to chisel his statue there, standing
as the sentinel whom God had placed to keep eternal watch over
the liberties of a re-united people!
* * * * *
The exercises were concluded with the benediction by the Rev. G. A.
Nunnally, D.D., President of Mercer University.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PERSONAL TRIBUTES.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THOUGHTS ON H. W. GRADY.
BY B. H. SAMETT.
-------
MEN of genius often die early. Keats died at twenty-six, Shelly at
thirty, Byron at thirty-six, and Burns at thirty-seven. Henry Grady was
born May 24th, 1850, and hence was a little more than thirty-nine years
of age at his death.
In the opinion of many, no more brilliant man has lived since Byron
died. In the power of intense, beautiful and striking expression he has
had no equal among us. Had he turned his attention to poetry he would
have written something as beautiful as Childe Harold.
Take, for instance, a sentence or two, written eight or ten years ago,
in an article from New York to the _Constitution_, entitled “The
Atheistic Tide.” The whole article is exceptionally brilliant. I select
at random a paragraph or two:
“We have stripped all the earth of mystery and brought all its phenomena
under the square and compass, so that we might have expected science to
doubt the mystery of life itself, and to plant its theodolite for a
measurement of the Eternal, and pitch its crucible for an analysis of
the Soul. It was natural that the Greek should be led to the worship of
his physical Gods, for the earth itself was a mystery that he could not
divine, a vastness and a vagueness that he could not comprehend. But we
have fathomed its uttermost secret—felt its most hidden pulse, girdled
it with steel, harnessed and trapped it to our liking. What was mystery
is now demonstration—what was vague is now apparent. Science has
dispelled illusion after illusion, struck down error after error, made
plain all that was vague on earth and reduced every mystery to
demonstration. It is little wonder then that, at last, having reduced
all the illusions of matter to an equation, and anchored every theory to
a fixed formula, it should assail the mystery of life itself and warn
the world that science would yet furnish the key to the problem of the
soul. The obelisk, plucked from the heart of Egypt, rests upon a shore
that was as vaguely and infinitely beyond the knowledge or aspiration of
its builders, as the shores of a star that lights the spaces beyond our
vision are to us to-day. The Chinaman jostles us in the streets, and the
centuries that look through his dreamy eyes have lost all sense of
wonder—ships that were freighted in the heart of Africa lie in our
harbors, and our market-places are vocal with more tongues than
bewildered the builders of Babel—a letter slips round the earth in
ninety days and the messages of men flash along the bed of the ocean—we
tell the secrets of the universe as a woman tells her beads, and the
stars whirl serenely through orbits that science has defined—we even
read of the instant when the comet that plunged in dim illimitable
distance, where even the separate stars are lost in mist and vapor,
shall whirl again into the vision of man, a wanderer that could not
shake off the inexorable supervision of science, even in the chill and
measureless depths of the universe.”
This brilliancy, this dazzling, meteoric imagination, made against his
reputation in the earlier years of his career. The impression got abroad
that he was simply fanciful and superficial—that he could paint his
productions in the gorgeous imagery of poetry, but that he had no great
intellectual strength and force. It took some time to dispel this
illusion. It was only after the great breadth of his mind displayed
itself in his powerful speeches in New York, Dallas, Tex., Augusta, Ga.,
and Boston, that the public began to see that, back behind his rich and
brilliant imagination, there was a masterful intellect, able to
comprehend the profoundest questions of social and political policy.
His development as an orator was indeed phenomenal. Nothing has ever
been known like it since Sheridan quit play-writing to enter the English
House of Commons, and delivered, according to the judgment of Fox and
Burke, the most eloquent oration ever spoken to an English auditory.
Grady’s whole preparation had been in the line of journalism. He had
never practiced at the bar, in the forum, or on the hustings. Yet such
was his genius, that, from the very moment he got before the American
public, he leaped from the base to the very summit of oratorical fame.
His oratory was _sué generis_. Like all great men he had no prototype.
There was nothing sonorous in his tones of voice—he had nothing of the
declamatory pomp of Toombs, the stately periods of Hill, the slow,
measured cadences of Stephens. Like Mark Antony he talked along; but
such talk—as sweet as the harp of Orpheus whose melody swayed the trees
of the forest and rent asunder the solid rocks. Like a fountain
unsealed, his thought flowed forth in gushing opulence, and in every
rhythmic period his soul voiced itself in perfect music. He could awake
all the sleeping passions of the heart and set them astir with his own
enthusiasm. Like a pendulum, he swung betwixt a smile and a tear, now
convulsing all with his humor and anon melting all with his pathos.
Added to such brilliant gifts as a writer and a speaker, he had the
genius of common sense. He could project a movement of great practical
interest, and perfect and accomplish it with the same marvellous
facility that he could indite a morning editorial. He saw in our uncut
quarries the marble halls and palaces of the rich—in our mountains of
ore the matchless steam engines and their tracks of steel along which
our growing commerce was to be borne to the distant marts of the
world—in our waving forests of pine, the cities of majestic splendor and
beauty that were to adorn and enrich our vast domain. As Webster said of
Hamilton, in reference to the public credit, he touched the dead corpse
of our industries and they arose and stood upon their feet.
To all these gifts of head, there was an added heart of boundless
sympathies. In his writings there is always an undertone of sentiment,
bespeaking a moral nature as opulent as was his intellectual endowment.
His imagination caught up the good, the beautiful and the true. With the
alchemy of his genius he could transmute the simplest flower into a
preacher of righteousness, and get from it some lessons of wisdom and
truth. To lift up and crown humanity was the supremest aspiration of his
life. This ruling passion was strong in death, and even in the delirium
preceding dissolution, his brain was rife with its own desiring
phantasies, and he died in the midst of dreams born of yearnings to help
and bless the needy and the heavy laden.
Perhaps no one has lived among us who possessed more of the elements
which go to make up the hero, the popular idol. Noble in presence,
gracious in manner, gentle in spirit, manly in everything, he commanded
not only the admiration but the love of all. If all who tenderly loved
him could lay a garland upon his grave his ashes would rest beneath a
mountain of flowers.
To die so wept and mourned were more to be desired than the glittering
honors of splendid obsequies. To live, as he will live, embalmed in the
immortality of love, is better far than enshrinement in the cold
emblazonry of marble.
Loving hands and hearts will erect to his memory the granite shaft, cut
and chiselled with words of eulogy, but his most enduring monument is
his grand, historic life, standing out imperishably based upon the
affections and the love of a grateful people, and pointing unborn
generations to the same heights of purity and honor he so worthily
attained.
--------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SEARGENT S. PRENTISS AND HENRY W. GRADY.
_SIMILARITY OF GENIUS AND PATRIOTISM._
BY JOSEPH F. PON.
-------
HISTORY repeats itself, and genius does the same. The light which shines
with electric brilliancy in one portion of a country, though suddenly
extinguished, soon blazes forth with life and hope, in genial air and
under propitious skies.
Eminent in illustration of this truth, is the very great similarity in
the mental structure, the physical temperament and the personal
qualities of Seargent S. Prentiss and Henry W. Grady. The first was born
in bleak and sterile Maine, and yet his great heart was not hemmed in by
the hills around which clung the memories of his Pilgrim fathers. It
took within its spacious chambers, and nurtured in patriotic affection
the new-found friends of his adopted home, in the semi-tropical valleys
of the lower Mississippi. The other was born on Georgia soil, and
Southern traditions, memories and methods of thought seemed but a second
nature with him. It did not prevent his fullness to the brim with that
Promethean flame and “milk of human kindness,” which caused him in
boundless Americanism, to wear a constant smile, born of infinite hope
and faith in the future of a great Republic, stretching from the rugged
coast of Maine to the broad plazas of Texas—from the noble forests of
Oregon to the coral reefs of Florida.
Each of these men combined with deep research and intuitive perception,
an imagination as luxuriant as a tropical garden, and while each put
forth “thoughts that breathed in words that burned,” he was ever careful
in the exercise of his great gifts, that they should always be directed
in the promotion of human happiness, and to stimulate the loftiest human
exertion. When Prentiss or Grady spoke every listener felt the touch of
the master hand as it played upon his heart-strings—felt the tingling of
the blood in his fingers’ ends, and could not fail to enjoy the
delightful silence of universal and spontaneous admiration. The
eloquence of these two men was not of that school which deals in
thundergusts of word-painting, devoid of reason, sense, or consistency.
Their ideas are always comely, well-proportioned, clear in outline and
yet not angular in structure. They spoke for God and humanity—for
liberty—for love—for law. They did not pervert their great gifts from
the purposes that Nature intended. They used their magic power to smooth
and soften the rough, hard places of human life, to promote all ends and
objects catholic, worthy, commendable—to charm and persuade the morose
and unwilling—to denounce like Nathan—to warn like Cassandra—to
encourage like an angel of light. When either of them spoke, he seemed
to realize the sublimest purpose of his mission; and condensed his giant
electric power, as the heat charges the summer cloud with the bolts that
are soon to flash and shiver.
Prentiss died in the same year that Grady was born; and when he first
closed his brilliant career at forty-two years of age, the second was
but a smiling infant six weeks old. Each, cut off before he had reached
the zenith, was
A mighty vessel foundered in the calm,
Its freight half given to the world.
The glorious sun of each “went down while it was yet day.”
Some extracts are here given, from an address delivered by Prentiss
before the New England Society of New Orleans, on December 22, 1845.
These will be followed by some from Grady’s Boston speech. Prentiss at
the time named, was about the same age that Grady was when he died. In
opening Prentiss said: “This is a day dear to the sons of New England,
and ever held by them in sacred remembrance. On this day, from every
quarter of the globe, they gather in spirit around the Rock of Plymouth,
and hang upon the urn of their Pilgrim fathers, the garlands of filial
gratitude and affection. We have assembled for the purpose of
participating in this honorable duty—of performing this pious
pilgrimage. To-day we will visit that memorable spot. We gaze upon the
place where a feeble band of persecuted exiles founded a mighty nation;
and our hearts will exult with proud gratification, as we remember that
on that barren shore our ancestors planted not only empire, but freedom.
“Of the future but little is known; clouds and darkness rest upon it. We
yearn to become acquainted with its hidden secrets—we stretch out our
arms toward its shadowy inhabitants—we invoke our posterity, but they
answer us not. We turn for relief to the past, that mighty reservoir of
men and things. There we are introduced into Nature’s vast laboratory,
and witness her elemental labors. We mark with interest the changes in
continents and oceans, by which she has notched the centuries. With
curious wonder we gaze down the long aisles of the past, upon the
generations that are gone. We behold as in a magic glass, men in form
and feature like ourselves, actuated by the same motives, urged by the
same passions, busily engaged in shaping out both their own destinies
and ours. We approach them, and they refuse not our invocation. We hold
converse with the wise philosophers, the sage legislators, and divine
poets. But most of all among the innumerable multitudes that peopled the
past, we seek our own ancestors, drawn toward them by an irresistible
sympathy. With reverent solicitude we examine into their character and
actions, and as we find them worthy or unworthy, our hearts swell with
pride or our cheeks glow with shame.”
Speaking of the simplicity of the Pilgrim habits, Prentiss goes on: “In
founding their colony they sought neither wealth nor conquest; but only
peace and freedom. From the moment they touched the shore, they labored
with orderly, systematic and persevering industry. They cultivated,
without a murmur, a poor and ungrateful soil, which even now yields but
a stubborn obedience to the dominion of the plow. They brought with them
neither wealth nor power, but the principles of civil and religious
freedom. They cherished, cultivated and developed them to a full and
luxuriant maturity; and furnished them to their posterity as the only
sure and permanent foundations for free government. We are proud of our
native land, and turn with fond affection to its rocky shores. Behold
the thousand temples of the Most High, that nestle in its happy valleys
and crown its swelling hills. See how their glittering spires pierce the
sky—celestial conductors ready to avert the lightning of an angry
heaven!”
Himself the son of a ship-builder, he thus speaks of the enterprise of
the Pilgrims: “They have wrestled with Nature, till they have prevailed
against her, and compelled her reluctantly to reverse her own laws. The
sterile soil has become productive under their sagacious culture, and
the barren rock, astonished, finds itself covered with luxuriant and
unaccustomed verdure. Upon the banks of every river they build temples
of industry, and stop the squanderings of the spendthrift waters. They
bind the Naiades of the brawling stream; they drive the Dryades from
their accustomed haunts, and force them to desert each favorite grove:
for from river, creek, and bay they are busy transforming the crude
forests into staunch and gallant vessels. From every inlet and indenture
along the rocky shore, swim forth these ocean-birds—born in the
wildwood—fledged upon the wave. Behold how they spread their white
pinions to the favoring breeze, and wing their flight to every quarter
of the globe—the carrier pigeons of the world!”
But lastly how brimming with pathos, how pregnant with patriotic ardor,
is the following: “Glorious New England! Thou art still true to thy
ancient fame, and worthy of thy ancestral honors. We thy children have
assembled in this far-distant land to celebrate thy birthday. A thousand
fond associations throng upon us, roused by the spirit of the hour. On
thy pleasant valleys rest, like sweet dews of the morning, the gentle
recollections of our early life; around thy hills and mountains cling
like gathering mists the mighty memories of the Revolution; and far away
on the horizon of the past, gleam like thine own Northern lights, the
awful virtues of our Pilgrim sires. But while we devote this day to the
remembrance of our native land, we forget not that in which our happy
lot is cast. We exult in the reflection that, though we count by
thousands the miles which separate us from our birthplace, still our
country is the same. We have but changed our chamber in the paternal
mansion; in all its rooms we are at home, and all who inhabit it are our
brothers. We are no exiles meeting upon the banks of a foreign river, to
swell its waters with our home-sick tears. Here floats the same banner
which nestled above our boyish heads, except that its mighty folds are
wider, and its glittering stars increased in number.”
The sound of this eloquent tongue was stilled, but the “divine afflatus”
with which it was tuned was transferred to, and continued in another.
Near the birthplace of the noble Prentiss, and surrounded by those who
were proud of his fame, Grady referred to those surroundings and the
objects of his visit, when he said: “Happy am I that this mission has
brought my feet at last to press New England’s historic soil, and my
eyes to the knowledge of her beauty and her thrift. Here within touch of
Plymouth Rock and Bunker Hill—where Webster thundered and Longfellow
sang, Emerson thought, and Channing preached—here in the cradle of
American letters, and almost of American liberty, I hasten to make the
obeisance that every American owes New England, when first he stands
uncovered in her mighty presence. Strange apparition! This stern and
unique figure, carved from the ocean and the wilderness, its majesty
kindling and growing amid the storms of winters and of wars,—until at
last the gloom was broken, its beauty disclosed in the sunshine, and the
heroic workers rested at its base,—while startled kings and emperors
gazed and marveled that from the rude touch of this handful, cast on a
bleak and unknown shore, should have come the embodied genius of human
government, and the perfected model of human liberty! God bless the
memory of those immortal workers, and prosper the fortunes of their
living sons, and perpetuate the inspiration of their handiwork.”
Faithful to the memories of his childhood, and to the devotion of his
mature years, visions of his distant home rise to his mental eye, and
with a master’s magic touch he spreads the picture on the glowing
canvas: “Far to the South, Mr. President, separated from this section by
a line once defined in irrepressible difference, once traced in
fratricidal blood, and now, thank God, but a vanishing shadow, lies the
fairest and richest domain of this earth. It is the home of a brave and
hospitable people. There is centered all that can please or prosper
human kind. A perfect climate above a fertile soil, yields to the
husbandman every product of the temperate zone. There, by night, the
cotton whitens beneath the stars, and the wheat locks the sunshine in
its bearded sheaf. In the same field the clover steals the fragrance of
the wind, and the tobacco catches the quick aroma of the rains.”
In speaking of southern citizenship, and the perils of its present
environment, Grady says: “The resolute, clear-headed, broad-minded men
of the South, the men whose genius made glorious every page of the first
seventy years of American history—whose courage and fortitude you tested
in five years of the fiercest war—whose energy has made bricks without
straw, and spread splendor amidst the ashes of their war-wasted
homes—these men wear this problem in their hearts and their brains, by
day and by night. They realize, as you cannot, what this problem means,
what they owe to this kindly and dependent race, the measure of their
debt to the world in whose despite they defended and maintained slavery.
And though their feet are hindered in its undergrowth, and their march
encumbered with its burdens, they have lost neither the patience from
which comes clearness, nor the faith from which comes courage. Nor, sir,
when in passionate moments is disclosed to them that vague and awful
shadow, with its lurid abysses and its crimson stains, into which I pray
God they may never go, are they struck with more of apprehension than is
needed to complete their consecration!”
The conclusion of that grand address, so powerful in scope and faultless
in diction, is a forcible reminder of Webster’s great peroration in his
reply to Hayne on Foot’s Resolution. Grady here says: “A mighty duty,
sir, and a mighty inspiration impels every one of us to-night to lose in
patriotic consecration whatever estranges, whatever divides. We, sir,
are Americans, and we fight for human liberty. The uplifting force of
the American idea is under every throne on earth. France, Brazil—these
are our victories. To redeem the earth from kingcraft and oppression,
this is our mission. And we shall not fail. God has sown in our soil the
seed of his millennial harvest, and he will not lay the sickle to the
ripening crop until his full and perfect day has come. Our history, sir,
has been a constant and expanding miracle from Plymouth Rock and
Jamestown, all the way, aye, even from the hour when, from the voiceless
and trackless ocean, a new world rose to the sight of the inspired
sailor. As we approach the fourth centennial of that stupendous day—when
the old world will come to marvel and to learn, amid our gathered
treasures—let us resolve to crown the miracles of our past with the
spectacle of a Republic compact, united, indissoluble in the bonds of
love—loving from the Lakes to the Gulf—the wounds of war healed in every
heart as on every hill, serene and resplendent at the summit of human
achievement and earthly glory, blazing out the path and making clear the
way up which all the nations of the earth must come in God’s appointed
time!”
The love and respect of the Mississippians and Louisianans, and of the
entire Southwest for Prentiss was only equaled by the admiration of the
North for Grady. All honor to their memories, and peace to their patriot
shades! The “clods of the valley will be sweet unto them” until the
resurrection morn.
COLUMBUS, GA., Feb. 5, 1890.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SERMON BY T. DE WITT TALMAGE,
-------
THE great Academy of Music, Brooklyn, N.Y., was crowded to-day, February
23, as it never had been before. Prominent in the congregation were most
of the gentlemen who had attended the banquet of the Southern Society.
Their presence was due to the intimation that Dr. Talmage was going to
preach on the life and character of the _Constitution’s_ late editor,
Mr. Henry W. Grady. Dr. Talmage was at his best, in splendid voice, and
his rounded periods made a deep impression upon all present. Taking for
his text Isaiah viii., 1, “Take thee a great roll, and write in it with
a man’s pen,” the preacher said:
To Isaiah, with royal blood in his veins and a habitant of palaces, does
this divine order come. He is to take a roll, a large roll, and write on
it with a pen, not an angel’s pen, but a man’s pen. So God honored the
pen and so he honored the manuscript. In our day the mightiest roll is
the religious and secular newspaper, and the mightiest pen is the
editor’s pen, whether for good or evil. And God says now to every
literary man, and especially to every journalist: “Take thee a great
roll and write in it with a man’s pen.”
THE NEWS ON THE MEDITERRANEAN.
Within a few weeks one of the strongest, most vivid and most brilliant
of those pens was laid down on the editorial desk in Atlanta, never
again to be resumed. I was far away at the time. We had been sailing up
from the Mediterranean Sea, through the Dardanelles, which region is
unlike anything I ever saw for beauty. There is not any other water
scenery on earth where God has done so many picturesque things with
islands. They are somewhat like the Thousand Islands of our American St.
Lawrence, but more like heaven. Indeed, we had just passed Patmos, the
place from which John had his apocalyptic vision. Constantinople had
seemed to come out to greet us, for your approach to that city is
different from any other city. Other cities as you approach them seem to
retire, but this city, with its glittering minarets and pinnacles, seems
almost to step into the water to greet you. But my landing there, that
would have been to me an exhilaration, was suddenly stunned with the
tidings of the death of my intimate friend, Henry W. Grady. I could
hardly believe the tidings, for I had left on my study table at home
letters and telegrams from him, those letters and telegrams having a
warmth and geniality, and a wit such as he alone could express. The
departure of no public man for many years has so affected me. For days I
walked about as in a dream, and I resolved that, getting home, I would,
for the sake of his bereaved household, and for the sake of his bereaved
profession, and for the sake of what he had been to me, and shall
continue to be as long as memory lasts, I would speak a word in
appreciation of him, the most promising of Americans, and learn some of
the salient lessons of his departure.
I have no doubt that he had enemies, for no man can live such an active
life as he lived, or be so far in advance of his time without making
enemies, some because he defeated their projects, and some because he
outshone them. Owls and bats never did like the rising sun. But I shall
tell you how he appeared to me, and I am glad that I told him while he
was in full health what I thought of him. Memorial orations and
gravestone epitaphs are often mean enough, for they say of a man after
he is dead that which ought to have been said of him while living. One
garland for a living brow is worth more than a mountain of japonicas and
calla lilies heaped on a funeral casket. By a little black volume of
fifty pages, containing the eulogiums and poems uttered and written at
the demise of Clay and Webster and Calhoun and Lincoln and Sumner, the
world tried to pay for the forty years of obloquy it heaped upon those
living giants. If I say nothing in praise of a man while he lives I will
keep silent when he is dead. Myrtle and weeping willow can never do what
ought to have been done by amaranth and palm branch. No amount of “Dead
March in Saul” rumbling from big organs at the obsequies can atone for
non-appreciation of the man before he fell on sleep. The hearse cannot
do what ought to have been done by chariot. But there are important
things that need to be said about our friend, who was a prophet in
American journalism, and who only a few years ago heard the command of
my text: “Take thee a great roll, and write in it with a man’s pen.”
A RETROSPECT OF LIFE.
His father dead, Henry W. Grady, a boy fourteen years of age, took up
the battle of life. It would require a long chapter to record the names
of orphans who have come to the top. When God takes away the head of the
household He very often gives to some lad in that household a special
qualification. Christ remembers how that His own father died early,
leaving Him to support Himself and His mother and His brothers in the
carpenter’s shop at Nazareth, and He is in sympathy with all boys and
all young men in the struggle. You say: “Oh, if my father had only lived
I would have had a better education and I would have had a more
promising start, and there are some wrinkles on my brow that would not
have been there.” But I have noticed that God makes a special way for
orphans. You would not have been half the man you are if you had not
been obliged from your early days to fight your own battles. What other
boys got out of Yale and Harvard you got in the university of hard
knocks. Go among successful merchants, lawyers, physicians and men of
all occupations and professions, and there are many of them who will
tell you: “At ten, or twelve, or fifteen years of age, I started for
myself; father was sick, or father was dead.” But somehow they got
through and got up. I account for it by the fact that there is a special
dispensation of God for orphans. All hail, the fatherless and
motherless! The Lord Almighty will see you through. Early obstacles for
Mr. Grady were only the means for development of his intellect and
heart. And lo! when at thirty-nine years of age he put down his pen and
closed his lips for the perpetual silence, he had done a work which many
a man who lives on to sixty and seventy and eighty years never
accomplishes. There is a great deal of senseless praise of longevity, as
though it were a wonderful achievement to live a good while. Ah, my
friends, it is not how long we live, but how well we live and how
usefully we live. A man who lives to eighty years and accomplishes
nothing for God or humanity might better have never lived at all.
Methuselah lived nine hundred and sixty-nine years, and what did it
amount to? In all those more than nine centuries he did not accomplish
anything which seemed worth record. Paul lived only a little more than
sixty, but how many Methuselahs would it take to make one Paul? Who
would not rather have Paul’s sixty years than Methuselah’s nine hundred
and sixty-nine? Robert McCheyne died at thirty years of age and John
Summerfield at twenty-seven years of age, but neither earth nor heaven
will ever hear the end of their usefulness. Longevity! Why, an elephant
can beat you at that, for it lives a hundred and fifty and two hundred
years. Gray hairs are the blossoms of the tree of life if found in the
way of righteousness, but the frosts of the second death if found in the
way of sin.
MR. GRADY AS A CHRISTIAN.
One of our able New York journals last spring printed a question and
sent it to many people, and, among others, to myself: “Can the editor of
a secular journal be a Christian?” Some of the newspapers answered no. I
answered yes; and, lest you may not understand me, I say yes again.
Summer before last, riding with Mr. Grady from a religious meeting in
Georgia on Sunday night, he said to me some things which I now reveal
for the first time, because it is appropriate now that I reveal them. He
expressed his complete faith in the gospel, and expressed his
astonishment and his grief that in our day so many young men were
rejecting Christianity. From the earnestness and the tenderness and the
confidence with which he spoke on these things I concluded that when
Henry W. Grady made public profession of his faith in Christ, and took
his place at the holy communion in the Methodist Church, he was honestly
and truly Christian. That conversation that Sunday night, first in the
carriage and then resumed in the hotel, impressed me in such a way that
when I simply heard of his departure, without any of the particulars, I
concluded that he was ready to go. I warrant there was no fright in the
last exigency, but that he found what is commonly called “the last
enemy” a good friend, and from his home on earth he went to a home in
heaven. Yes, Mr. Grady not only demonstrated that an editor may be a
Christian, but that a very great intellect may be gospelized. His mental
capacity was so wonderful it was almost startling. I have been with him
in active conversation while at the same time he was dictating to a
stenographer editorials for the Atlanta _Constitution_. But that
intellect was not ashamed to bow to Christ. Among his last dying
utterances was a request for the prayers of the churches in his behalf.
There was that particular quality in him that you do not find in more
than one person out of hundreds of thousands—namely, personal magnetism.
People have tried to define that quality, and always failed, yet we have
all felt its power. There are some persons who have only to enter a room
or step upon a platform or into a pulpit, and you are thrilled by their
presence, and when they speak your nature responds and you cannot help
it. What is the peculiar influence with which such a magnetic person
takes hold of social groups and audiences? Without attempting to define
this, which is indefinable, I will say it seems to correspond to the
waves of air set in motion by the voice or the movements of the body.
Just like that atmospheric vibration is the moral or spiritual vibration
which rolls out from the soul of what we call a magnetic person. As
there may be a cord or rope binding bodies together, there may be an
invisible cord binding souls. A magnetic man throws it over others as a
hunter throws a lasso. Mr. Grady was surcharged with this influence, and
it was employed for patriotism and Christianity and elevated purposes.
GREAT MEN MAY BE CHRISTIANS.
You may not know why, in the conversation which I had with Mr. Gladstone
a few weeks ago, he uttered these memorable words about Christianity,
some of which were cabled to America. He was speaking in reply to this
remark: I said: “Mr. Gladstone, we are told in America by some people
that Christianity does very well for weak-minded men and children in the
infant class, but it is not fit for stronger minded men; but when we
mention you, of such large intellectuality, as being a pronounced friend
of religion, we silence their batteries.” Then Mr. Gladstone stopped on
the hillside where we were exercising, and said: “The older I grow, the
more confirmed I am in my faith in religion.” “Sir,” said he, with
flashing eye and uplifted hand, “talk about the questions of the day,
there is but one question, and that is the Gospel. That can and will
correct everything. Do you have any of that dreadful agnosticism in
America?” Having told him we had, he went on to say: “I am profoundly
thankful that none of my children or kindred have been blasted by it. I
am glad to say that about all the men at the top in Great Britain are
Christians. Why, sir,” he said, “I have been in public position
fifty-eight years, and forty-seven years in the cabinet of the British
government, and during those forty-seven years I have been associated
with sixty of the master minds of the century, and all but five of the
sixty were Christians.” He then named the four leading physicians and
surgeons of his country, calling them by name and remarking upon the
high qualities of each of them and added: “They are all thoroughly
Christian.” My friends, I think it will be quite respectable for a
little longer to be the friends of religion. William E. Gladstone, a
Christian; Henry W. Grady, a Christian. What the greatest of Englishmen
said of England is true of America and of all Christendom. The men at
the top are the friends of God and believers in the sanctities of
religion, the most eminent of the doctors, the most eminent of the
lawyers, the most eminent of the merchants, and there are no better men
in all our land than some of those who sit in editorial chairs. And if
that does not correspond with your acquaintanceship, I am sorry that you
have fallen into bad company. In answer to the question put last spring,
“Can a secular journalist be a Christian?” I not only answer in the
affirmative, but I assert that so great are the responsibilities of that
profession, so infinite and eternal the consequences of their obedience
or disobedience of the words of my text, “Take thee a great roll and
write in it with a man’s pen,” and so many are the surrounding
temptations, that the men of no other profession more deeply need the
defenses and the reinforcements of the grace of God.
THE OPPORTUNITIES OF JOURNALISM.
And then look at the opportunities of journalism. I praise the pulpit
and magnify my office, but I state a fact which you all know when I say
that where the pulpit touches one person the press touches five hundred.
The vast majority of people do not go to church, but all intelligent
people read the newspapers. While, therefore, the responsibility of the
minister is great, the responsibilities of editors and reporters is
greater. Come, brother journalist, and get your ordination, not by the
laying on of human hands, but by the laying on of the hands of the
Almighty. To you is committed the precious reputation of men and the
more precious reputation of women. Spread before our children an
elevated literature. Make sin appear disgusting and virtue admirable.
Believe good rather than evil. While you show up the hypocrisies of the
church, show up the stupendous hypocrisies outside of the church. Be
not, as some of you are, the mere echoes of public opinion; make public
opinion. Let the great roll on which you write with a man’s pen be a
message of light and liberty, and kindness and an awakening of moral
power. But who is sufficient for these things! Not one of you without
Divine help. But get that influence and the editors and reporters can go
up and take this world for God and the truth. The mightiest opportunity
in all the world for usefulness to-day is open before editors and
reporters and publishers, whether of knowledge on foot, as in the book,
or knowledge on the wing, as in the newspaper; I pray God, men of the
newspaper press, whether you hear or read this sermon, that you may rise
up to your full opportunity and that you may be divinely helped and
rescued and blessed.
Some one might say to me: “How can you talk thus of the newspaper press
when you yourself have sometimes been unfairly treated and
misrepresented?” I answer that in the opportunity the newspaper press of
this country and other countries have given me week by week to preach
the gospel to the nations, I am put under so much obligation that I defy
all editors and reporters, the world over, to write anything that shall
call forth from me one word of bitter retort from now till the day of my
death. My opinion is that all reformers and religious teachers, instead
of spending so much time and energy in denouncing the press, had better
spend more time in thanking them for what they have done for the world’s
intelligence, and declaring their magnificent opportunity and urging
their employment of it all for beneficent and righteous purposes.
A TYPE OF CHRISTIAN PATRIOTISM.
Again, I remark that Henry W. Grady stood for Christian patriotism
irrespective of political spoils. He declined all official reward. He
could have been Governor of Georgia, but refused it. He could have been
Senator of the United States, but declined it. He remained plain Henry
Grady. Nearly all the other orators of the political arena, as soon as
the elections are over, go to Washington, or Albany, or Harrisburg, or
Atlanta, to get in city or state or national office, reward for their
services, and not getting what they want spend the rest of the time of
that administration in pouting about the management of public affairs or
cursing Harrison or Cleveland. When the great political campaigns were
over Mr. Grady went home to his newspaper. He demonstrated that it is
possible to toil for principles which he thought to be right, simply
because they were right. Christian patriotism is too rare a commodity in
this country. Surely the joy of living under such free institutions as
those established here ought to be enough reward for political fidelity.
Among all the great writers that stood at the last Presidential election
on Democratic and Republican platforms, you cannot recall in your mind
ten who were not themselves looking for remunerative appointments. Aye,
you can count them all on the fingers of one hand. The most illustrious
specimen of that style of man for the last ten years was Henry W. Grady.
Again, Mr. Grady stood for the New South, and was just what we want to
meet three other men, one to speak for the New North, another for the
New East, and another for the New West. The bravest speech made for the
last quarter of a century was that made by Mr. Grady at the New England
dinner in New York about two or three years ago. I sat with him that
evening and know something of his anxieties, for he was to tread on
dangerous ground, and might by one misspoken word have antagonized both
sections. His speech was a victory that thrilled all of us who heard him
and all who read him. That speech, great for wisdom, great for kindness,
great for pacification, great for bravery, will go down to the
generations with Webster’s speech at Bunker Hill, William Wirt’s speech
at the arraignment of Aaron Burr, Edmund Burke’s speech on Warren
Hastings, Robert Emmett’s speech for his own vindication.
Who will in conspicuous action represent the New North as he did the New
South? Who will come forth for the New East and who for the New West?
Let old political issues be buried, let old grudges die. Let new
theories be launched. With the coming in of a new nation at the gates of
Castle Garden every year, and the wheat bin and corn crib of our land
enlarged with every harvest, and a vast multitude of our population
still plunged in illiteracy to be educated, and moral questions abroad
involving the very existence of our Republic, let the old political
platforms that are worm-eaten be dropped, and platforms that shall be
made of two planks, the one the Ten Commandments, and the other the
Sermon on the Mount, lifted for all of us to stand on. But there is a
lot of old politicians grumbling all around the sky who don’t want a New
South, a New North, a New East, or a New West. They have some old war
speeches that they prepared in 1861, that in all our autumnal elections
they feel called upon to inflict upon the country. They growl louder and
louder in proportion as they are pushed back further and further and the
Henry W. Gradys come to the front. But the mandate, I think, has gone
forth from the throne of God that a new American Nation shall take the
place of the old, and the new has been baptized for God and liberty, and
justice and peace and morality and religion.
THE APOTHEOSIS.
And now our much lamented friend has gone to give account. Suddenly the
facile and potent pen is laid down and the eloquent tongue is silent.
What? Is there no safeguard against fatal disease? The impersonation of
stout health was Mr. Grady. What compactness of muscle! What ruddy
complexion! What flashing eye! Standing with him in a group of twenty or
thirty persons at Piedmont, he looked the healthiest, as his spirits
were the blithest. Shall we never feel again the hearty grasp of his
hand or be magnetized with his eloquence? Men of the great roll, men of
the pen, men of wit, men of power, if our friend had to go when the call
came, so must you when your call comes. When God asks you what have you
done with your pen, or your eloquence, or your wealth, or your social
position, will you be able to give satisfactory answer? What have we
been writing all these years? If mirth, has it been innocent mirth, or
that which tears and stings and lacerates? From our pen have there come
forth productions healthy or poisonous! In the last great day, when the
warrior must give account of what he has done with his sword, and the
merchant what he has done with his yard stick, and the mason what he has
done with his trowel, and the artist what he has done with his pencil,
we shall have to give account of what we have done with our pen. There
are gold pens and diamond pens, and pens of exquisite manufacture, and
every few weeks I see some new kind of pen, each said to be better than
the other; but in the great day of our arraignment before the Judge of
the quick and dead, that will be the most beautiful pen, whether gold or
steel or quill, which never wrote a profane or unclean or cruel word, or
which from the day it was carved or split at the nib, dropped from its
point kindness and encouragement, and help and gratitude to God and
benediction for man.
May God comfort that torn up Southern home, and all the homes of this
country, and of all the world, which have been swept by this plague of
influenza, which has deepened sometimes into pneumonia and sometimes
into typhus, and the victims of which are counted by the ten thousand,
Satan, who is the “prince of the power of the air,” has been poisoning
the atmosphere in all nations. Though it is the first time in our
remembrance, he has done the same thing before. In 1696 the unwholesome
air of Cairo, Egypt, destroyed the life of ten thousand in one day, and
in Constantinople in 1714 three hundred thousand people died of it. I am
glad that by the better sanitation of our cities and wider understanding
of hygienic laws and the greater skill of physicians these Apollyonic
assaults upon the human race are being resisted, but pestilential
atmosphere is still abroad. Hardly a family here but has felt its
lighter or heavier touch. Some of the best of my flock fell under its
power and many homes here represented have been crushed. The fact is the
biggest failure in the universe is this world, if there be no heaven
beyond. But there is, and the friends who have gone there are many, and
very dear. Oh, tearful eyes, look up to the hills crimsoning with
eternal morn! That reunion kiss will more than make up for the parting
kiss, and the welcome will obliterate the good-by. “The Lamb which is in
the midst of the throne shall lead them to living fountains of water and
God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.” Till then, O departed
loved ones, promise us that you will remember us, as we promise to
remember you. And some of you gone up from this city by the sea, and
others from under southern skies and others from the homes of the more
rigorous North and some from the cabins on great western farms, we shall
meet again when our pen has written its last word and our arm has done
its last day’s work and our lips have spoken their last adieu.
And now, thou great and magnificent soul of editor and orator! under
brighter skies we shall meet again. From God thou camest, and to God
thou hast returned. Not broken down, but ascended. Not collapsed, but
irradiated. Enthroned one! Coroneted one! Sceptered one! Emparadised
one! Hail and farewell!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRIBUTES
OF THE
NORTHERN PRESS.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
HE WAS THE EMBODIMENT OF THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW SOUTH.
-------
_From the “New York World.”_
AS the soldier falls upon the battle-field in the line of duty, so died
Henry Woodfin Grady, the progressive editor of the Atlanta
_Constitution_. Mr. Grady came to the North twelve days ago, with his
fatal illness upon him, against the entreaties of his family, to speak a
word for the South, to the mind and conscience of New England. He
performed his task in splendid spirit, and with the effective and moving
eloquence that were always his, and then returned home to die. It is
highly probable that if he had not gone to Boston he would be living and
writing to-day. It is as more than a journalist or an orator, that Mr.
Grady is to be counted. He was admirable as both, but he was more than a
Southerner, a peacemaker between the sections. He was intensely
Southern, filled full of all the traditions of his people, proud of them
and their past, but he accepted the new order with the magnificent
enthusiasm of his intense nature, and became the embodiment of the
spirit of the New South. More than any other man of this section, he had
the ear of the people of the North. They believed the patriotic
assurances which he made in behalf of his people, because they knew him
to be honest and sincere and thoroughly devoted to all that makes for
the best in public affairs. His influence in Atlanta and throughout the
South was deservedly great. No Southerner could have been so ill-spared
as this young man, whose future only a day or two ago seemed brilliant
to a degree. His death is a wonderfully great bereavement, and not only
to his family and the community in which he lived and labored, but the
whole country, whose peace and unity and kindly sentiment he did so much
to promote.
A THOROUGHLY AMERICAN JOURNALIST.
-------
_From the “New York Herald.”_
MR. GRADY’S death will be deeply and justly regretted all over the
country. He had, though still a young man, made for himself a national
reputation, and by his steadfast counsels for peace and good will, and
by his intelligent devotion to the development of his State and of the
South, had won the good will of North and South alike.
It is seldom that so good a journalist is at the same time so brilliant
and effective an orator as Mr. Grady was. The reason probably is that
when he spoke he had something to say, and that he was of so cheerful
and hopeful a spirit that he was able to affect his hearers with his own
optimism. In that he was a thorough American, for, as one of the
shrewdest New Yorkers once said, “This is a bull country, and the bears
have the wrong philosophy for the American people.”
For that training which made him not only a brilliant and successful,
but, what is better, a broadly intelligent and useful journalist, the
_Herald_ claims a not inconsiderable share of credit, which Mr. Grady
himself was accustomed to give it. The _Herald_ was his early and best
school. As a correspondent of this journal he first made his mark by the
fearless accuracy of his reports of some exciting scenes in the
reconstruction period. He showed in those days so keen an eye as an
observer, united with such rapid and just judgment of the bearings of
facts, that his reports in the _Herald_ attracted general attention and
were recognized freely, even by those whom they inconvenienced, as the
clearest, the most truthful, and the most just reports made of those
events. He was then still a very young man; but he quickly saw that the
province of a newspaper, and of a reporter of events for it, is to tell
the exact truth, to tell it simply and straightforwardly, and without
fear, favor or prejudice. This is what he learned from his connection
with the _Herald_, and this lesson he carried into his own able journal,
the Atlanta _Constitution_.
It does not often happen that so young a man as Mr. Grady was makes so
great and widespread a reputation, and this without any of the tricks of
self-puffery which are the cheap resort of too many young men ambitious
of fame, or what they mistake for fame—notoriety.
In Mr. Grady’s untimely death the country loses one of its foremost and
most clear-headed journalists, and his State one of its most eminent and
justly admired citizens.
------------------
A LOSS TO THE WHOLE COUNTRY.
-------
_From the “New York Tribune.”_
THE death of Henry Grady is a loss to the whole country, but there is
some consolation in the general recognition of this fact. During his
brief career as a public man he has said many things that it was
profitable for both North and South to hear, and he has said them in
such a way as to enhance their significance. As editor of one of the few
widely influential papers of the South, he possessed an opportunity,
which he had also in great measure created, of impressing his opinions
upon Southern society, but it was to a few occasional addresses in
Northern cities that he chiefly owed his national reputation. His
rhetorical gifts were not of the highest order, but he had command of a
style of speaking which was most effective for his purposes. It was
marked by the Celtic characteristic of exuberance, but it was so
agreeable and inspiring that he was able to command at will audiences at
home and abroad. When so endowed he has also a significant message to
deliver, and is, moreover, animated by a sincere desire to serve his
generation to the full measure of his ability, the loss which his death
inflicts is not easily repaired. The whole country will unite in
deploring the sudden extinction of a faithful life. Mr. Grady’s zeal,
activity and patriotism were fully recognized in the North, as we have
said, but yet it was pre-eminently to his own people that he was an
example and inspiration. His loyalty to the cause in which his father
fell was untinged with bitterness, and he never permitted himself to
imagine that vain regrets were more sacred than present obligations. He
was an admirable illustration of that sagacious and progressive spirit
which is gradually, but surely, renewing the South, and which, though it
still lacks something of being altogether equal to its opportunities,
does nevertheless recognize the fact that “new occasions teach new
duties, time makes ancient good uncouth.”
------------------
WHAT HENRY W. GRADY REPRESENTED.
-------
_From the “New York Commercial Advertiser.”_
WHAT undoubtedly interested and fascinated people most in the late Henry
W. Grady was the fact that he represented an order of genius now almost
extinct in our country, and yet one in which some of the favorite
episodes of its history are entwined. The orator who appealed at once to
the reason and the feelings was beyond question the foremost power of
our early national century of history. He was not predominant in the
councils which founded our government, nor in the first decade of its
administration; because the duties of that period called for the calm
deliberations of statesmen rather than the arousing of voters to action.
As this era of national infancy drew to its close, and the gigantic
problems, destined at a later day to involve the nation in civil war,
came forth into sudden prominence, the orator became the central figure
of the national stage. The rank and file gave their allegiance to their
chosen oratorical leader. He spoke in their behalf in Congress; he
defined in all political gatherings the will and purposes of his
constituents; and not less powerfully was his influence exerted to shape
those opinions and purposes. Indeed, the speeches of Clay, Calhoun and
Webster, and at a later day of Douglas and Lincoln, are better
understood when regarded as shaping public opinion than as following the
popular will already formed. The speeches of these leaders supplied the
need which is now met by the newspaper editorial in journals of
influence and public spirit. Like the newspaper of this later day, the
American orator of half a century ago was quick to note a change in the
trend of public sentiment, and at his best fearless in leading the
movement even before the popular mind had given assent.
The civil war brought to a close the epoch in which flourished this
interesting and impressive figure of our earlier politics. To-day,
partly because of the greater diffusion of news and intelligence, partly
by reason of the more technical and analytical character of the national
problems which confront us, he has quite disappeared from the political
stage. One need only recall the congressional or campaign speeches of
our ablest public speakers to appreciate the truth of this. It was Mr.
Grady’s good fortune that he, equipped with the keen insight and fervid
eloquence of our old public leaders, was placed in an epoch and a
community where the reconciling of the North and the South called for
just these powers. Presently, when the wave of closer commercial
intercourse and the better mutual understanding shall have swept with
unprecedented rapidity over the whole nation, the feelings which made
such mediation necessary will be quite dead. But the work of the men who
led the way is not likely to be forgotten.
--------------
A FAR-SIGHTED STATESMAN.
-------
_From the “New York Star.”_
THE death of Henry W. Grady is a very much greater national loss than
the public will at first concede; and while his death will be regretted,
not only by the Democracy of the country, but by all patriotic citizens,
few will recognize that he was one of the few prominent young men, who
were children during the War, who labored to obliterate absolutely the
animosity it engendered. We believe that if the circumstance of his
prominent position had not silenced Jefferson Davis, who died almost
simultaneously with this youth, he, too, would have been found
advocating the truth that the Union of these States is homogeneous, and
that Union is worth all the sacrifices it cost.
The young Atlanta editor has, during the past few years, done as much as
any other public man toward the accomplishment of perfect reunion and
for the prosperity of his State and section. His later addresses had
been specially characterized by a broad grasp of political and
industrial problems that entitled him to high rank as an accomplished
and far-sighted statesman.
There have been few more interesting personalities in the life of the
country in the past decade, and there was no man of his years with
brighter prospects than Grady at the time of his last visit to the
North, which will be memorable as the occasion of his most comprehensive
and effective address on his constant theme of American prosperity
through fraternity.
------------------
AN APOSTLE OF THE NEW FAITH.
-------
_From the “New York Times.”_
FEW men who have never entered the public service were more widely known
throughout the country than Henry W. Grady, who died at Atlanta, and the
death of only a few even of those who have won the honors and the
prominence of public life would be more sincerely deplored. Ten years
ago Mr. Grady had made himself known in the South by the fervency of his
devotion to her interests and by the unusual ability he displayed in his
newspaper work, and the people of the South met his devotion with
characteristic warmth of affection and generosity of praise. A little
later he was recognized in the North as an eloquent interpreter of the
new spirit which had awakened and possessed the South. His speech at the
dinner of the New England Society three years ago was only an expression
from a more conspicuous platform of the sentiments which had long
inspired his daily writing. And it was not merely as an interpreter of
Southern feeling that Mr. Grady was entitled to recognition. In a large
measure he was the creator of the spirit that now animates the South. He
was an apostle of the new faith. He exhorted the people of the Southern
States to concern themselves no longer about what they had lost, but to
busy themselves with what they might find to do, to consecrate the
memories of the war if they would, but to put the whole strength of
their minds and bodies into the building up of the New South. To his
teaching and his example, as much as to any other single influence
perhaps, the South owes the impulses of material advancement, of
downright hard work, and that well-nigh complete reconciliation to the
conditions and duties of the present and the future that distinguish her
to-day.
------------------
THE FOREMOST LEADER.
-------
_From the “New York Christian Union.”_
THE death of Henry W. Grady, at Atlanta, on Monday of this week, was a
loss, not only to his own section, but to the country. Although a young
man, and not in political life, Mr. Grady had already acquired a
national reputation. It is only three years since he delivered the
speech at the New England dinner in this city, which gave a sudden
expansion to a reputation already rapidly extending, and made his name
known in every State in the Union. Mr. Grady was a typical Southern man,
ardent in his love for his own section, loyal to the memory of those who
fought in the struggle of a quarter of a century ago, but equally loyal
to the duties and the nation of to-day. Warm-hearted, generous, and of a
fervid imagination, Mr. Grady’s oratory recalled the best traditions of
the Southern style; and the sincerity and geniality of his nature evoked
the confidence and regard of his audience, while his eloquence thrilled
them. His latest speech was delivered in Boston two weeks ago, on the
race question, and was one of those rare addresses which carry with them
an immediate broadening of the views of every auditor. Among the men of
his own section Mr. Grady was probably the foremost leader of
progressive ideas, and his death becomes for that reason a national
loss.
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A GLORIOUS MISSION.
-------
_From the Albany, N.Y., “Argus.”_
ALL who admire true patriotism, brilliant talents, golden eloquence and
ripe judgment, will regret the untimely taking off of the gifted
Southern journalist and orator, Henry W. Grady, in the very zenith of
his powers and fame. His eloquent address at the annual banquet of the
Boston Merchants’ Association is still fresh in the minds of those who
listened to him or read his glowing words in the columns of the press.
It was the last and grandest effort of the brilliant young Southerner.
It was the defense of his beloved South against the calumnies cast upon
her, and the most lucid, convincing exposition of the race question ever
presented at a public assemblage. Impassioned and heartfelt was his plea
for Union and the abandonment of all sectionalism. These closing words
of his address might fitly be inscribed upon his tomb: “Let us resolve
to crown the miracles of our past with the spectacle of a Republic,
compact, united, indissoluble in the bonds of love—loving from the Lakes
to the Gulf—the wounds of war healed in every heart as on every
hill—serene and resplendent at the summit of human achievement and
earthly glory—blazing out the path, and making clear the way up which
all the nations of the earth must come in God’s appointed time.” The
words were all the more emphatic and convincing because they were spoken
in the presence of an ex-president whose entire administration had been
consecrated to such a Union of all sections, and who accomplished more
in the grand work of obliterating the last traces of sectional strife
and division than any other man who sat in the national executive chair.
Well may the South mourn over this fervid advocate of her honor, her
rights, her interests, and regard his death a public calamity. Eloquence
such as his is rarely given to men, and it was devoted wholly to his
beloved land. It has done more to break down the barriers of prejudice
and passion than a decade of homilies, dry arguments and elaborate
statistics could effect. His was a most glorious mission, the bringing
together in the closest bonds of fraternal love and confidence the
sections which partisan malice, political selfishness and unconscionable
malignity would keep apart. Whenever he spoke, the earnestness of his
convictions, expressed in the noblest language, impressed itself upon
the intelligence of his hearers. His last appeal, made, as he described
it, “within touch of Plymouth Rock and Bunker Hill, where Webster
thundered and Longfellow sang, and Emerson thought and Channing
preached,” melted away the most hardened prejudice and enkindled in the
New England heart the spirit of respect and sympathy for the brave,
single-minded people of the South, who are so patiently and determinedly
working out their destiny to make their beautiful land the abode of
unalloyed peace and prosperity. Journalism will also mourn the loss of
one of its brightest representatives. Henry W. Grady shone in the
columns of his newspaper, the Atlanta _Constitution_, with no less
brilliancy than he did as an orator. Under his guidance that paper has
become one of the brightest in the land. It will be difficult for the
South to supply his place as patriot, journalist and orator. He was an
effective foil to the Eliza Pinkston class of statesmen in and out of
Congress.
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HIS LOFTY IDEAL.
-------
_From the “Philadelphia Press.”_
FEW men die at thirty-eight whose departure is felt as a national loss,
but Henry W. Grady was one. At an age when most men are just beginning
to be known in their own States and to be recognized in their own
section, he was known to the nation and recognized by the American
people. At the South he represented the new pride in the material
revival of a section desolated by the war. At the North he stood for
loyal and enthusiastic support by the South of the new claims of the
Union. His every appearance before the public was one more proof to the
nation that the sons of those who fought the war were again one people
and under one flag, cherishing different memories in the past, but
pressing forward to the same lofty ideal of a homogeneous democratic
society under republican institutions.
If Henry W. Grady spoke at the North he spoke for the South; if he spoke
at the South he stood for Northern ideas in his own land. He was none
the less true in both attitudes that his utterances were insensibly
modified by his audiences. Eloquent, magnetic, impressionable, sharing
to the full the sympathy every great speaker always has with his
audience, his sentiment swung from extreme to extreme as he stood on a
Northern or a Southern platform. It was always easy to pick flaws in
them. Now and then his rhetorical sympathies placed him in a false
position. But it was the inevitable condition of work like his that he
should express extremes. If he had not felt and voiced the pride with
which every Southerner must and should look back to the deathless valor
of men we all rejoice to claim as Americans, he would have been
worthless as a representative of the South. If he had not thrilled
earlier than his fellows to the splendid national heritage with which
defeat had dowered his people, he could never have awakened the applause
of Northern audiences by expressions of loyalty and devotion to our
common nation.
This service to both sections sprang from something more than sympathy.
A moral courage Northern men can little understand was needed for him to
oppose Southern treatment of the negro. Energy and industry, unknown
among his fellows, were needed in the leadership he undertook in the
material development of his State and section. It is easy now to see the
enormous profit which lay in the material development of Georgia.
Far-sighted provision was needed to urge the policy and aid the
combination which made it possible ten years ago.
No one but a journalist, we are proud to say, could have done Mr.
Grady’s work, and he brought to the work of journalism some of its
highest qualifications. Ability as a writer, keen appreciation of
“news,” and tireless industry, which he had, must all be held second to
the power he possessed in an eminent degree of divining the drift and
tendency of public feeling, being neither too early to lead it nor too
late to control it. This divination Mr. Grady was daily displaying and
he never made better use of it than in his last speech in Boston, the
best of his life, in which he rose from mere rhetoric to a clear,
earnest and convincing handling of fact. A great future was before him,
all too soon cut off. He leaves to all journalists the inspiring example
of the great opportunities which their profession offers to serve the
progress of men and aid the advance of nations, by speaking to the
present of the bright and radiant light of the future, and rising above
the claims of party and the prejudice of locality to advocate the higher
claims of patriotism and humanity.
------------------
HIS PATRIOTISM.
-------
_From the “Philadelphia Ledger.”_
THE death of Henry W. Grady, which occurred almost at the dawning of
this beneficent Christmas time, did not “eclipse the gayety of nations,”
as it was long ago said the death of another illustrious person did, but
it still casts a shadow over his native land—a shadow which falls
heavily upon all those of his countrymen who knew, honored and loved the
man.
Henry W. Grady was one of the youngest, the most brilliant, the best
beloved of the young men of his country who, since the war of secession,
won distinction in public life. Whether considered as a writer or an
orator, his talents were extraordinary. His language was strong,
refined, and, in its poetic warmth and elegance, singularly beautiful.
But that which gave to it its greatest value and charm was the wisdom of
the thought, the sincerity of the high conscience of which it was the
expression. It was given to him as it is to so few—the ability to wed
noble thoughts to noble words—to make the pen more convincing than the
sword in argument, to make the tongue proclaim “the Veritas that lurks
beneath the letter’s unprolific sheath.”
Henry W. Grady was, in the truest sense, an American; his love of
country, his unselfish devotion to it, were unquestioned and
unquestionable; but he sought to serve it best by best serving the
South, which he so greatly loved and which so loved and honored him. It
was the New South of human freedom, material progress—not the Old South
of chattel slavery and material sluggishness—of which he was the
representative, the prophet. It was the South of to-day, which has put
off the bitternesses, defeats and animosities of the war; which has put
on the sentient spirit of real union, of marvelous physical development,
which advances day by day to wealth, dignity and greatness by gigantic
strides. This was the South that he glorified with pen and tongue, and
which he sought with earnest, zealous love to bring into closer, warmer
fraternity with the North and the North with it.
The story of the shield which hung in the forest, and which, to the
traveler coming from the North, seemed to be made of gold, and to the
traveler journeying from the South, to be made of silver, is an old one.
But it has its new significance in every great matter to which there are
two sides, and which is looked at by those approaching it from different
directions from their respective points of view. He saw but one side of
the race question—the Southern side, and for that he strenuously
contended only a few days before his death, in the very shadow of
Faneuil Hall, or, as he finely said: “Here, within touch of Plymouth
Rock and Bunker Hill—where Webster thundered and Longfellow sang,
Emerson thought and Channing preached—here, in the cradle of American
letters and of American liberty.” It was in the house of his antagonists
that he fought for the side which he thought good and just, and if in
doing so he did not convince, he was listened to with respect and
admiration.
That is a question not to be discussed here and now, and it is referred
to only to show the courage of Mr. Grady in defence of his convictions,
for they were convictions, and honest ones, and not mere political or
sectional opinions. Apart from the race question, Mr. Grady was a man of
peace, who, whether writing in his own influential journal in the South,
or speaking in Boston, his tongue and voice were alike for peace, good
will, unity of interest, thought and feeling. In his address of the 13th
instant, at the Boston banquet, Mr. Grady said:
“A mighty duty, sir, a mighty inspiration impels every one of us
to-night to lose in patriotic consecration whatever estranges, whatever
divides. We, sir, are Americans, and we stand for human liberty! The
uplifting force of the American idea is under every throne on earth.
France, Brazil—these are our victories. To redeem the earth from
kingcraft and oppression, this is our mission! And we shall not fail.
God has sown in our soil the seed of His millennial harvest, and He will
not lay the sickle to the ripening crop until His full and perfect day
has come. Our history, sir, has been a constant and expanding miracle
from Plymouth Rock and Jamestown all the way—aye, even from the hour
when, from the voiceless and trackless ocean, a new world rose to the
sight of the inspired sailor. As we approach the fourth centennial of
that stupendous day—when the Old World will come to marvel and to learn,
amid our gathered treasures—let us resolve to crown the miracles of our
past with the spectacle of a republic, compact, united, indissoluble in
the bonds of love—loving from the Lakes to the Gulf—the wounds of war
healed in every heart as on every hill—serene and resplendent at the
summit of human achievement and earthly glory—blazing out the path and
making clear the way up which all the nations of the earth must come in
God’s appointed time.”
The fine expression of these lofty sentiments shows the eloquence of the
man, but, better than that, they themselves show the broad and noble
spirit of his patriotism. And the man that his countrymen so admired and
honored is dead, his usefulness ended, his voice silent, his pen idle
forever, and he so young. There are no accidents, said Charles Sumner,
in the economy of Providence; nor are there. The death of Henry W.
Grady, which seems so premature, is yet part of the inscrutable design
the perfectness of which may not be questioned, and out of it good will
come which is now hidden. He was of those great spirits of whom Lowell
sang:
“We find in our dull road their shining track;
In every noble mood
We feel the Orient of their spirit glow,
Part of our life’s unalterable good,
Of all our saintlier aspirations!”
He was of those who even through death do good, and so posthumously work
out the economy of Providence, for
“As thrills of long-hushed tone
Live in the viol, so our souls grow fine
With keen vibrations from the touch divine
Of Nobler natures gone.”
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ORATORY AND THE PRESS.
-------
_From the “Boston Advertiser.”_
THE lamented death of Mr. H. W. Grady affords a fit occasion for saying
that oratory is not one of “the lost arts.” A great deal is said from
time to time about the decadence of oratory as caused by the competition
of the press. We are told that public address is held in slight esteem
because the public prints are much more accessible and equally
interesting. It is said that this operates in two ways, that the man who
has something to say will always prefer to write rather than speak,
because the printed page reaches tens of thousands, while the human
voice can at most be heard by a few hundreds, and that not many people
will take the trouble to attend a lecture when they can read discussions
of the same subject by the lecturer himself, or others equally
competent, without stirring from the evening lamp or exchanging slippers
for boots. But there is a great deal of fallacy in such arguments. The
press is the ally, not the supplanter of the platform. The functions of
the two are so distinct that they cannot clash, yet so related that they
are mutually helpful. Oratory is very much more than the vocal
utterance, of fitting words. One of the ancients defined the three
requisites of an orator as first, action; second, action; and third,
action. If by action is meant all that accompanies speech, as gesture,
emphasis, intonation, variety in time, and those subtle expressions that
come through the flushing cheek and the gleaming eye, the enumeration
was complete. Mr. Grady spoke with his lips not only, but with every
form and feature of his bodily presence. Such oratory as his, and such
as that of the man whose lecture on “The Lost Arts” proved that oratory
is not one of them, will never be out of date while human nature remains
what it is. There is, indeed, one class of public speakers whose
occupation the press has nearly taken away. They are the “orators,”
falsely so called, whose speech is full of sound and fury, signifying
nothing. Cold type is fatal to their pretensions.
------------------
THE LESSON OF MR. GRADY’S LIFE.
-------
_From the “Philadelphia Times.”_
HENRY W. GRADY is dead, but the lesson of his life will live and bear
fruits for years to come. The young men of the South will not fail to
note that the public journals of every faith in the North have discussed
his life and death in the sincerest sympathy, and that not only his
ability but his candor and courage have elicited universal commendation.
Had Mr. Grady been anything less than a sincere Southerner in sympathy
and conviction, he could have commanded the regulation praise of party
organs in political conflicts, but he would have died little regretted
in either section. He was a true son of the South; faithful to its
interests, to its convictions, to its traditions; and he proved how
plain was the way for the honest Southerner to be an honest patriot and
a devoted supporter of the Union.
There are scores of men in the South, or who have lived there, and who
have filled the highest public trusts within the gifts of their States,
without commanding the sympathy or respect of any section of the
country. Of the South, they were not in sympathy with their people or
interests, and they have played their brief and accidental parts only to
be forgotten when their work was done. They did not speak for the South;
they were instruments of discord rather than of tranquility, and they
left no impress upon the convictions or pulsations of either section.
But Mr. Grady was a true, able, candid, courageous son of the South, and
he was as much respected under the shadows of Bunker Hill as in Georgia.
Sincerely Southern in every sympathy, he was welcomed North and South as
a patriot; and long after the Mahones and the Chalmers shall have been
charitably forgotten, the name of Grady will be fresh in the greenest
memories of the whole people of the country.
There is no better lesson for the young men of the South to study than
the life, the aims and the efforts of Mr. Grady and the universal
gratitude he commanded from every section. He was beloved in the South,
where his noble qualities were commonly known, but he was respected in
the North as an honest Southerner, who knew how to be true to his
birthright and true to the Republic. The Northern press of every shade
of political conviction has united in generous tribute to the young
patriot of Georgia, and if his death shall widen and deepen the
appreciation of his achievement among the young men of the South who
must soon be the actors of the day, he may yet teach even more
eloquently and successfully in the dreamless sleep of the grave than his
matchless oratory ever taught in Atlanta or Boston.
------------------
HIS LOSS A GENERAL CALAMITY.
-------
_Front the “St. Louis Globe-Democrat.”_
THE sudden and lamentable death of Henry W. Grady will eclipse the
gayety of the Christmas season in the South. He was a popular favorite
throughout that section, and his loss is a general calamity. His public
career was yet in its beginning. He had distinguished himself as an
editor and as an orator, and high political honors awaited him quite as
a matter of course. His qualities of head and heart fitted him admirably
for the service of the people, and they trusted and loved him as they
did no other of the younger Southern leaders. He believed in the new
order of things, and was anxious to see the South redeemed from the
blunders and superstitions of the past, and started on a career of
rational and substantial progress. In the nature of things, he was
obliged now and then to humor sectional prejudice, but he did it always
in a graceful way, and set an example of moderation and good temper that
was greatly to his credit. Without sacrificing in the least his honor or
his sincerity as a devoted son of the South, he gave candid and
appreciative recognition to the virtues of the North, and made himself
at home in Boston the same as in Atlanta. The war was over with him in
the best sense. He looked to the future, and all his aspirations were
generous and wholesome.
If the political affairs of the South were in the control of men of the
Grady pattern, a vast improvement would soon be made. He did not
hesitate to denounce the methods which have so often brought deserved
reproach upon the Southern people. He was not in sympathy with the
theory that violence and fraud may be properly invoked to decide
elections and shape the course of legislation. His impulses as a
partisan stopped short of the feeling that everything is fair in
politics. He did much to mollify and elevate the tone of public
sentiment; and he would have done a great deal more if he had been
spared to continue his salutary work. His loss is one of that kind which
makes the decrees of fate so hard to understand. There was every reason
why he should live and prosper. His opportunities of usefulness were
abundant; his State and his country needed him; there was certain
distinction in store for him. Under such circumstances death comes not
as a logical result, but as an arbitrary interference with reasonable
conditions and conceptions. We are bound to believe that the mystery has
been made plain to the man himself; but here it is insoluble. The lesson
of his sterling integrity, his patriotism and his cheerfulness is left,
however, for his countrymen to study and enforce. Let us hope that in
the South particularly it will not be neglected.
------------------
SADDEST OF SEQUELS.
-------
_From the “Manchester, N.H., Union.”_
THE death of Henry W. Grady, the brilliant journalist and eloquent
orator, will be sincerely deplored throughout the country. It is
especially untimely, coming as it does as the saddest of sequels to a
tour which promised much in the beginning, and which, in all save this
ending, more than fulfilled the expectations of his friends. His
brilliant speech in Boston was his last great effort, and it will long
be remembered as one of his best. In it he plead, as it now proves, with
the lips of a dying man, for true fraternity between the North and
South. Had he lived, his burning appeals would have moved the country
deeply. Now that it is known that the effort cost him his life, his
words will have a touch of pathos in them as they are recalled by the
men of all parties and all sections to whom they were so earnestly
addressed. But even this increased effect given to his last appeal to
the North will not compensate for the loss of such a man at this time.
Henry W. Grady was distinctively the representative of the New South.
Too young to have had an active part in the great struggle between the
states, he came into active life at just the time when men like him were
needed. His face was set toward the future. He belonged to and was
identified with the progressive element which has already accomplished
so much of positive achievement in the Southern States. He was a
Southern man, recognized as a leader by Southern men, but with a breadth
of mind and purpose which made him a part of the entire country. Under
his leadership the South was sure to make progress, but its rapid march
was to be to the music of the Union, and with every step the North and
South were to be nearer together than at any previous time since the
adoption of the Constitution. But his part in the great work is ended.
His passionate voice is stilled and his active brain is at rest at a
time in life when most men are entering upon their most effective work.
Had he lived, a brilliant future was already assured to him, a future of
leadership and of tremendous influence in public affairs. But his
untimely death ends all. Others will take up his work as best they may;
the New South will go forward with the development of its material
interests, old animosities will fade away and the North and South will
gradually come together in harmony of spirit and purpose, but the man of
all others who seemed destined to lead in the great movement will have
no further share in it. The South will mourn his early death most
deeply, and the North will throw off its reserve sufficiently to extend
its sincere sympathy, feeling that when such a man dies the loss is the
nation’s rather than that of a single state or of a group of states.
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A LIFE OF PROMISE.
-------
_From the “Chicago Inter-Ocean.”_
IN the death of Henry W. Grady, which occurred yesterday, journalism,
the South, and the whole country suffered serious loss. He had come to
occupy a large place, and one which cannot be filled. He was a
connecting link between the old and the new South, with his face toward
the East, albeit the shadows of the setting sun could be clearly
discerned in his discussions of the vital questions of the day. His life
seemed just begun, and big in the promise of usefulness. Two years ago
he was known only as a journalist. He addressed the New England Society
of New York on the evening of December 29, 1887. That speech made him
famous. Since then his name has been a household word. For him to be
stricken down at the early age of thirty-nine is little if any short of
a public calamity.
It is a dangerous thing for a man of serious purpose to win renown as an
after-dinner speaker. Post-prandial oratory is generally a kind of
champagne, as effervescent as it is sparkling, but Mr. Grady struck a
vein of thought at that New England banquet which had in it all the
earnestness of patriotism. A Southerner with a strong sectional flavor,
his influence, as a whole, was broadening. He never rose superior to the
prejudice of race, but it may well be doubted if any Southerner could do
so in these days without cutting himself off from all influence over his
own people. There is nowhere visible in the Southern heavens the dawn of
the day of equal justice, irrespective of race. In that regard Mr. Grady
was neither better nor worse than his white neighbors. But with that
exception his patriotism had largely outgrown its provincial
environments.
Mr. Grady was a native of Georgia. His father seems to have been a
follower of Alex. H. Stephens, for he was a Union man until the final
test came, when he took up arms for the Confederacy, meeting death for
the cause of his reluctant espousal. A graduate of the University of
Georgia and later of the University of Virginia, the son had the best
education the South could give. His newspaper life began early and was
never interrupted. For several years he was co-editor and co-proprietor
of the Atlanta Constitution, confessedly one of the leading newspapers
of the country. Previous to his connection with the _Constitution_ he
was the correspondent of the _Inter-Ocean_ and the New York _Herald_.
Both as editor and correspondent he excelled. Both as editor and orator
he has at different times spoken eloquently of both Abraham Lincoln and
Jefferson Davis his point of view being intermediate, and that fact,
rather than any conscious vacillation, explains his seeming
contradictions.
A few days ago the Southern people stood with uncovered heads by the
grave of Jefferson Davis, the most conspicuous representative of the Old
South, and now, before they had fairly returned from that funeral, they
are called upon to attend the obsequies of the most conspicuous
representative of the New South. These two notable men present much the
same blending of resemblance and contrast, as do the evening and the
morning stars. Certainly Mr. Grady, young, enthusiastic, and patriotic,
was to the South a harbinger of brighter, more prosperous days.
------------------
ELECTRIFIED THE WHOLE COUNTRY.
-------
_From the “Pittsburgh Dispatch.”_
THE Christmas holidays, North and South, are saddened by the death of
Henry W. Grady, the interesting young journalist of Atlanta, whose words
of patriotism and of manly hope and encouragement for all sections, have
more than once within a few years electrified the whole country. Mr.
Grady won fame early, and in an uncommon manner. Though locally known in
the South as a capable newspaper man, his name was not familiar to the
general public until a few years ago, when, by a single speech at a
banquet in a northern city, he attracted universal attention. Since then
his utterances have carried weight, and scarcely a man speaking or
writing on public topics has been more respectfully heard.
The key-note of Mr. Grady’s speeches on the South was that the past
belief of its people in the “Lost Cause,” and their continued personal
admiration for their leaders, should not and did not prevent them from
accepting fully and in perfect good faith the results as they stand. He
argued that the best elements, including the new generation, were only
too willing and anxious to treat of the past as a condition wholly and
irrevocably past—and, at that, a past which they would not recall if
they could. From the North he asked a recognition of this new feeling,
and the magnanimous consideration which would not assume that the South
was still disloyal or rebellious merely because it refused to condemn
itself and its leaders for the mistakes which brought it disaster.
The efforts of the deceased were to promote patriotic devotion to the
Union in the South, and to induce the North to believe that the feeling
existed. His evident sincerity and his eloquence in presenting the
situation won cordial approval in the North, while in his own section he
was applauded with equal warmth. His death will be very widely and
deeply regretted, as that of a man of high and generous feeling whose
influence, had he lived, promised to make for whatever was noble and
good.
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A LARGE BRAIN AND A LARGE HEART.
-------
_From the “Elmira, N.Y., Advertiser.”_
THROUGHOUT the entire North as well as in the South will there be
heartfelt and sincere mourning over the death of this most distinguished
editor on the other side of Mason and Dixon’s line. It was only ten days
ago that he came North and delivered an address at the annual dinner of
the Merchant’s Club of Boston, following it on the next evening with a
speech before the Bay State Club, a Democratic organization. While on
this trip Mr. Grady contracted a severe cold which was the immediate
cause of his death yesterday morning.
The dead editor was a man of large brain and large heart. His hope was
in the future of the South and he worked for the results which his
prophetic ken perceived ahead of its present with great earnestness and
great judgment. Since he became the editor of the Atlanta _Constitution_
he has labored unceasingly to remedy the unfortunate conditions which
operated against the progress and development of the South. Under his
inspiring leadership and wise counsel many enterprises have been started
and encouraged. There is no other one man to whom the New South owes so
much as to Henry W. Grady. When he came to New York City two years ago,
and in a notable address there told the people what this New South had
done and was trying to do, the public was astonished at his statistics.
The speech was so eloquent, so earnest, so broadly American in tone and
spirit that it attracted wide attention and sent a thrill of admiration
to the heart of every gratified reader. It made him not only famous but
popular all through the North. This fame and popularity were increased
by his recent excellent addresses in Boston. The _Advertiser_ published,
on Thursday last, on the fourth page, an extract from one of these
speeches, entitled “The Hope of the Republic,” and we can do the dead
man no better honor than to recommend to our readers that they turn back
and read that extract again. It expresses the purest sentiment and
highest appreciation of the foundation principles of the Republic.
Mr. Grady was a Democrat and a Southern Democrat. Yet he was a
protectionist and believed that the development of the South depended
upon the maintenance of the protective tariff. Under it the iron
manufactures and various products of the soil in that section of our
country have been increased to a wonderful extent while the general
business interests have strengthened to a remarkable degree. Mr. Grady
has encouraged the incoming of Northern laborers and capitalists and
aided every legitimate enterprise. He has been a politician, always true
to his party’s candidates, though he has been somewhat at variance with
his party’s tariff policy. He has been a good man, a noble, true
Christian gentleman, an earnest, faithful editor and a model laborer for
the promotion of his people’s interests.
------------------
THE MODEL CITIZEN.
-------
_From the “Boston Globe.”_
HENRY W. GRADY dead? It seems almost impossible.
Only ten days ago his fervid oratory rang out in a Boston banquet hall,
and enchanted the hundreds of Boston’s business men who heard it. Only
nine days ago the newspapers carried his glowing words and great
thoughts into millions of homes. And now he lies in the South he loved
so well—dead!
“He has work yet to do,” said the physician, as the great orator lay
dying. “Perhaps his work is finished,” replied Mr. Grady’s mother. She
was right. To the physician, as to many others, it must have seemed that
Mr. Grady’s work was just beginning; that not much had yet been
accomplished. For he was young; only thirty-eight years old. He had
never held a public office, and there is a current delusion that office
is the necessary condition of success for those endowed with political
talents. But Mr. Grady had done his work, and it was a great work, too.
He had done more, perhaps, than any other man to destroy the lingering
animosities of the war and re-establish cordial relations between North
and South. His silvery speech and graphic imagery had opened the minds
of thousands of influential men of the North to a truer conception of
the South. He had shown them that the Old South was a memory only; the
New South a reality. And he had done more than any other man to open the
eyes of the North to the peerless natural advantages of his section, so
that streams of capital began to flow southward to develop those
resources.
He was a living example of what a plain citizen may do for his country
without the aid of wealth, office or higher position than his own
talents and earnest patriotism gave him.
Boston joins with Atlanta and the South in mourning the untimely death
of this eloquent orator, statesmanlike thinker, able journalist and
model citizen. He will long be affectionately remembered in this city
and throughout the North.
------------------
A LOYAL UNIONIST.
-------
_From the “Chicago Times.”_
MR. GRADY was a loyal Unionist. The son of a Union veteran, proud of his
sire’s part in the battle-fields of the rebellion, could not be more so.
He stood manfully against the race prejudice which would lash the negro
or plunder or terrorize him, but he recognized fully the difficulties of
the race problem, and would not blink the fact, which every Northern man
who sojourns in the South soon learns, that safety, progress, peace, and
prosperity for that section forbid that the mere numerical superiority
of the blacks should authorize them to push the white man, with his
superior capability for affairs, from the places where laws are made and
executed. Mr. Grady looked upon the situation dispassionately and told
the truth about it to Northern audiences.
He was an active force in the journalism of the South, where the journal
is still regarded largely as an organ of opinion and the personality of
the editor counts for much. He entered the newspaper field when the
modern idea of news excellence had obtained a full lodgment at the North
and at one or two places South of the Ohio, and while he loved to occupy
the pulpit of the fourth page he was not unmindful of the demand for a
thorough newspaper.
------------------
HIS WORK WAS NOT IN VAIN.
-------
_From the “Cleveland, O., Plaindealer.”_
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.
------------------
THE BEST REPRESENTATIVE OF THE NEW SOUTH.
-------
_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.
------------------
A LAMENTABLE LOSS TO THE COUNTRY.
-------
_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.
------------------
A SAD LOSS.
-------
_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.
------------------
WORDS OF VIRGIN GOLD.
-------
_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.
------------------
SAD NEWS.
-------
_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.
------------------
A LEADER OF LEADERS.
-------
_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.
------------------
A FORCEFUL ADVOCATE.
-------
_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.
------------------
HIS GREAT WORK.
-------
_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.
------------------
NEW ENGLAND’S SORROW.
-------
_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.
------------------
A NOBLE LIFE ENDED.
-------
_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.
------------------
A TYPICAL SOUTHERNER.
-------
_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.
------------------
HIS NAME A HOUSEHOLD POSSESSION.
-------
_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.
------------------
EDITOR, ORATOR, STATESMAN, PATRIOT.
-------
_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.
------------------
A SOUTHERN BEREAVEMENT.
-------
_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.
------------------
A MAN WHO WILL BE MISSED.
-------
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.
------------------
AT THE BEGINNING OF A GREAT CAREER.
-------
_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.
------------------
THE PEACE-MAKERS.
-------
_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.
------------------
ONE OF THE BRIGHTEST.
-------
_From the “Seattle Press.”_
ONE of the brightest men in America passed away on Monday. Henry W.
Grady, the editor of the Atlanta _Constitution_, Georgia’s leading
paper, and which has come to be regarded by many as the ablest paper in
the South, had within a very brief period impressed his personality upon
the current history of the nation. Five years ago he was little more
than locally known. Being a guest at a dinner of the New England Society
at Boston, he made a speech which was the happiest inspiration and
effort of his life. It was the right word spoken at the right time. It
lifted him at once to the dignity of a national figure. It was the
greeting of the New South to the new order of things. It touched the
great heart of the North by its warm tribute to the patriotism and
faithfulness of the martyred President, Abraham Lincoln, being the first
Southern utterance which did full justice to the memory of that great
man. It was not a sycophantic nor an apologetic speech, but the voice of
one who accepts accomplished results in their fullness, recognizes all
the merits of his opponent, and bravely faces the future without
heart-burnings or vain regrets. Mr. Grady’s speech was published in
almost every paper in the land, in whole or in part, and, to borrow an
old phrase, “he woke up one morning and found himself famous.” Since
then all that he has written, said or done has been in the same line of
patriotic duty. He has been no apologist for anything done by the South
during the war. He never cringed. He was willing that he and his should
bear all the responsibility of their course. But he loved the whole
reunited country, and all that he spoke or wrote was intended to advance
good feeling between the sections and the common benefit of all.
Mr. Grady was a partisan, but in the higher sense. He never descended to
the lower levels of controversy. His weapon was argument, not abuse. And
he was capable of rising above his party’s platform. He could not be
shackled by committees or conventions. He nervily and consistently
proclaimed his adhesion to the doctrine of protection to American
industry, although it placed him out of line with his party associates.
------------------
THE SOUTH’S NOBLE SON.
-------
_From the “Rockland, Me., Opinion.”_
THE whole country is deeply grieved and shocked by the announcement of
the death of Mr. Henry W. Grady of Atlanta, Georgia, which occurred last
Monday morning. The land was yet ringing with the matchless eloquence of
his magnificent speech at the merchants’ dinner in Boston, when the news
of his illness came, closely followed by that of his death. The press of
the country was yet teeming with the applause of its best
representatives, when the voice that evoked it is stilled in death, and
one of the most brilliant careers of this generation is suddenly and
prematurely closed. Mr. Grady caught a severe cold during his visit to
Boston, and grew ill rapidly during his return journey. On his arrival
home, he was found to be seriously ill of pneumonia, and the dread
disease took a rapid course to a fatal termination. Mr. Grady was one of
the most popular men in the South. He was an eloquent orator and
brilliant writer. He was born in 1851 in Georgia, graduated at the State
University and also took a course at the University of Virginia. On
coming out of college, Mr. Grady embarked in journalism and devoted a
comfortable fortune to gaining the experience of a successful newspaper
man. Under his management the _Constitution_ of Atlanta, Ga., has gained
a very large circulation. Mr. Grady has persistently refused to accept
office. He won National fame as an orator by his speech at the Pilgrims’
dinner in Brooklyn, two years ago, and has been in great demand at
banquets and similar occasions ever since. His eloquence was of the
warm, moving sort that appeals to the emotions, his logic was sound and
careful and all his utterances were marked by sincerity and candor. He
has also no doubt done more than any one man to remove the prejudices
and misunderstandings that have embittered the people of the North and
South against each other politically, and to raise the great race
problems of the day from the ruck of sectionalism and partisanship upon
the high plane of national statesmanship. The South has lost a brave,
noble and brilliant son, who served her as effectively as devotedly; but
his work was needed as much and quite as useful at the North, and his
death is indeed a national misfortune.
------------------
BRILLIANT AND GIFTED.
-------
_Dr. H. M. Field in “New York Evangelist.”_
IT is with a grief that we cannot express, that we write the above name,
and add that he who bore it is no longer among the living. The most
brilliant and gifted man in all the South—the one who, though still
young, had acquired immense popularity and influence, which made him
useful alike to the South and to the whole country—has gone to his
grave. He has died in his prime, at the early age of thirty-eight, in
the maturity of his powers, with the rich promise of life all before
him.
Our acquaintance with Mr. Grady began nine years ago, when we saw him
for the first time in the office of a brother of ours, who was able to
give him the help which he needed to purchase a quarter of the Atlanta
_Constitution_. This at once made his position, as it gave him a point
of vantage from which to exercise his wonderful gifts. From that moment
his career was open before him; his genius would do the rest. This
kindness he never forgot, and it led to his personal relations with us,
which afterwards became those of intimacy and friendship.
When we first saw him, his face was almost boyish, round and ruddy with
health, his eyes sparkling with intelligence, as well as with the wit
and humor which he perhaps inherited from some ancestor of Irish blood.
His face, like his character, matured with years; yet it always had a
youthful appearance, which was the outward token of the immense vitality
within him. We have seldom known a man who was so intensely alive—alive
to the very tips of his fingers. As a writer, he was one of the very
best for the variety of work required in the office of a great journal.
His style was animated and picturesque, and he had an infinite
versatility; turning his pen now to this subject and now to that;
throwing off here a sharp paragraph, and there a vigorous editorial; but
never in either writing a dull line. The same freshness and alertness of
mind he showed in conversation, where he was as brilliant as with his
pen. He would tell a story with all the animation and mimicry of an
actor, alternating with touches of humor and pathos that were quite
inimitable. It was the chief pleasure of our visit to Atlanta to renew
this delightful acquaintance—a pleasure which we had twice last winter
in going to, and returning from, Florida. Never shall we forget the last
time that we sat before his fire, with his charming family and several
clergymen of Atlanta, and listened to the endless variety of his
marvelous talk.
Nor was his power confined to this limited circle. He was not only a
brilliant conversationalist and writer, but a genuine orator. No man
could take an audience from the first sentence, and hold it to the last,
more perfectly than he. His speech before the New England Society in
this city three years ago gave him at once a national reputation. It
came to us when abroad, and even so far away, on the shores of the
Mediterranean, at Palermo, in Sicily, we were thrilled by its fervid
eloquence. A second speech, not less powerful, was delivered but two
weeks since in Boston; and it was in coming on to this, and in a visit
to Plymouth Rock, where he was called upon to make a speech in the open
air, that he took the cold which developed into pneumonia, and caused
his death.
But Mr. Grady’s chief claim to grateful remembrance by the whole country
is that he was a pacificator between the North and the South. Born in
the South, he loved it intensely. His own family had suffered in the war
an irreparable loss. He once said to us as we came from his house, where
we had been to call upon his mother, whose gentle face was saddened by a
great sorrow that had cast a shadow over her life, “You know my father
was killed at Petersburg.” But in spite of these sad memories, he
cherished no hatred, nor bitterness, but felt that the prosperity of
millions depended on a complete reconciliation of the two sections, so
that North and South should once more be one country. This aim he kept
constantly in view, both in his speeches and in his writings, wherein
there were some things in which we did not agree, as our readers may see
in the letter published this very week on our first page. But we always
recognized his sincerity and manliness, and his ardent love for the land
of his birth, for all which we admired him and loved him—and love him
still—and on this Christmas day approach with the great crowd of
mourners, and cast this flower upon his new-made grave.
------------------
THE DEATH OF HENRY W. GRADY.
-------
_John Boyle O’Reilly, in the “Boston Pilot.”_
“THE South is in tears!” said the sorrowful dispatch from Atlanta on
Monday last; and the grief and the sympathy of the North went freely
southward in response. Next to his own city, indeed, this death strikes
Boston most deeply, for here with us, only a few days ago, he poured
forth the noblest stream of eloquence that ever flowed from his gifted
tongue. It matters not now that many New Englanders, the _Pilot_
included, dissented from his Southern view of the colored question. We
disagreed with the word, but we honored the silver tongue and the heart
of gold beneath it. “He was the most eloquent man,” said the Hon. P. A.
Collins, one who knows what eloquence consists of, “that I ever heard
speak in Boston.”
Since the olden times there has been no more striking illustration of
the power of oratory to appeal to the nation and to make a man famous
among his people than is found in the career of Mr. Grady. Within ten
years he leaped from the position of a modest Georgian editor to that of
the best-known and the greatest orator on this continent. So potent is
the true gift of eloquence when the substructure is recognized as solid
in character and profoundly earnest in purpose.
To Irish-Americans, as to the State that has lost him, the death of Mr.
Grady is a special affliction. He represented in a fine type the
patriotism and the manly quality of a citizen that every Irish-American
ought to keep in spiritual sight. He was a man to be trusted and loved.
He was a proud Georgian and a patriotic American, though his father had
died for “the Lost Cause.” He was, while in Boston, introduced to the
great audience by Colonel Charles H. Taylor as “the matchless orator of
Georgia.” Playfully, and yet half seriously, he accounted for himself
thus: “My father was an Irishman—and my mother was a woman. I come
naturally by my eloquence.”
North or South, it matters not the section—all men must honor such a
character. His brief life reached a high achievement. He was a type of
American to be hailed with delight—courageous, ready of hand and voice,
proudly sentimental yet widely reserved, devoted to his State and loyal
to the Republic, public-spirited as a statesman, and industrious and
frugal as a townsman, and the head of a happy family. His devotion to
his parents and to his wife and children was the last lesson of his
life. In his Boston speech he drew tears from thousands by the unnamed
picture of his father’s death for the bleeding South; from Boston he
went South, insisting on being taken to his home when they told him in
New York that he was dangerously ill. He died surrounded by his
own—mother, wife, and children. Almost his last words to his mother
were: “Father died fighting for the South, and I am happy to die talking
for her.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRIBUTES
OF THE
SOUTHERN PRESS.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
As Mr. Grady so eloquently expressed in his last hours: “Tell mother I
died for the South, the land I love so well!” And this was as true as it
could be of any patriot who falls on the field of battle.
’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, describes it in a letter
to a friend in this city as “a cannon-ball in full flight, fringed with
flowers.” The occasion, the audience, the surroundings, were all
inspiring. He was pleading for the South—for the people he loved—and to
say that he reached the topmost height of the great argument, is comment
and compliment enough. The closing paragraphs are republished this
morning, and no man ever uttered a sublimer peroration. He spoke as one
might have spoken standing consciously within the circling wings of
death, when the mind is expanded by the rapid crowding of great events
and the lips are touched with prophetic fire.
The death of Henry Grady was a public calamity. He had the ear of the
North as no other Southern man had, or has. He was old enough to have
served in the Confederate armies, yet young enough, at the surrender,
while cherishing the traditions of the past, to still lay firm hold on
the future in earnest sympathy for a restored and reconciled Union. In
this work he was the South’s most conspicuous leader.
But his life-work is finished. Let the people of the South re-form their
broken ranks and move forward to the completion of the work which his
genius made more easy of accomplishment and which his death has
sanctified. In the words he himself would have spoken, the words
employed by another brilliant leader on undertaking a great campaign,
each of the soldiers enlisted for the South’s continued progress will
cry: “Spurn me if I flee; support me if I fall, but let us move on! In
God’s name, let us move on!”
------------------
THERE WAS NONE GREATER.
-------
_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 arms 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 ever 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.
Mr. Grady had the ear and heart of the South because he loved its
history and its very soil, and because he was the leading exponent of
the idea that is working to build up a prosperous manufacturing New
South. He had the ear of the North because, while he had no apologies to
make for Southern actions and was proud of Southern achievements, he had
turned his eyes to the morning and lived in the busy world of to-day. He
recognized changed conditions and did not bemoan fate. He stood up in
his manliness and his faith and went to work to bring prosperity where
poverty cast its blight. He inspired others in the South with faith in
the future of his section, and invited Northern men of money, brains,
and brawn to come South and make a fortune; and when they accepted his
invitation, as not a few did, he gave them a brotherly welcome and made
them feel that they were at home. In this he showed practical
patriotism. Under no temptation—even when speaking in Boston—did he ever
so far forget his manhood as to
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. He was a member of the Methodist
church. He had profound convictions, and his eloquent speeches in favor
of Prohibition in Atlanta will not be forgotten. No man ever spoke more
earnest words for what he conceived to be the safety of the homes of
Atlanta than he. They will long be treasured up with fondness by those
who mourn that he was cut down in the zenith of what promised the most
brilliant career that lay out before any man in America.
Henry W. Grady was a grandson of North Carolina. His father was a native
of Macon county, but early in life emigrated to Rome, Georgia, to make
his fortune, and he made it. He was one of those men who succeed in
every undertaking. Everything he touched seemed to turn to gold. He
prospered and made a large estate. When the war came on he had a
presentiment that he would be killed. But notwithstanding that idea took
possession of him, he raised and equipped _at his own expense_ a
regiment of cavalry, and hastened to the front as its captain. His
company was attached as company G to the 25th N.C. Regiment, commanded
by Col. Thos. L. Clingman. Eventually Capt. Grady was promoted to be
major of the regiment. In the first battle he fell mortally wounded,
showing how true was his presentiment of death. He was surrounded by his
men, some of them brave, sturdy North Carolinians. He left a legacy of
honor to his son, who always called North Carolina his grandmother and
had a deep affection for its sons.
Mr. Grady graduated with high honors at the University of Georgia in
Athens. Then he spent two years at the University of Virginia, where he
devoted himself rather to the study of literature and to the work of the
societies than to the regular college course. He won high honors there
as an orator and as a debater. He was as well equipped and as ready and
as effective as a debater as he became later on as an orator and editor.
He was regarded there as a universal genius and the most charming of
men. Leaving college he established a paper at Rome. Later in connection
with Mr. Alston (North Carolina stock) he established the Atlanta
_Herald_. It was a brilliant paper but was not a financial success. Our
readers will remember that Mr. Alston was shot in the Capitol by State
Treasurer Cox. Upon the failure of the _Herald_, Mr. Grady went to New
York. He was without money and went there looking for something to do.
He went into the office of the New York _Herald_ and asked for a
position.
“What can you do?” asked the managing editor, when Mr. Grady asked for a
position. “Anything,” was the reply of the young Georgian, conscious of
his powers and conscious of ability to do any kind of work that was to
be done in a great newspaper office. The editor asked him where he was
from, and learning that he was from Georgia, said: “Do you know anything
about Georgia politics?” Now if there was any subject which he knew all
about it was Georgia politics, and he said so. “Then sit down,” said the
managing editor, “and write me an article on Georgia politics.” He sat
down and dashed off an article of the brightest matter showing thorough
insight into the situation in Georgia and thorough knowledge of the
leaders in that State. He was always a facile writer, and all his
articles were printed without erasing or re-writing. The article was put
into the pigeon-hole, and Mr. Grady took his departure. He left the
office, so he said, very despondent, thinking the article might be
published after several weeks, but fearing that it would never see the
light. What was his surprise and joy to see it in the _Herald_ the next
morning. He went down to the office and was engaged as correspondent for
Georgia and the South. In this capacity he wrote letters upon Southern
topics of such brilliancy as have never been surpassed, if equaled, in
the history of American journalism. They gained for him a wide
reputation, and made him a great favorite in Georgia. The public men of
that State recognized his ability, and saw how much he might do to
develop the resources and advance the prosperity and fame of Georgia if
at the head of a great State paper. The late Alexander H. Stephens
interested himself in Mr. Grady and assisted to get him on the staff of
the _Constitution_. From the day he went to Atlanta on the staff of the
_Constitution_ until his death his best energies and his great abilities
were directed toward making it a great paper, and a powerful factor in
developing the resources of Georgia. It became the most successful of
Southern newspapers, and is to-day a competitor with the great papers of
the North. To have achieved this unprecedented success in journalism
were honor enough to win in a life-time. He was confessedly the Gamaliel
of Southern journalism, and the best of it all was that he was, as was
said of Horace Greeley after his death, “a journalist because he had
something to say which he believed mankind would be the better for
knowing; not because he wanted something for himself which journalism
might secure for him.”
He was a Saul, and stood head and shoulders above all his fellows as an
orator as well as an editor. We cannot dwell upon his reputation as an
orator, or recount the scenes of his successes. We had heard him only in
impromptu efforts and in short introductory speeches, where he easily
surpassed any man whom we ever heard. He had a fine physique, a big,
round, open, manly face, was thick-set, was pleasing in style, and had a
winning and captivating voice. He could rival Senator Vance in telling
an anecdote. He could equal Senator Ransom in a polished, graceful
oration. He could put Governor Fowle to his best in his classical
illustrations. He could equal Waddell in his eloquent flights. In a word
he had more talent as a public speaker than any man we ever knew; and
added to that he had _heart_, _soul_, _fire_—the essentials of true
oratory. We recall four speeches which gave him greatest reputation. One
was in Texas at a college commencement, we think; another at the New
York banquet on “The New South”; the third at the University of
Virginia; and the last—(alas! his last words)—at the Boston banquet just
two weeks ago. These speeches, as well as others he has made, deserve to
live. The last one—published in last week’s _Chronicle_—is emphasized by
his untimely death. In it he had so ably and eloquently defended the
South and so convincingly plead for a united country based upon mutual
confidence and sympathy that, in view of his death, his words seem to
have been touched by a patriotism and a devoutness akin to inspiration.
His broad catholicity and his great patriotism bridged all sectional
lines, and he stood before the country the most eloquent advocate of “a
Union of Hearts” as well as a “Union of Hands.” As the coming greatest
leader of the South, he sounded the key-note of sublimest patriotism.
Less profound than Daniel Webster, his burning words for the perpetuity
of the Union, with mutual trust and no sectional antagonism, were not
less thrilling nor impressive. The Southern people ought to read and
re-read this great speech, which, doubtless, cost him his life, and make
it the lamp to their feet. If we heed his words and bury sectionalism,
it will be written of him that “though dead, he yet speaketh.”
Star of the South!
To thee all eyes and hearts were turned,
As round thy path, from plain to sea,
The glory of thy greatness burned.
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 the 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 this 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 young 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 perception; 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 him 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
between 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 in 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 Georgia. 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 greater 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.
------------------
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 ending 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.”
------------------
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 to 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, and 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 it 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.
------------------
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 South 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.
------------------
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
Boston’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 this 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 to 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 was 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 that 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 Georgia 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 went 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. Two 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.
Some 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 such 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 life, 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.
------------------
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, and 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 of 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 be 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.
From 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!
But 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. In 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 was 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 brilliant 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.
Mr. Grady, as the representative of what people are pleased to call the
“New South,” but which is the “Old South” rehabilitated, was, in the
providence of God, calculated to do for his country what Hill, Gordon
and other brilliant lights of the old _régime_ could never have
compassed. As David, “the man of war,” was not permitted to build the
temple, but that glory was reserved for Solomon, so Grady, the exponent
of present principles, was permitted to gather the fragments and broken
columns of the South’s ruined fortunes and begin the erection of a
temple of prosperity so grand in proportion, so symmetrical in outline,
as to attract, in its incomplete state, the admiration of the world.
In the extremity of our grief we are apt to magnify our loss, but this,
indeed, seems irreparable, and we can take no comfort in the assurance
of the philosopher who codified the experience of the past into the
assurance that great ability is always found equal to the demand. On
whom will Grady’s mantle fall? There really seems to be none worthy to
wear what he so easily graced. And every Southern heart weighed down
with a sense of its woe cannot but ask,
O death, why arm with cruelty thy power
To spare the idle weed yet lop the flower?
------------------
STILLED IS THE ELOQUENT TONGUE.
-------
_From the “Brunswick Times.”_
HENRY W. GRADY is dead!
Hushed forever is the voice of the South’s most wonderful orator!
With the laurel upon his brow, with the plaudits of a nation ringing in
his ears, with the love of his people freshly spoken, with a crown of
glory about him, the matchless defender of the South has passed from
earth, and beyond the silence of the stars his soul dwells in the
companionship of the great who have gone before.
With his sorrow fresh upon the South, this death and loss following so
closely upon that other in New Orleans but a few days ago, the heart is
not in keeping with the brain, and not now can the pen dipped only in
tears write.
Henry Grady had not reached the zenith of his fame, for the circle was
widening for him and there were still brighter flowers for him to pluck,
and in her hand Honor held out still richer prizes. But the mystery of
death is upon him, and from his hand has dropped the forceful, graceful
pen, and in silence and peace he sleeps for the grave.
With a superb intellect, with an eloquence rivalling the golden-tonged
Chrysostom, with a love almost unapproached by any other for the South
and her people, he stood peerless and matchless as his land’s defender
and leader in all that made for her peace, prosperity and happiness.
But his sun has set. It matters not that in all brightness it went down;
it matters not that he died full of honors; about that grave a people
will gather with tears fast flowing and hearts crushed and bleeding. It
is hard to give up one so grand of mind, so wonderful of tongue, so
magnetic of personality, so richly endowed in all that equips the great
leader.
And such was Henry W. Grady.
Atlanta will mourn him, Georgia will weep for him, and the South will
sorrow indeed.
Upon his bier the _Times_ lays this tribute and stands reverent and
uncovered by the grave of Georgia’s most brilliant son.
------------------
A SHINING CAREER.
-------
_From the “Macon Telegraph.”_
HENRY GRADY is dead. This announcement carried sorrow all over Georgia
yesterday, for there were few men in whom the people of this State felt
so much interest or for whom they cherished such a warm affection as
they did for this gifted and lovable man. He had not attained his
thirty-ninth year when “God’s finger touched him” and closed his
remarkable career, but his name was familiar from one limit of this
Union to the other. Georgia had no more famous citizen, and perhaps
there never was a man in this State in private station who was so widely
known or so much admired. Mr. Grady never held a public office, and yet
he was a recognized force in Georgia politics almost before he had
reached the years of statutory manhood. He devoted his life to
journalism, and in his chosen field achieved a national fame. He began
his career as a boy editor in Rome, and at an age when most men are
merely selecting their standards and shaping themselves for the real
work of life, he became a prominent and influential figure, a leader of
thought, and a promoter of public enterprises. Eighteen years ago he
moved to Atlanta to pursue his profession in a broader field, and
immediately made himself felt as a positive force in the community. The
debt which Atlanta owes him is great indeed. No man did more to inspire
the pride of community, to set on foot and carry to success great
enterprises for the welfare and progress of the city, to rally its
people to an enthusiastic unanimity on all questions affecting local
prosperity than did Henry W. Grady. These public services would have
endeared him to the people of his adopted city, but they were not so
admirable as his private benefactions. He was first and foremost in many
good works, the fame of which never went beyond the homes of the poor
and unfortunate who were relieved by his ministrations. His hand was
open always to the stricken and needy. He gave to the afflicted with a
generosity which was oblivious to his own circumstances. Of his
influence in promoting public enterprises there are enduring monuments.
By his eloquence of tongue and pen he raised in less than two weeks
$85,000 for the erection of the beautiful Young Men’s Christian
Association building which now adorns one of the principal streets of
Atlanta. He was the moving spirit in the building of the Chamber of
Commerce and the enlargement of its membership until it reached
proportions that made it a power not only in matters of business but in
all the public concerns of the city. The Confederate Soldiers’ Home of
Georgia is a monument to him, for he seized mere suggestions and made
them the text of an appeal which stirred the hearts of the people of
Georgia and evoked a long delayed tribute of gratitude to the broken
veterans of the lost cause. The Cotton Exposition of 1880 and the
Piedmont Expositions of 1887 and 1889, from which Atlanta reaped immense
benefits, were largely due to his persistent labors.
While Mr. Grady became prominent in Atlanta, and justly esteemed by his
fellow-citizens on account of works and triumphs like these, he rose
into national prominence by reason of other evidences of his genius. His
address to the New England Society in New York in December, 1886, was
one of the most famous occasional speeches ever delivered in this
country. The morning after its delivery he literally awoke to find
himself famous throughout the country. Since that time he made various
public addresses which commanded the attention of the United States and
became subjects of common conversation among the people. His speech at
the Dallas Exposition last year and his address to the legislatures of
Georgia and South Carolina at the Augusta Exposition a few weeks later,
were themes of the public press of the entire country. But the best and
ablest public speech of his life was his last. It was that which he
delivered two weeks ago at Boston in the performance of a mission which
proved fatal to him. In this, as in all his famous public addresses, he
seemed to strive with a passionate ardor and a most persuasive eloquence
to bring the North and the South to a better understanding of each
other, to foster the spirit of mutual respect and mutual forbearance, to
inculcate the great idea that this is a re-united country and that the
duty of every good citizen in its every section is to strive for its
domestic peace, for its moral, social and material progress, and for its
glory among the nations of the earth. He handled these great themes with
a master hand and invested his exposition of them with a most
fascinating eloquence. Few men in Georgia ever accomplished so much in
so few years. Few men in Georgia were even the object of such affection
at home and such admiration beyond the bounds of the State. The career
which has been so suddenly cut off was shining with golden promise. The
future seemed to be full of honors and there was everything surrounding
the present that could make life sweet. But the end has come. The most
eloquent tongue in Georgia has been smitten into everlasting silence in
this world. A great, generous heart has been stilled.
A useful citizen, after a brief but busy and momentous life, which was
productive of many enterprises of public importance and beneficent
tendency, has folded his hands in the eternal rest. God’s peace be with
him!
------------------
THE GREATEST CALAMITY.
-------
_From the “Augusta News.”_
CAN it be possible? Can it be that the brightest star in the galaxy of
our great luminaries is blotted out and stricken from its orbit just as
it was rising in full career to the zenith of usefulness, influence and
splendor? Can it be that the most brilliant meteor which has flashed
across our sky for a generation has fallen to earth literally burned to
ashes by its own fiery contact with the grosser air and elements of the
natural world? Can it be that the light has gone out of the most
magnetic mind and the spirit gone from the most resistless personality
in this sovereign State? Can it be that the South has lost the man who
has been first and foremost in representing its real and progressive
needs and issues, and who has done more for this section than all the
young men of his day combined? Can it be that the kindly heart has
ceased to beat which throbbed in love first for a devoted family, and
next and always for his native State?
Even so, for while still the shadows of the night hung in mournful pall
about his home and dawn lingered as if loth to look upon the lifeless
form of one whom all his people loved, his spirit soared away to greet
the dawning of an eternal day and the mortal part of Henry Woodfin Grady
lay cold in death.
Dead, did we say? Was ever the coming of Death’s angel more untimely? So
it seems to us, with our poor mortal vision, but there is an eye above,
all-seeing; a Providence, all-timely; a Power, almighty; and to His will
we bow this day. In His sight the stricken star is not blotted out but
borne aloft to a brighter realm. In His providence the brilliant meteor
of a day is not fallen, but simply shorn of all its dross and burnished
in beauty and splendor for its flight through all the ages. In His power
the spark which no longer animates the mortal man glows again in glory
and sends a ray of loving light from Heaven to cheer and console the
broken hearts on earth, and remind us that his influence and work are
not lost, but will live and bear blessed fruit for generations yet to
come.
Henry Grady has gone from earth ere yet the dew of youth has been drunk
up by the midday sun of maturity, but in the brief span of life allotted
to him what a world of work he has done, and what a name he made for
himself! Not two-score years had passed over his head, and yet he had
attained all the substantial success and honor which mortal man might
wish. He was not only loved all over Georgia, but he was famous all over
the country, and no public occasion of national import was deemed
complete without his presence and his eloquent voice. He was a magician
in his mastery of men, and the witchery of his voice was enchantment to
any audience in any section. He was coming to be regarded as the
representative of the whole South in the editor’s chair and on the
rostrum, and it is truly said of him that he has done more for the
material advancement of this section than any other man for the past
fifteen years. His death is the greatest calamity which has befallen the
South since the late war, and Israel may indeed mourn this day as for
her first-born.
The name of Henry W. Grady will not be forgotten, for it will live in
the affectionate regard of Georgians and grow greater in the good
results which will follow his life-work. The fact that he literally died
in the service of the South, as a result of cold contracted just after
the impassioned delivery of his recent grand oration in Boston, will
bind his name and memory nearer and dearer to Southern hearts; for to
warrior or hero was never given a better time or a nobler way to die
than to the man who gave his voice, his heart, his reputation and his
life to healing the wounds of a fratricidal war, and to the harmonious
building up of his own beloved South as the fairest and richest domain
of our common country.
God bless his name and his memory, and be a strong and abiding support
to his broken-hearted widow and household this day!
------------------
NO ORDINARY GRIEF.
-------
_From the “Columbus Ledger.”_
A GREAT loss has befallen the South in the death of Henry W. Grady, and
deep sorrow rests upon the hearts of her people.
He was no ordinary man, and his death calls forth no ordinary grief.
Brilliant in intellect, strong in his convictions, untiring in his
efforts to promote the welfare of his country, genial, courteous,
kind-hearted, ever ready to help the unfortunate, the loss of such a man
cannot be estimated. When results were to be achieved, when
encouragement was needed, his eloquent tongue, his ready pen, his
helping hand were used with telling effect. His creed was to build up
and not to tear down; to encourage and not to discourage; to help and
not to hurt. His efforts were ever directed to the promotion of his
State and the South, and no other man has accomplished so much for them
as he. His last effort was for his country and his people, and the good
which will result from his eloquent speech at Boston, will be a lasting
monument. It would have been impossible for any man to have attained to
Mr. Grady’s position without coming into contact with those who
disagreed with him on many points, but even these acknowledged his
greatness. To read of him was to admire him; to know him was to love
him. In the midst of our sorrow let us thank God that He lends to earth
such men.
------------------
A PLACE HARD TO FILL.
-------
_From the “Griffin News.”_
HENRY W. GRADY died at his home in Atlanta late Sunday night of
pneumonia, contracted during his recent trip North. His illness was very
short and his untimely death is a shock not only to his many friends and
admirers, but to the whole State in which he was so well known, and will
be received with regret outside its borders. He was a beautiful writer
and a brilliant orator, as well as a prominent factor in the development
of Atlanta. He will be greatly missed in that city, and his place in the
_Constitution_, of which he was easily the head, will be hard to fill.
Peace to his ashes.
------------------
“JUST HUMAN.”
-------
_From the “Thomasville Enterprise.”_
THACKERAY, the greatest of English novelists, in the concluding words of
Pendennis, says: “I have not painted a hero, only a man and a brother.”
When Henry W. Grady made his first appearance before the public as a
lecturer, his subject was the words that begin this article—“Just
Human.” This was years ago, when he was only known to the world as a
brilliant young journalist, and even then his fame for quick perception,
incisive utterance and felicitous manner, was only begun. Later years
added to that fame, and with each year, there seemed to come to him a
wider range of ideas, and a bolder conception of the most effectual way
to put those ideas into burning, glowing language.
After he had made his memorable speech before the New England Society in
New York, each succeeding one only raised him higher in public esteem as
a matchless, a magnetic orator, who could wield human hearts as he
would. Through all these speeches, and in all that he ever wrote, there
lingers, like a sweet incense, this thought, that he recognized that men
were “Just Human,” and entitled to all that charity could offer in
extenuation of their faults.
There is not a heart in all the world that has received one pang from
aught that Henry Grady ever wrote or said; his utterances, whether from
the rostrum or through the columns of his paper, always tended to make
the world better, and his ambition seemed to be to smooth away the
differences that annoy, and the bitternesses that gall. There is no man
in all the country that can take up his work where he left it.
Where can we find the same impassioned eloquence that swayed, despite
its force, as gently as the summer breezes that come across fields of
ripe grain?
Where can we find the same acute feeling for the sorrows and sufferings
of men and women, “Just Human,” the same sweet pleading for their
extenuation or their amelioration?
When the epitaph over his grave comes to be written, no better rendering
of the true greatness of the departed could be made than is contained in
the suggestive name of his first lecture, “Just Human,” for the noble
instinct that taught him to plead so eloquently for the failings of his
fellow men, taught him to enter the Divine presence, asking for himself
that mercy he had asked for others.
------------------
GEORGIA WEEPS.
-------
_From the “Union News.”_
HON. HENRY W. GRADY, of the _Constitution_, died at his home in Atlanta
this morning at 3:40.
This cruel blow shivers every heart with agony, even as the thunderbolt
of heaven rends the mighty monarch of the forest.
His death is a loss to Georgia. Every man feels it as a personal
bereavement. He has done more for the material development of the State
than any other one man in it. He was an enthusiast in the cause of
education, an upholder of the church, an advocate of industrial
training, a promoter of every enterprise calculated to benefit Georgia
and her people. He was a friend to humanity, true to himself, to his
country and to his God.
The most brilliant light in Southern journalism is veiled in darkness—a
manly heart has ceased to beat; the tongue that has electrified
thousands with magic eloquence is silent forever; the fingers that
wielded the pen of genius and never traced a line in bitterness or
malice, but was always uplifted in behalf of charity, love and good
will, in behalf of progress, industry and enterprise, in behalf of the
South and her institutions, his State and her people, are cold in death;
the once warm hand of benevolence and fraternal greeting is chilled
forever; a golden life is ended, but his works live after him, as a
priceless heritage to his State, a boon to his people. The influence of
his example pervades the State as a delightful aroma.
The dispensations of Providence are mysterious. It is strange fate, past
all human understanding, why so excellent a spirit, a man of so much
influence, should be cut down in the glory of his life, in the richest
prime of his royal manhood.
Only a few days ago he stood in a blaze of glory in a Northern city and
electrified thousands by his matchless oratory, in the presentation of a
question that did the South great good and justice, and did much to
soften the animosities of the North toward the South, and establish more
fraternal relations between the two sections. But even while the
plaudits of the admiring multitude were ringing in his ears, and the
press of the country was singing his praises, the fatal hand of disease
was laid upon him, and he was brought back to his own sunny and beloved
Southland to die.
Mr. Grady was a popular idol. He was destined to reap the highest
political honors in the State. His name was being prominently mentioned
in connection with the Governorship and Senatorship of Georgia.
Democratic leaders sought his favor. His influence was felt throughout
the entire State. His support was an omen of success.
Ben Hill died, and his place has never been supplied in Georgia. Mr.
Grady approached nearer to it than any other man. Now Mr. Grady is gone,
and his duplicate cannot be found in the State. No man in recent years
could so attract the eye and fasten the attention of the North. The
death of no other Georgian at this time would have been so calamitous.
The star was rapidly hastening to the zenith of its brilliancy and
greatest magnitude when suddenly it went out in darkness, but across the
industrial and political firmament of the country it has left an
effulgent track whose reflection illumines the world.
------------------
A GRAND MISSION.
-------
_From the “West Point Press.”_
SO much has been said about the lamented Grady that we may not be able
to offer anything new. But as we feel that his untimely death is an
irreparable loss we must offer our heartfelt tribute.
He was the most unselfish slave to friends, and to duty. As an editor he
was brilliant and at all times as fearless as a Spartan; as an orator,
age considered, he stood without a peer within the broad realm of his
native land, and although but in the full vigor of manhood he has left
upon record speeches that compare favorably with the master efforts of
Calhoun and Webster. As a companion he was genial, jovial and untiring
in his efforts to entertain; as a friend there was no bound to his
fidelity.
If you would know the beauty and grandeur of Henry Grady’s character, go
and learn it at the homes of poverty where he delighted to turn in the
light, by his many offices of love and charity. If you would know the
kindness of his generous heart go to those whom he has lifted from the
vale of poverty and given encouragement to look up. Ask the army of
newsboys for a chapter upon the life of Henry Grady and you will hear
words to convince you that a philanthropist has been called hence. It
seemed to us the other day while in Atlanta, as they said “Paper, sir,”
that there was a sadness in the tone, and that a great sorrow was upon
their hearts. Yes, those newsboys miss Henry Grady, for he was their
friend and protector. Words of eulogy cannot restore those who cross the
dark river; if they could there has been enough said to recall Henry
Grady to the high position he honored by a life of unselfishness. His
mission, only begun, was a grand one, and we trust his mantle may fall
upon some one who will carry on his work.
------------------
THE SOUTH LOVED HIM.
-------
_From the “Darien Timber Gazette.”_
SELDOM has the nation’s heart been so saddened as by the news of Henry
W. Grady’s death. Henry W. Grady, although comparatively young, has
conquered this vast continent—east and west, north and south—and his
many victories have been bloodless. He has truly demonstrated that the
pen is mightier than the sword. An intellect exceptionally brilliant, an
indomitable courage, a judgment keen, clear and cool, a character
unspotted and unassailable—these are the weapons with which Henry W.
Grady captured the nation.
The South loves him for his unflinching devotion to its interests; the
North admires him for the conservatism which always characterized his
political actions. The brilliancy of his intellect all admit. We venture
to say that there lives not a man in the United States to-day whose
death would be more sincerely or more universally mourned.
That a career so unusually promising should have been so suddenly cut
off is sad indeed—sad especially for the South, whose claims he so ably
advocated and so successfully furthured. The severing of the still more
tender ties between wife and husband, mother and son, while in the youth
of his glory, adds another gloomy chapter to the death of Southland’s
most patriotic and brilliant son. Millions will bow their heads in grief
with the loving wife and devoted mother.
We read and re-read the words of Henry W. Grady’s last speech with a
strange fascination. They are like the last notes of the dying swan and
will doubtless have much more weight under the sad circumstances. He has
literally laid down his life that the colored man might enjoy his in
peace and prosperity.
------------------
NO SADDER NEWS.
-------
_From the “Marietta Journal.”_
NO sadder news ever fell upon the ears of this people than the
announcement that “Henry Grady is dead!” It staggered our people like a
bolt of lightning from a clear sky.
His death took place at the family residence in Atlanta at 3:40 o’clock
Monday morning, December 22. While on a visit to Boston, where he
delivered the grandest speech of his life, he took cold, and being ill
before he left home, he was prostrated on his return home, his sickness
culminating in pneumonia and death. He was thirty-eight years old at the
time of his death, and no private citizen at that age ever attained the
renown that Grady had. As an orator and journalist he was without a
peer; gifted above his fellows to sway men by his pen or his voice, he
won the applause and admiration and love of his countrymen wherever he
came in contact with them. His young life and genius had been devoted to
deeds of kindness, peace, unity and charity. Selfishness did not enter
his heart, that always beat in response to the woes and sufferings of
his fellow men.
There was a charm and sparkle about his writings that never failed to
captivate the senses, please and entertain. The South lost one of her
brightest minds and stanchest champions in the death of Henry Grady.
There is no man that can take his place in the rare gifts that so
befittingly endowed him in the grand work in which he was engaged. His
loss is an irreparable one. Sorrow and gloom pervade the hearts of our
people over this sad event. We may not understand how one so superbly
gifted, with capacities for the accomplishment of so much good in the
world, is taken, and many who cumber the earth and are stumbling blocks,
are left, but we know the hand of Providence is behind it all, and He is
too wise to err, too good to be unkind.
Grand and noble Grady, we mourn your death; but we know a soul so
radiant with love for humanity, is now at rest with the redeemed.
------------------
GEORGIA’S NOBLE SON.
-------
_From the “Madison Advertiser.”_
IN view of the innumerable, heartfelt and touching memorials to this
gifted child of genius, anything that we might add would be as Hyperion
to a Satyr. But moved by a feeling of profound grief at our’s and the
Nation’s loss, we claim the privilege of giving, as humble members of
the craft, expression to our high regard for the character of Georgia’s
noble son, and mingle a tear with those of the entire country upon the
grave of a great and good man.
In early life he manifested a ripeness and decision of purpose in
selecting a calling for which he conceived he had an aptitude. Nor was
his judgment erroneous, for, with rare genius, coupled with energy and
untiring application, he soon found a place amongst the first
journalists of the country. How, with his gifted pen, he convinced the
judgment, moved the emotions and sympathies, inspired to lofty resolve
and the cultivation of gentle kindness, none knew better than his
constant readers.
Perhaps no character in Georgia, we may say in the South, was possessed
of such varied, versatile talent. Profuse in rhetorical attainments,
gifted in oratory, profound in thought, facile and versatile as a
writer, an encyclopædia of statistics, he presented a combination
amounting to an anomaly. Coming upon the stage of action at a period
when the crown was torn from our Southland and she bent beneath the
cross, when the gore of his patriot father, poured out on the fields of
Virginia, was still red before his vision and calling as it were for
vengeance, he remembered the vow of the greatest Captain of the age,
taken at Appomattox, the injunction of our recently departed Chieftain,
and set his noble brain, gifted pen and silver tongue to the herculean
task of extinguishing the embers of sectional hate; to a recognition of
the rights, and adjustment of the wrongs of his beloved South, and the
rehabilitating of the great American nation, under the ægis of
constitutional equality.
His strong and graceful effusions in the Atlanta _Constitution_ had
attracted universal attention, and put men everywhere to thinking.
Blended with so much of genial kindness and courtesy, while abating
nothing of truth or right, they won commendation, even from unwilling
ears. Nor were they confined to one theme. Every work of industry,
labor, love or charity found in him a potent advocate, convincing by his
logic, and persuading by his gentle, finished rhetoric. As a journalist,
among the craft and the world of readers, he was recognized as without a
superior, scarcely with a peer.
But burning with a grand, great purpose, he felt with the inspiration of
true greatness, that there was work for his tongue, as well as pen. With
a penetrating judgment, he felt that the territory of those misguided
and uninformed as to the condition and burdens of his beloved South must
be invaded, and the ear of those who read but little or nothing of her
grievances must be reached. Unexpectedly an opportunity was opened up
for him, and he appeared before a cultivated audience in the great
metropolis, New York.
To say that wonder, admiration and conviction was the result of his
grand effort on that occasion, would be to put it mildly. Never, since
the surrender, have any utterances, from any source, commanded, up to
that time, so much attention and attracted so much careful and
unprejudiced consideration of the situation of the South. From the
position of an accomplished journalist, he bloomed out into a grand
orator. His name and his grand effort was on every tongue, and every
true Georgian thanked God that a David had arisen to battle her cause.
So profound was the impression made upon the Northern mind of the
justice, truth and temperance of Mr. Grady’s position, that he was
called to Boston, the cradle of Phillips, Garrison and all isms, to
discuss the race question. Had his people been admonished of the
consequences to him physically, they would have felt as did others in
reference to the sweet singer of Israel—better ten thousand perish than
he be endangered. Intent upon what he believed his great mission, he
responded. What that grand effort was is fresh in the minds of all. Its
influence upon this Nation, time alone will disclose.
Grand as was Mr. Grady as a writer, thinker and orator, his greatness
culminated in the bigness of his heart. He might truthfully be called
(as he styled the late Dawson) “the Golden-hearted man.” His pen,
tongue, hand and purse were ever open to all the calls of distress or
want, and every charitable movement found no more effective champion
than in him. A striking recent incident is narrated of him illustrative
of this his noble characteristic. Taking two tattered strangers into a
store, he directed the proprietor to furnish each with a suit of
clothes. The proprietor, his close personal friend, remonstrated with
him for his prodigality, saying, “You are not able to so do.” He
replied, “I know it, but are they not human beings?” Grand man. Surely
he has won the crown bestowed upon the peacemaker and the cheerful
giver. Mysterious are the ways of the Great Ruler. Little did his
exulting friends think that he would be so soon summoned from the field
of his glory and usefulness to the grave. Man proposes, God disposes,
and Grady sleeps the long sleep, but “tho’ dead he yet speaketh.” Alone,
aided by none save perhaps the gifted, battle-scarred, faithful Gordon,
he gave up his life to enforcing the obligation of Lee, the injunctions
of the lamented Davis. With a brave spirit and a heart of love, he would
speak words of forgiveness to his wrong-doers, if any, while others less
tolerant might say to them, “An eagle in his towering flight was hawked
at by a mousing owl.” But with indorsement from such as Cleveland, Hill,
Campbell and a host of others, he needs no apology from us. Peacefully
he has crossed over the river, and under the perennial shade of the leal
land he sits with Davis and Lee and receives their plaudits for his
faithful, patriotic efforts.
------------------
THE DEATH OF HENRY GRADY.
-------
_From the “Hawkinsville Dispatch.”_
HENRY W. GRADY died at his home in Atlanta, at 3:40 o’clock, on the
morning of the 23d ult.
This announcement has already been flashed all over the United States,
and has carried genuine sorrow throughout Georgia and many places
beyond. The fame and the popularity of this brilliant young orator and
writer were not confined to this State, but were almost co-extensive
with the limits of the Union.
Mr. Grady was in Boston a week or two before his death to make an
address, by invitation of the Merchants’ Club of that city. The address
was on “The Negro Problem,” and it attracted attention throughout the
United States. He was not well when he left Atlanta, and his departure
was contrary to the advice of his physician. Immediately after the
address, he went to New York, and while there he had to take his bed. He
was compelled to decline all the honors tendered him, and hastened home.
The citizens of Atlanta had arranged a complimentary reception for his
return, but he was taken from the car into a carriage and carried to his
home. He never left that home until he was carried out in his coffin.
His funeral took place on Wednesday of last week. It was probably the
largest that has ever been seen in Atlanta, for Mr. Grady was nearer and
dearer to the popular heart than any other man. The body was carried to
the First Methodist church, where it lay in state several hours.
Thousands of people passed through the church and took a last look at
the face which was so familiar to all Atlanta. The church was profusely
and beautifully decorated.
At two in the afternoon the funeral took place. There was no sermon, but
the services consisted of prayers, reading selections from the Bible by
several ministers, and songs. “Shall we gather at the river?” was sung
as the favorite hymn of the deceased. At the close of the services, the
remains were placed in a vault in Oakland Cemetery.
Henry Grady was a remarkable man. He was not quite thirty-nine years of
age, had never held an official position, and yet his wonderful talent
had won for him a national reputation. It is scarcely an exaggeration to
say that, as an attractive writer and speaker, he had not an equal in
the United States. Certainly he had no superior. He spoke as well as he
wrote, and every utterance of his tongue or production of his pen was
received with eagerness. There was an indescribable charm about what he
said and wrote, that is possessed by no other person within our
knowledge.
He began writing for the press when about eighteen, and at once made a
reputation throughout the State. That reputation steadily grew until he
could command an audience that would crowd any hall in the United
States.
It is impossible to estimate the good he has done. At one time he would
use his wonderful eloquence to urge the farmers of Georgia to seek
prosperity by raising their own supplies. At another time, he would
rally the people of Atlanta to help the poor of the city who were
suffering from the severity of the winter weather. Then he would
plead—and never in vain—for harmony among the distracted factions of his
loved city, who were fighting each other in some municipal contest.
Still again, he would incite his people to grand achievements in
material prosperity; and who can measure the value which his influence
has been to Atlanta in this particular alone? He often said to his
people “Pin your eternal faith to these old red hills”; and he set the
example.
But his work was not confined to the narrow limits of his city and
State. He was in demand in other places, and wherever he went he
captured the hearts of the people. His speeches and his writings were
all philanthropic. All his efforts were for the betterment of his
fellows. In the South he urged the moral and material advancement. In
the North he plead, as no other man has plead, for justice to the South
and for a proper recognition of the rights of our people. The South has
had advocates as earnest, but never one as eloquent and effective.
In the prohibition contest in Atlanta two years ago, Mr. Grady threw his
whole soul into the canvass for the exclusion of bar-rooms. With his
matchless eloquence he depicted the evils of the liquor traffic and the
blessedness of exemption from it. If reason had prevailed, his efforts
would not have been in vain; but unfortunately the balance of power was
held by the ignorant and the vicious—by those on whom eloquence and
argument could have no effect; and he lost.
But his life-work is ended, except so far as the influence of good works
lives after the worker dies. He has done much good for his State and for
the entire country; and there is no man whose death would be more
lamented by the people of Georgia.
------------------
A MEASURELESS SORROW.
-------
_From the “Lagrange Reporter.”_
ATLANTA buried yesterday her greatest citizen, and Georgia mourns the
death of her most brilliant son. Not only Atlanta and Georgia bewail an
irreparable loss, but the whole South joins in the lamentation, while
beyond her boundaries the great North, so lately thrilled by his
eloquence, stands with uncovered head at Grady’s tomb.
O measureless sorrow! A young man, with unequaled genius and great,
loving heart, has been cut off in his golden promise. The South saw in
him her spokesman—her representative to the world. The old and the new
were happily blended in him. Revering the past, his face was turned to
the rising day. As the stars went out, one by one, he greeted the dawn
of a grander era, which he was largely instrumental in hastening. His
work for Georgia, the South, the country, will abide. Time will only
increase his fame.
A journalist without a peer, an orator unsurpassed, a statesman with
grasp of thought to “know what Israel ought to do,” has fallen. Words
are impotent to express the public grief.
God reigns. Let us bow to His will and trust Him for help. Our extremity
is His opportunity. If leader is necessary to perfect the work, He will
give us one qualified in all respects. Like Moses, the South’s young
champion had sighted the promised land and pointed out its beauties and
glories to his wondering people. Let us boldly pass over the Jordan that
lies between.
Rest, noble knight. Dream of battle-fields no more—days of toil, nights
of danger. Thy country will take care of thy fame.
------------------
GRADY’S DEATH.
-------
_From the “Oglethorpe Echo.”_
TOGETHER with the sorrow of the thousands who loved Henry Grady that he
should be taken from among them, comes the lament of the Nation that one
so gifted and capable of so much good should be cut down just as he was
fairly upon the threshold of his useful career. Viewing the surroundings
from a human standpoint, it would seem that his end was indeed untimely
and a calamity to the whole Nation.
Our own Colquitt and Gordon have won greatly the respect of the Northern
people, but they nor any Southern man had as implicitly their
confidence. Whatever Grady said or wrote, on no matter what subject, our
friends across Mason and Dixon’s line accepted as utterly true and not
to be questioned. They respected also his ability more than they did any
other man of this section, and were more inclined to take his counsel
and be governed by his advice and admonition.
This distinction Grady had honestly won, and by having it he was doing
more than any ten men to obliterate sectional prejudices. His last great
speech, delivered only a few days before his death, was on this line,
and its good effects will be felt the country over, though he has been
taken before he could see them. In that speech he disabused the minds of
his hearers of many erroneous ideas of the relations of the races in the
South. He did it by stating plainly and unhesitatingly facts and giving
a true picture of the situation without varnish. He had the gift of
doing this in such a way as to command the respect of both sides of
whatever question he might be discussing. Just such speakers and just
such speeches is what is now needed to bring the two sections together;
to obliterate sectional prejudices; make the entire Nation one people in
purpose and sentiment. But have we any more Gradys to make them? Perhaps
so, but they are in the background and time must elapse before they can
reach his place. We need them in the front and on the platform now.
Grady was already there, and was doing perhaps, as no other man will
ever do, what is urgently needed to make the Nation more harmonious,
more peaceful and more prosperous; and while we must bow in humble
submission to the will of the Higher Power which saw fit to end his
career, we can but lament the evident loss the people of the South
especially, and the whole Nation, sustains.
------------------
HE LOVED HIS COUNTRY.
-------
_From the “Cuthbert Liberal.”_
IN the death of Henry W. Grady, Georgia loses one of her most gifted
sons. Though but a young man he had already acquired a name that will
live as long as Americans love liberty or humanity loves charity. Though
in point of years but just above the horizon of fame’s vast empyrean,
his sun shone with the splendor and brilliancy usually reached at the
zenith. As journalist, he was without a peer in his own loved Southland.
As orator, none since the death of the gifted Prentiss had, at his age,
won such renown. He loved Georgia, he loved the South, but his big heart
and soul encompassed his whole country. As patriot, his widespread arms
took in at one embrace the denizens upon the borders of the frozen lakes
and the dwellers among the orange groves that girt the Mexic sea. He
gave his life away in a masterful effort to revive peace and good will
between sections estranged by passion and prejudice, and races made
envious of each other by selfish intermeddling of those who would
perpetuate strife to gratify their own greed. As neighbor and friend,
those who knew him best loved him most. Wherever suffering or poverty
pinched humanity, there his heart beat in sympathy and there his hand
dispensed charity’s offerings without stint. Though we have differed
with him in many things, the grave now holds all our differences and our
tears blot out the bitterness of words or thoughts of the past. May the
God in whom he trusted dispense grace, mercy and peace to the widow and
orphans, whose grief and sorrow none but they can know.
------------------
A RESPLENDENT RECORD.
-------
_From the “Madison Madisonian.”_
IT is almost impossible to realize that Henry Grady is dead; that the
eager, restless hands are stilled, and the great heart pulseless
forevermore. The soul turned sick at the tidings, and a wave of anguish
choked all utterance save lamentation alone. His people mourn his
passing with one mighty voice, and like Rachel weeping in the
wilderness, refuse to be comforted.
It seems a grief too heavy to be borne, and as lasting as the
everlasting hills; but when time shall have laid its soothing hand upon
our woe, there will succeed a sensation of exultance and exaltation, the
natural consequence of a contemplation and appreciation of the briefness
and brilliancy of his course, and the proportions and perfection of his
handiwork.
To few men has it been given to live as Grady lived; to still less to
die as Grady died, in the flush flood-tide of achievement, laying down
sword and buckler, the victory won, and bowing farewell while yet the
thunder-gust of plaudits shook the arena like a storm. He flamed like a
meteor athwart the night and vanished in focal mid-zenith, leaving the
illimitable void unstarred by an equal, whose rippling radiance,
flashing in splendor from its myriad facets, might gladden our
sublimated vision.
And what of good he accomplished, all his claim to renown, and the sole
and simple cause of endearing him to mankind, rested upon one trait
alone, one Christ-like attribute and actuating motive. He held but one
creed and preached but one gospel—the gospel of love. “Little children,
love one another,” said, now nearly a score of centuries since, the
carpenter of Nazareth, and with this text—this first and greatest and
most divine of all the commandments—for a wizard’s wand, our modern
Merlin unlocked hearts and insured the hearty clasping of palms from one
end to the other of this broad land.
What more resplendent record could man attain? What prouder fame be
shouted down the ages?
His epitaph is written in the hearts of his people. His memory is
enshrined in the love of a nation.
Let us leave him to repose.
------------------
DEDICATED TO HUMANITY.
-------
_From the “Sandersville Herald and Georgian.”_
THE usual joyous season of Christmas tide has been saddened by funeral
dirges over the loss of Georgia’s gifted son. Since the death of the
eloquent and lamented Ben Hill, the loss of no man has aroused deeper
sorrow than Henry W. Grady. Greater demonstrations of grief with all the
emblems of mourning were perhaps never before exhibited in Georgia.
Memorial services were held not only in Atlanta, the city of his home,
but throughout the State, voicing the great love of the people and their
deep sense of the magnitude of his loss. More touching, beautiful
eulogies and panegyrics have perhaps never been pronounced over the bier
of any man.
The intensity of the admiration for Henry Grady grew out of the fact
that his grand powers were all dedicated to the interests of humanity.
His magic pen, that charmed while it instructed, that delighted while it
moved, was laid under contribution to the good of his fellows. Eager for
the development of his State and her resources, he traversed the
lowlands of the South, and depicted her vast possibilities in the
cultivation of fruits, melons, etc., that have added so much to her
material wealth. Turning to the rock-ribbed mountains and hills of North
Georgia he pointed out the vast treasures of iron ore, marble and coal,
but waiting the hand of industry. In all sections he portrayed their
resources, their fields for manufacturers, the importance and value of
increased railroad transportation—in fact, leaving nothing undone that
seemed to promise good and prosperity to his people.
The sunny heart which he always carried into his labors was his chief
charm. The playful yet ardent spirit which he always had he seemed
happily to be able to impart to others. Indeed, he seemed to be a
gatherer of sunbeams, his blithe spirit seemed to sing,
Let us gather up the sunbeams
Lying all around our path,
Let us keep the wheat and roses,
Casting out the thorns and chaff.
The sweet, pacific tone of his mind gave him a wonderful influence over
the masses. More than once when disturbing questions were agitating the
city, and party and personal feeling ran high, has he by his
conciliatory spirit and harmless pleasantry quelled the boisterous
multitude. This spirit was ever fruitful of methods and concessions by
which all could harmonize. It was the cropping out of these broad,
liberal views in the fields of national patriotism that arrested the
attention of other sections of the Union, and gave rise to calls for
Grady to address the people at the meeting of the Historical Society in
New York over two years ago. The eloquent utterances of the young
orator, as he painted the Confederate soldier returning from the war,
ragged, shoeless and penniless, fired the Northern heart with a sympathy
for the South it had never known before.
From this time his fame as an orator was established, and he was at once
ranked among the greatest living orators of the day.
Thoughtful men of the North, recognizing the race problem as one of the
coming momentous issues of the future, were eager to hear the broad
views and patriotic suggestions of this great pacificator. An invitation
was there extended by the Merchants’ Association of Boston to address
them at Faneuil Hall. The address seemed to call forth all his capacious
powers, and is styled the crowning masterpiece of his life. As he
graphically sketched the happy results of the sun shining upon a land
with all differences harmonized, with all aspirations purified by the
limpid fount of patriotism, he sketched a panorama of loveliness and
beauty and promise that enraptured his hearers. And as the notes of the
dying swan thrill with new melody, so the last utterances of the dying
statesman will have now a new charm for those who loved him.
------------------
THE SOUTH LAMENTS.
-------
_From the “Middle Georgia Progress.”_
ONE week ago yesterday morning woe folded her dark and gloomy pinions
and settled over our fair and sunny Southland! He, who by his love for
us, by his incessant labor for the advancement of our material progress,
whose voice was raised to dispel the shadows of hate and prejudice, and
bring the North and South into a closer union, whose heart was filled
with charity, and whose hands were ever performing deeds of kindness,
the eloquent and gifted Grady—the knightly and chivalrous leader of the
peaceful hosts of the New South—was called to a brighter home in the
skies, where all is peace and joy and supernal bliss. The whole South
laments his death “and may his soul rest in peace” is the sentiment of
every heart. His virtues are sung in sweetest song, and his worth
proclaimed by lips tremulous with emotion. Young in years, but matured
in wisdom, he grappled the great question that affected his people, and
with matchless eloquence presented their cause on New England soil and
told of their loyalty and love, still cherishing and remembering the
traditions of the past. His death everywhere is recognized as a national
calamity. Every public utterance and every public appearance, whether in
New York, Boston, Texas or on his native soil, amid “the red old hills
of Georgia,” has been greeted with applause and demonstrations of
delight. Made fatherless in youth by the cruel ravage of war, he struck
out with a stout heart and strong hands for success—how well he achieved
it, the praises showered upon him from every quarter forcibly
demonstrate the fact! Who has not felt the warmth of his sunny
nature?—it glows in every stroke of his pen, and shines in all his
eloquent utterances, and brightens his memory as his name and triumphs
pass into history. Mr. Grady, by his pen and eloquence, has done more
for the South than any other of her sons, and their love and
appreciation is attested in their universal sorrow. His gifts were rare,
his eloquence wonderful, and he bore in honor and peace the standard of
his people, and they will ever keep his memory fresh and green.
------------------
HIS CAREER.
-------
_From the “Dalton Citizen.”_
ONLY a few short weeks ago Hon. Henry W. Grady left his Atlanta home to
electrify a critical audience in Boston, Mass., with one of his
inimitable speeches. Through all the papers of the country the fame of
this magnificent address went ringing, and ere the speech itself was
printed, in full, the orator from whose lips it fell was stricken with a
fatal disease on his return homeward. In little more than a week his
life’s sands had run their course, and in the flush of a glorious and
useful manhood Henry Grady lay dead, while his eulogies were on the lips
of the whole nation. There has been much written by friends (he had no
foes) in the newspaper world concerning this great loss; but it is all
summed up in the words, “Henry Grady is dead!”
Somewhere, in an English poet’s writings, we find a pregnant little
sentence: “I stood beside the grave of one who blazed the comet of a
season.” The career of Henry Grady has been likened by several speakers
and writers to a star burning brightly in the national and journalistic
sky, but its light quenched in the darkness of death ere it reached its
zenith. Fittest, it seems to us, is the simile quoted previously. A
comet trailing its brilliant light across the darkening heavens, a
spectacle focussing the gaze of millions of eyes, causing other stars to
sink into insignificance by reason of its greater glow and
grandeur.—Then, while the interest concerning its movements has reached
its intensity, its gleaming light fades, and presently the sky is merely
glittering again with the myriad stars, for the flash and the blaze of
the comet have disappeared forever and it is invisible to mortal eyes.
The question is, will another take its place, and when?—We think not
soon. Even should an orator, whose eloquence might sway multitudes, rise
to reign in the dead hero’s stead, it is more than probable that he
would not combine with his oratory the wonderful statistical knowledge
possessed by Mr. Grady, whose solid reasoning was only exceeded by the
winsome touch, creeping in here and there, of the true artistic nature.
He spoke in his last address of the South’s vast resources—of its
“cotton whitening by night beneath the stars, and by day the wheat
locking the sunshine in its bearded sheaf.” A practical argument at one
turn and a beautifully rounded sentence at another.
These things made up the speeches that held so many in breathless
attention, augmented by his magnetic personality. It would be well for
our Southland could another as gifted shine forth in like splendor.
------------------
OUR FALLEN HERO.
-------
_From the “Hartwell Sun.”_
WE little thought in our last issue for the old year, when we penned a
brief paragraph to the effect that Mr. Grady had returned from his
brilliant triumph in Boston to his home in Atlanta sick with a cold,
that in a few hours afterward his grand spirit should have winged its
flight to the home beyond, and that upon the Christmas day, when the
glad bells should ring out their joyous message of “Peace on earth—good
will to men” in the great city so much of his own making, that instead
they should toll the sad requiem of “Dust to dust,” and that every heart
from the ragged newsboy to the chief magistrate should be bursting with
anguish as the noble form of their idolized leader was consigned to the
cold, silent grave.
The blow came so suddenly and was so totally unexpected, that it spread
consternation—not only in his own beloved State and Southland—but over
the entire country. Was there ever a man so universally loved with so
brief a career! Was there ever a man so sincerely and widely mourned!
Was there ever a man so grandly, so eloquently eulogized! Never have we
seen anything like it—never have we heard of anything like it; nor do we
believe there was ever a parallel.
But all the panegyrics by passionate lips uttered, nor all the burning
words of eulogy by eloquent pens written, have yet expressed the
tremendous weight of sorrow that oppresses the hearts of the people who
loved him so well. This was indeed a time when strong men of mighty mind
and fluent tongue felt the utter poverty of expression and the
inadequacy of words.
It did appear as if he was just entering upon his glorious career,—as if
his life’s work yet lay out before him. And yet what a glorious, what a
grand work he had done! And may not his death have emphasized his
glowing appeals for a broader charity; for an unquestioning confidence;
for fraternal love and justice; for a re-united country. In our very
heart we believe so. If not—God help our country!
We will not attempt to eulogize Henry Grady—to speak of his brilliant
intellect; of his matchless eloquence; of his spotless character; of his
great, warm, unselfish heart—that has already been done by those better
fitted for the loving task; but the hot tears blind our eyes as we think
of the handsome, boyish form of the peerless Grady lying cold in the
remorseless embrace of death. Peace be to his precious ashes!—Eternal
joy to his immortal spirit!
------------------
A DEATHLESS NAME.
-------
_From the “Gainesville Eagle.”_
There was buried in Atlanta yesterday a young man that illustrated the
possibilities of American youth.
There are two forces that combine to make great men—heredity and
environment. The first had given Henry Grady magnificent natural
endowment—a kingly and masterful mind. The second gave him opportunity,
and he utilized it for all it was worth. Combined, they have given him a
deathless name and fame that will make one of the brightest pages in the
Southland’s history.
All over the land, men and women, who loved his sweetness of soul,
grieve to-day over his untimely end. All over the South, men who
expected much of his tongue and pen, mourn sincerely the loss of the
brilliant mind which worshiped so loyally at Patriotism’s altar. How
illy could he be spared. How inscrutable the ways of Providence! We can
but bow and grieve.
But what an inspiration the history of his brief years! Poor and unknown
a few years ago, he died in a halo of glory that had made his name a
household word over a continent. His life was a psalm of praise. Like
the birds, he sang because he must. Eloquence dwelt in his tongue like
the perfume in the heart of the flowers; sweetness flowed from his pen
as the honey comes from the mysterious alchemy of the bee—it was his
nature.
This is not the time or place to analyze or measure his life-work.
History and the future must render that verdict. Frankly, we are not of
those who believe that his speeches—eloquent and grand as they were—will
wipe out sectional feeling. The people who hate and fear the South are
given over to believe a lie. It is their stock in trade; it is the life
blood of their political partisanship, and though one rose from the
dead, they would not believe. But he had done and was doing, and had he
lived would have brought to a marvelous fruition something of far more
practical value. He had made known to the world the marvelous resources
of the South, and gotten the ear of capital and enterprise and brought,
and was bringing, the enginery of its power to unlock the storehouses of
an untold wealth. ’Tis here his grandest work was done. Call it selfish,
if you will, but ’tis here our loss is greatest.
His brilliancy, dash and originality had made the great journal, of
which he was the head, easily the foremost newspaper of the South. His
eloquent tongue and matchless pen had made him par excellence the
exemplar and apostle of this grand and growing section.
But the end has come. Only He who has smitten can know whether such
another prophet shall rise in the wilderness to lead us forward to the
glorious destiny which his prophetic eye foresaw, and to which his
throbbing, loyal heart gave itself and died.
------------------
A GREAT SOUL.
-------
_From the “Baxley Banner.”_
A GREAT soul has passed away.
After a life brief but brilliant, he is lost to the country that loved
and honored him, and which his lofty eloquence and pure patriotism have
illustrated and adorned.
As the lightning that comes out of the South, and flashes from horizon
to horizon, so was his short life in its bright, swift passage,
illuminating the earth.
In the death of Henry Grady, his city, his State, the South, the whole
country has suffered a great loss. His voice was ever the ringing,
stirring herald-tones that announced the promise of fairer days and a
happier people. He was no low-browed, latter-day prophet of evil; but
preached here and everywhere the new and bright evangel of hope. He was
the voice of his city, heard ringing through Georgia and the Union; the
voice of his State, heard clarion-like from ocean to ocean, and the
golden-mouthed messenger from the South to the North, proclaiming a
brotherhood of love that the shock of war had not destroyed. And thus
his death will be mourned, not in Atlanta or in Georgia only, but
wherever an American heart is, that heart will mourn his death.
Particularly is Mr. Grady’s death a loss to journalism. He stood the
peer of any in the world, and was the greatest journalist in the South.
His pen was as eloquent as his tongue, and from the closet as well as
from the platform his words came with vivifying power, refreshing and
inspiring.
Death struck him down from the lofty pinnacle of fame, to which his
eloquence had so swiftly upborne him. A young man, he had already
reached a height that would have dazzled a weaker soul, and he has
fallen in the midst of his triumph, while yet the plaudits of tens of
thousands from every part of this country rang fainter and fainter on
his dying ear. It was something worth to have such heartfelt
approbations sounding around him as he sunk to his last sleep. It was
the crowning of a life well lived, and spent with lavish patriotism for
his country’s weal.
He burned his life to the socket like a swift devouring flame. His
energy was tremendous, and almost feverish in its eagerness to do
something worth the doing. He returned to his city and his home with
death upon him, stricken even in his great triumph. The glow of fever
followed hard upon the glow of victory, and so, after a brief and
burning life—a life crowded thick with triumphs, “God’s finger touched
him and he slept”—the sleep He giveth to His beloved.
Of his private life all may speak. We know it well. It is familiar to us
all as household words, though his charity and his kindness were without
ostentation. He was generous without stint, and whether it was as the
boy making up a fund to buy a poor schoolmate a handsome suit to
graduate in, or as the man lending a helping hand to lift or guide the
needy, self was forgotten in his kindness to others. In thousands of
homes he will be
Named softly as the household name
Of one whom God has taken.
His city, his State, and his country will build for him a shaft, but his
greatest monument will be in the hearts that mourn his death.
A great and loving soul has passed.
------------------
IN MEMORIAM.
-------
_From the “Henry County Times.”_
THE public heart, still quivering and aching from the shock occasioned
by the death of its venerated and talented leader, Jefferson Davis, had
its cup of woe and grief filled to overflowing by those words of
doom—“Henry Grady is dead.” In the natural course of events, the first
catastrophe was one that might have happened any time in the past ten
years, as the great Confederate chief had long since passed the limit of
three-score-and-ten, the average limit attached by Biblical authority to
human life. Mr. Davis descended to his grave full of years and honors,
and while he was universally and sincerely mourned in the South, still,
it did not fall upon us with that electric suddenness which so shocked
and agonized the Southern heart as when our young Demosthenes became a
victim to the fell destroyer.
So universal is this sorrow, that a separate and personal bereavement
could not have more completely shrouded in grief the public mind than
did the announcement of his death. The advent of the dark angel into
each and every household could not have more completely paralyzed the
public mind than did the untimely taking off of this superbly gifted son
of Georgia. Never since the angel of the Lord smote the first-born of
Egyptian households for lack of mystic symbols on the door, has a
people’s sorrow been so deep, so universal, and so sincere. Had the end
of such a man come in the proper course of nature, heralded by such
physical changes as indicate the approach of death, it might have been
better borne, but would still have been an event of national misfortune
that would have taxed to the uttermost the endurance of hearts already
lacerated by freshly opened wounds. Had we been in the possession of
such warnings as it was in the power of Omnipotence to have granted us,
still the blow would have been unutterably painful and overpowering. But
that he, who was conceded to be the intellectual peer of any in the
nation; who was without a superior as an orator in the present
generation; that he who was in an especial manner fitted to be the
champion of the South in her appeal for justice at the bar of public
opinion, both in Europe and America; that he, who was so richly endowed
should suddenly and without warning, as it were, become the victim of
death, and have all the bright and brilliant promise of a life whose sun
had risen so gloriously, quenched in death and darkness, might well move
a people to tears, and clothe a nation in sackcloth and ashes.
------------------
A PEOPLE MOURN.
-------
_From the “Warrenton Clipper.”_
THE people of the Southland are wrapped in grief and a nation mourns in
sympathy. While all nature beams with beauteous smiles and December
luxuriates in the balmy breezes of spring, he whom we had learned to
love and to whom his people turned for hope and encouragement, lies
wrapped in earth’s cold embrace. Henry W. Grady is dead. Early Monday
morning his brave spirit forsook its earthly tenement and sought Him who
had given it being. The electric words which flashed the sad news
through the length and breadth of the country carried mourning into
thousands of homes and millions of hearts. The friend of the people was
dead, and one universal sense of sorrow pervaded the minds of all.
Mr. Grady had just returned from Boston, where he had delivered one of
the grandest addresses of his life, before the Boston Merchants’
Association, upon the Southern question. The speech was thoroughly
Southern in its character, and a grand defense of the course of his
people in national politics and their dealings with the colored race.
Exposure in the raw New England atmosphere caused him to contract a
severe cold which rapidly grew worse. He was very ill when he returned
to Atlanta and pneumonia in its worst form soon developed. He lay ill at
his beautiful home in Atlanta for a few days only, gradually growing
worse, until the end came Monday morning.
Though his dangerous situation was known, the probability of his death
did not seem to occur to the people. That the youthful, magnetic,
beloved Grady could die seemed impossible. When the blow had fallen its
effect was to stun, and had we been told that it was a dream, a mistake,
we would really have believed it and sought out some new evidence of his
popularity. Dead! Is it possible! Before he had reached the prime of his
manhood or the zenith of his fame! Did Death but waylay to seize him
just as we were learning his worth? Of the many mysteries of life death
is the greatest.
Nothing shows more the high estimation in which the man was held than
the widespread sources from which came the words of sympathy and
condolence; from field and fireside, from town and hamlet, from city
street and mansion, from every source in which his noble words have
found an echo, poured forth the gentle words of sympathy and sorrow.
Statesmen and soldiers hastened to proffer their sympathy and great men
of every rank condoled with the bereaved ones. Not a prominent Northern
journal but devoted considerable space to his memory. Party and creed
were alike forgotten. Not a whisper of depreciation was heard from any
source.
There never died a man within the history of the State whose fame was so
recent, who was so generally loved and admired in life and so
universally regretted in death. On Christmas, the day of joy and peace,
we laid our hero to rest. Not the less a hero because his were the
victories of peace. No victor, fresh from the bloody field of battle,
was ever more deserving of his laurel wreaths than he of the chaplets we
can only lay upon his grave. The lips that pleaded so eloquently for
peace and union are stilled in death, and the hand that penned so many
beautiful words for the encouragement of his people moves no more. A
sense of peculiar personal loss is upon us. The old men have lost a son,
the young men a brother. Atlanta mourns her foremost citizen, the State
a devoted son, the South an able defender and the Nation an honored
citizen. Our matchless Grady is no more.
------------------
HENRY W. GRADY IS NO MORE.
-------
_From the “Valdosta Times.”_
HENRY W. GRADY is dead. His great soul has passed from this mundane
sphere. Truly “a silver tongue is hushed and a golden pen is broken.”
Matchless orator, brilliant journalist, able statesman, patriotic
citizen, noble man—shall we see your like again!
When Stonewall Jackson fell fighting for the land he loved, the
Confederacy lost her great right arm, and never recovered from the blow.
So, in these post-bellum days—in times of comparative peace—but under
anomalous and trying conditions—the South loses her ablest leader, and
at a time when his services seem most needed, and when he was doing that
service so nobly and well. The death of Mr. Grady in ’89 compares only,
in the Southern estimate, with the loss of Jackson in ’63. Viewed from
the natural side of human wisdom, his death, in the words of the great
Republican orator of New York, is a national calamity.
This young man, from obscurity and poverty, by the sheer force of his
genius, sprang easily and early to a national celebrity which few dare
hope for, and fewer still attain in the generations of men. He was both
brilliant and practical, both gentle and wise. He would build a factory
or a railroad, or found a great exposition, as easily as he would
deliver a bright oration. He would counsel with statesmen with the same
tact and ease that he would go gunning with the young men of the town.
When he touched a man he made a friend.
The writer, who would pay this short and poor tribute, knew him for
eighteen years. He has seen him from many points of view—mostly as an
opponent in State politics, but always as a friend. In his office at
work—at his private board—in the political caucus—on an angling or
gunning expedition—his transcendent genius always shown with a rare and
radiant light. To these who have known him well he has long been the man
the world has recently found him to be—one of the greatest men of his
time; to such his loss is felt as a personal bereavement. Each one, when
his name is heard, will recall some word or deed to cherish as a
fragrance from the tomb. Such memories will be treasured in the hearts
of many, from Grover Cleveland to the saucy newsboys who cry the
_Constitution_ on the streets of Atlanta.
But to abler pens, and to those who have known him longer and better,
the task is left to pronounce a fitting eulogy.
Of his life and his death, much space is ungrudgingly given elsewhere in
this issue of the _Times_. Let the young men of the country read, and
learn of him who has passed away at thirty-eight years of age and left
the impress of his genius upon the greatest Nation of the earth.
------------------
“MAYBE HIS WORK IS FINISHED.”
-------
_From the “Dalton Argus.”_
HENRY WOODFIN GRADY died Monday morning, December 23, 1889, from
bronchial and other troubles, irritated by his recent visit to Boston,
where he made his last and greatest speech in behalf of the section and
people he loved so well.
Since England lost her Wellington, and America her Lincoln, no greater
calamity has moved a people to sympathetic tears than the death of Henry
Grady. His life was the fulfillment of a noble man, and his grand
impulses touched every phase of humanity. No man was ever better known
to his country by an unbroken chain of rarer virtues, nobler purposes,
and more powerful capacities. His work, in whatever field, was the
impetuosity of patriotism. His successes stand as a mark of indomitable
energy. Possessing an extraordinary faculty of grasping opportunities at
the full flood tide, he illustrated the perfect patriot in forgetting
self for common good, the genuine friend in bestowing his own advantages
to others. Only he that worthily lives, in death enshrines himself in
the hearts of his people, and not a wire in all the network of
commercial arteries but that has given, in messages of love, cadences of
a country’s sorrow. When poets and patriots are met at the bier by the
hushed voices of the rabble, and commerce pauses to pay tribute,
Heaven-blest must be the spirit that gives flight from earth. In all the
walks of life Henry Grady has left remembrances that suggest homage to
his worth.
But his name shall occupy a space in history, filling the brightest
niche of an illustrious age, that his life shall stand out boldly in the
perfect beauty of its accomplishment.
There is a touching coincidence in his death, following so closely after
that of Jefferson Davis, that the funeral dirge of one almost blends
into the decadence of the other, giving figure to an illustration as
true as it is sublime.
Who can refute the suggestion that it was a wise decree of Providence,
staying the relentless demands of Time that sectional prejudice might
lose its forceful resentment, lending ear to the vigorous mind of Davis,
through the very nobility of his after life; and giving communion of
perfect sympathy through the pleading of Henry Grady, caught up as if
from the living embers of the old, a fair type of that historic period,
imbued with all the demands of the present, his patriotic ardor glowing
with fire of eloquence, his dying speech giving tumult of enthusiasm in
voice of advocacy, expounding reason indorsed by every Southern man?
No man better knew the temper of his people, or gave thought with riper
philosophy to the issues which surround them; or was less fearless to
speak the truth.
As a common country gave applause to the logic of the living, may we not
trust in the prophecy of the mourning mother, that the work for which he
gave his life, in unmurmuring sacrifice, is truly accomplished?
There is such pathos in the incident of this last grand effort to break
the cordons of estrangement between the sections as may justify the
hope.
The South, undemonstrative, unprejudiced, unyielding furthermore, pleads
for no fairer basis.
------------------
HE NEVER OFFENDED.
-------
_From the “Washington Chronicle.”_
HE died peacefully at his home in Atlanta on Monday morning at forty
minutes past three o’clock. As the news flashed over the wires it
imparted a thrill of anguish to every Southern heart. For he was a great
favorite at the South. And at the North he had cause to be proud of his
reputation. It would be impossible to compare Mr. Grady with any man who
has lived. His character was unique and so was his work. It is idle and
senseless talk to conjecture what his future might have been if he had
lived. His course is run and his life is finished, as completely
finished as if he had lived an hundred years and died. What was that
life? Grady was a big-hearted, whole-souled fellow, a man of the people,
a statesman and a patriot. His intellectual attainments and all fitted
him for the grand and brilliant position which he reached. True as steel
to his native South, he was able to conciliate the North. A man of noble
impulses, he never offended. In sober truth he was a great man, and
accomplished a great work which will live after him and glorify his
name.
Were a star quenched on high,
Forever would its light,
Still traveling downward from the sky,
Shine on our mortal sight.
So when a great man dies,
Ages beyond our ken,
The light he leaves behind him lies
Upon the paths of men.
------------------
THE SOUTH IN MOURNING.
-------
_From the “Elberton Star.”_
HENRY W. GRADY, the peerless orator and true patriot, has been called to
join the silent majority. This sad intelligence reached Elberton last
Monday morning, by private telegram, and there was a gloom cast over the
community unequaled in the history of the town. Henry Grady was loved
and admired all over the South, but nowhere more dearly than in this
section.
It seems hard that this brilliant young statesman should have been cut
off just before he had gained the goal, just prior to when he would have
written his name among that galaxy of eminent men who have gone before
and made the world better for having lived in it. If Grady had lived he
would have carried to a happy ultimatum the purpose he had just
commenced in solving the vexatious race problem, and in doing this he
would have had a place with the names of Jefferson, Washington, Clay,
Calhoun, and Webster.
Grady was a great man. He was not only an orator of Hill-like ability,
but he was a statesman. His writings and speeches for years were well
able and well panoplied to grapple with and treat the most intricate and
complicated questions in a masterly manner.
His recent speech in Boston, at which time he contracted the cold that
terminated in his premature death, was particularly and singularly
forcible. The press and people, both North and South, with one accord
pronounced it one of the ablest papers of the nineteenth century, and
with this great work begun, and the great architect thereof dead, it is
difficult to conjecture who will or can come to the front and finish the
grand and noble undertaking.
Grady’s first and greatest love was Atlanta. He was like an
inexhaustible gold mine to that town, and the Gate City has sustained an
irreparable loss. But Atlanta’s confines were too contracted for a heart
and brain like his. He loved Georgia, almost like he loved his mother,
and for Georgia’s weal, he would have sacrificed his all.
Georgia’s loss, the South’s loss, cannot be estimated.
At his bier we bow our heads in profound sorrow, and were it so that we
could, we would cull the whitest flower in the whole world and place it
on the grave of this the truest, noblest Georgian of them all.
------------------
STRICKEN AT ITS ZENITH.
-------
_From the “Greenesboro Herald and Journal.”_
ON the mild Christmas morning the heart of Georgia is bowed in sorrow
over the death of her favorite son. It seems, indeed, a mockery that
amidst the joys and festivities of the Christmas time, the dark shadow
of the relentless foe of man should intrude his presence and take from
our land one who was its brightest hope, its strongest support!
And yet it is true. Henry Grady is dead! The orator, the journalist, the
poet by nature, the man of the people, is dead! We cannot realize it. So
bright in his strong young manhood but one short week ago, now folded in
the arms of death! A greater shock, a keener sorrow was never crushed
upon a people!
This is not the time, in the shadow of the grave but in the brightness
of his glory, to speak fully of him that is gone! Our pen fails, and all
it can say is “Thou has stricken Thy people, O God! and in Thy wisdom
Thou hast given us bitterness to drain! Let not our hearts rebel against
Thee, our Lord and our God!”
The death which has come to Georgia to-day cannot be measured in its
irreparable loss. A week ago the South was in mourning over the death of
her great leader! But he belonged to the past, and while the sorrow fell
deep, yet we realize that a life had ended which had filled its fullest
mission. But in the death of Henry Grady the South has lost a leader of
to-day—an active, earnest, true man, whose heart, bound up in the
advancement of his people, was but laying brighter and fresher and truer
plans for their prosperity. To every heart in the South the question
comes “Who will lead us now? Who will defend our principles now that he
is taken from us?” And out of the blackness of our desolation it seems
that no star shines to guide us!
It is, perhaps, well that the last effort of Mr. Grady was in defense of
our institutions and in support of the principles, motives and ambitions
of his people. He died with the gathering halo of a people’s love
clustering about him! He went to death with a defense of that people
clinging to his lips and to his heart! In the zenith of his usefulness
he was cut down! Why? God in His infinite wisdom knows best!
We can pay no tribute to the memory of Henry Grady greater than the love
which weeps at his bier this morning. And yet the writer would lay,
amidst the offerings which fall from the overflowing hearts of thousands
to-day, a tiny tribute to his memory. He was our friend, wise and true
and earnest in his counsels—pointing out that the true end of the
journalist is the defense and advancement of his people. As a
journalist, perhaps, has his greatest work been done, and upon the heart
of every man of the pen he left an impression that his vocation is
ennobled and is the grander that Henry Grady made it his love. And, in
the shadow of death will come this consoling thought. That the press,
which was his power, and which remains as the bulwark of the people, is
the purer, and the better, and the stronger from the principles which
Henry Grady inculcated in it. To carry out that work, which has fallen
from his hands in death, should move the heart of every journalist, and
when its fullest fruition has come, then will the crown upon the fame of
Henry Grady shine the brighter!
Peace to the great man gathered to his reward! The future will crown his
memory with the bright flowers which will come as the fruition of his
hopes and of his life-work!
------------------
THE SOUTHLAND MOURNS.
-------
_From the “Griffin Morning Call.”_
THE brilliant young editor of the Atlanta _Constitution_ entered into
rest eternal and closed an earth-life remarkable for splendor at 3:40
o’clock yesterday morning. His brief career reflects not only glory upon
his name, but also crowns with unique distinction the high profession of
journalism. A noble representative of the grand old State of Georgia,
the lustre of his life-work was reflected upon the commonwealth he
served and to whose honor he consecrated the ripeness of his learning,
his eloquence and his patriotism.
His harp hangs now mute upon the willows! No more shall the soul and
intellect of the thoughtful North or South, in New York, New England,
Texas or Georgia, be stirred to the depths by his impassioned words or
impressed by his unanswerable logic. “The silver cord is loosed, the
golden bowl is broken.” But the music his harp evoked is not dead and
shall long linger a sweet song in many hearts, and his works do follow
him.
He was born in Athens, Ga., in 1851, and though a man of well ripened
powers, had not reached that prime when a strong man’s capacity for
labor is most highly tested.
He was educated at the State University, and afterward pursued a post
graduate course at the University of Virginia, where so many noble
characters have been molded.
Here the orator and scholar grew and nature’s rare gifts were fused and
refined in the crucible of mental discipline. The studies which
specially attracted him and in which he excelled, were Greek,
Anglo-Saxon, history and belles-letters. Thus, evidently a most copious
vocabulary was created and the mind stored with fertile illustrations in
the department of history and general literature. In the happy use of
words, in graceful rhetoric he was not surpassed by any American of his
day. Roscoe Conkling or Col. Ingersoll might be compared to him, but the
former had not Grady’s tact, neither his full vocabulary, and never
treated the difficult and delicate topics Grady handled. And Ingersoll,
though having remarkable power of language and an accomplished
rhetorician, had not the logical mind of the brilliant young Georgian,
and tinges his best efforts with bitterness and cant.
Grady was natural, even-tempered, generous, warm-hearted. His end came
after the greatest effort of his life. His Boston speech will do an
inestimable benefit to the South at a time when, under President
Harrison, the bitter and partisan spirit of the Republicans was
leavening much of the thought of the North. Mr. Grady addressed Northern
people from the home of Phillips and Sumner, and his words have rung
from Boston to San Francisco. His great speech was susceptible to no
criticism for taste, for loyalty to our convictions, for impressive
oratory or convincing argument. His facts and his logic are as strong as
his word painting.
His beautiful tribute to the land which “lies far South” is a literary
gem not destined alone to stir the hearts at the time of its utterance.
It will live for its poetry, its tender sentiment and its reality.
If our friends across Dixie’s mythical line are but moved to do justice
to a long suffering people, and trust us for loyalty to settle our
peculiar problems, Grady has not lived in vain and will be the great
apostle of his age.
Lay him gently to rest then, Georgians, in this sweet Christmas time,
while the bells are chiming the notes of his Savior’s birth, and cover
his grave with holly, mistletoe, and ivy, until the Master comes in
glorious majesty to judge the world, and earth and sea give up their
dead.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE “CONSTITUTION”
_AND ITS WORK_
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
ATLANTA CONSTITUTION BUILDING.
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE “CONSTITUTION” AND ITS WORK.
-------
THE Atlanta _Constitution_ came into being in the seething chaos of
reconstruction. The name suggests the issue of which it was born and the
cause which gave it life and strength at the beginning of its career.
Georgia was being reconstructed under military supervision, against the
will of a vast majority of the people, and there was no journal
published in Atlanta which gave adequate expression to the sentiment of
a million people. The old _Intelligencer_, which had been the clarion of
war times, was no longer equal to the emergency. It had bravely breasted
the storm of war, dodging about between bomb-shells and issuing forth
defiant, one day in one town and one day in another, sometimes even
setting up its press in a box car. But for the more trying times of
reconstruction it was not adequate. The fiery tone and dauntless
attitude were gone and it began to counsel for the things that were.
While the people were idolizing Ben Hill for his superb defiance and
applauding the unreconstructed and unterrified Toombs, there was no
paper to voice the deep and unconquerable sentiment against
reconstruction and for the re-establishment of the State constitution.
It was then that the _Constitution_ appeared. When Messrs. W. A.
Hemphill and J. H. Anderson bought a little sheet called _Public
Opinion_, and put Colonel Carey Styles in charge as editor, he named it
_The Constitution_, and the name became its shibboleth and its issue.
The editor was a bold and fearless writer and a fiery and impetuous
orator. His editorials glowed with defiance of the reconstructionists,
and his speeches were iridescent with burning denunciation. Writing and
speaking on the side of the people, he made the paper immensely popular,
and the enterprise of the proprietors kept it rolling on the crest of
the tide.
From the first the _Constitution_ was a more enterprising news-gatherer
than any of its contemporaries. It was the first to employ special
correspondents in all parts of the State and the South. The system which
has since become comprehensive and well-nigh perfect was then in its
beginning, but it was something new in Georgia, and attracted attention.
It was in this way that Mr. Grady was employed to go with the press
excursion which passed through North Georgia, looking and writing to the
development of the resources of the State, and his “King Hans” letters
on that trip gave the first news from the important points of the
excursion.
In those early days the _Constitution_ was not without literary
attractions. The associate editor with Colonel Styles was Mayor J. R.
Barrick, a genial gentleman, much beloved by his acquaintances and known
to the public as a scholar and poet. He had been a _protégé_ of George
D. Prentice, who had recognized in the young man literary talent of no
common order.
In those days editorials were of the first importance. The State was
being reconstituted, and great questions that went down to the
foundations of government were being discussed. The orators of the day
were Ben Hill, Toombs, Alexander Stephens, and scores of lesser but not
inconsiderable lights. Speeches were matters of vital importance to
newspapers and the public, and the leading orators were always
stenographically reported. The modern synopsis would not then suffice.
There were giants in those days, and the people hung upon their words;
their utterances must be given in full. Editorials must rise to the same
level, and great questions must be handled with the same dignity and
earnestness. Men were not too busy to think and read, and they demanded
mental pabulum that was strong and rich. Talent was at a premium, and
its services easily commanded good pay. The owners of the _Constitution_
were the first to realize the priceless value of Mr. Grady’s genius, and
when he was yet a college boy under age, Mr. Hemphill, who had lived in
Athens, where Mr. Grady grew up, made his guardian a proposition to buy
an interest in the _Constitution_ for Mr. Grady on condition that he
should take the position of managing editor. From then until Captain
Howell employed him in 1876, the _Constitution_ never lost sight of Mr.
Grady. While attending the University of Virginia he contributed to the
paper, and on his return he was engaged by the editor to represent the
_Constitution_ on the press excursion referred to above.
The mechanical appliances of Southern newspapers at that time were
vastly out of proportion to the matter then carried. The _Constitution_
was born and swaddled in a store-room on Alabama Street. It was a long
room with a skylight, and printer’s cases were arranged along the wall
on either side. In front was the business office, and in one corner a
little room was partitioned off for the editors. There was a freemasonry
between printers and editors, and the whole force glowed with enthusiasm
for the cause which was epitomized in the paper’s name.
After reconstruction became a fact the State swarmed with aliens, and
the people were goaded to fury under negro and carpet-bag government.
The Capitol was infested with unknown men suddenly thrust into power,
and they carried extravagant measures with a high hand. A Republican
Governor was in office, and the venerable Secretary of State, Colonel
N.C. Barnet, lately deceased, had gone out, carrying with him the great
seal of the State, which he refused to allow affixed to any official act
of men ushered into office by the military authorities. The State was
involved in lottery schemes and loaded down with railroad bonds on which
Treasurer Angier, a sturdy Republican, had refused to put his signature.
The sessions of the Legislature were held in a great opera house sold to
the State by private parties for an enormous price. In the building was
a restaurant, confectionery shop, and velocipede rink. It was a scene
decried, and the proceedings of the Legislature were daily denounced by
the press and people. Among the boldest and most scathing critics of
those disgraceful transactions was the _Constitution_, and its editor in
his public speeches smote the participants hip and thigh. The fight was
on for the redemption of the State, and it was waged without ceasing
till the yoke was thrown off and a Democratic Governor was elected in
1872. In all that fight the _Constitution_ was the leading newspaper,
and from the beginning the battle was waged with the uncompromising
fervor that had characterized its opposition to the reconstructionists.
In both these contests it was with the people, and in its columns they
found free and full expression. The bitterness of those days has died
out, and many of the sturdiest opponents have become friends;
differences of judgment have long since been allowed admissible, but the
friendships cemented in the heat of those contests are deep and abiding,
and for its gallant services then the _Constitution_ is still endeared
to the people of Georgia.
With the redemption of the State from negro and carpet-bag rule, there
was no local political issue of transcendent importance. The State was
safe, and people began to look about and take account of what was left
from the wreck of war and reconstruction. The country was in a
deplorable condition, and its rehabilitation almost a work of despair.
In the midst Atlanta had begun to rise out of the ashes, and the brave
spirits that gathered here had already made a name for the new city,
which began to be looked upon as something more than a Phoenix; but all
around was desolation. The plantations were in a deplorable condition,
fences were rotting, and houses were going to decay. The first flush
times of peace and greenbacks had passed, and the panic of 1873 left
every interest depressed. It was then that the effects of war and waste
were fully felt, and then that the stoutest hearts were tried. Labor was
restless and hard to control, the planter was out of funds and interest
was high, real estate outside a few favored localities was depreciating,
and the farmers were almost at the point of desperation.
In all this hopelessness there were a few hopeful spirits, here and
there one that could chirp. The hot days of politics were past and the
newspapers must look to other fields. The _Constitution_ was the first
to look to the development of the State’s resources as the new
opportunity for journalistic enterprise. This was a reconstruction in
which the people could take part; the _Constitution_ had fought the one,
it would lead the other. From that time until now development has been
the _Constitution’s_ most important mission, and in that field its most
earnest efforts have been put forth. Constructive journalism was a new
thing, and the _Constitution_ became the pioneer. Men might differ on
matters of public policy, but no one could afford to differ with a
newspaper devoted to building up its environment, its city, State, and
section.
Here in Atlanta the effect of this new policy was first felt, and here
are its richest results; but helpfulness is contagious, and everywhere
the _Constitution_ touched there was a better feeling, and on account of
that feeling it touched farther and farther. Coupling with this
constructive policy a news system of unprecedented thoroughness, the
_Constitution_ became inseparably connected with the life of the people.
It was in touch with them everywhere in Georgia and the surrounding
States, and finally its beneficent influence spread throughout the whole
South, inspiring, encouraging, building up. While some old statesmen
were conducting in its columns a discussion as to whether Georgia was
growing richer or poorer, the policy of repair was unremittingly
pursued; and before the death of Alexander Stephens, who had cried out
that the State was going to decay, the signs of new life had already
appeared and people began to talk about a New South.
The New South sprang from the scions of the old, and everywhere
Confederate soldiers were leaders in this upbuilding. While they
cherished the relics of by-gone valor and continued to keep the graves
of their dead comrades green, they looked hopefully to the future and
strove to lay the foundations of new greatness and future influence in
the restored Union. This was the key-note of the most enlightened press,
led by the _Constitution_, whose editor, Capt. Howell, was a Confederate
soldier.
There came an interesting period of rivalry in this good work when Mr.
Grady dashed into the arena. With the impulsive Alston he took charge of
the Atlanta _Herald_ in 1873, and for two years it was warm in Atlanta.
Colonel J. W. Avery, who succeeded Barrick as editor of the
_Constitution_, had gone over to the _Herald_, and Colonel E. Y. Clarke,
who had bought out Mr. Anderson, was editor of the _Constitution_, while
Mr. Hemphill remained business manager, a position he has filled without
intermission since the birth of the paper. He and Colonel Clarke had
already built the old _Constitution_ building on Broad Street. Mr. Grady
was making the _Herald_ one of the brightest papers ever published in
Atlanta, and there were several other dailies in the field. The old
_Intelligencer_ had passed away, and in its place had come the _Sun_, a
Democratic paper edited by Alexander Stephens. _The New Era_, a
scholarly Republican paper, was edited by Colonel William L. Scruggs,
now Minister Plenipotentiary to Venezuela, and _The True Georgian_,
another Republican paper, was edited by Sam Bard, a rugged product of
those times. When the _Herald_ came into this field there were five
morning dailies in Atlanta. From the first the contest for supremacy was
between the _Constitution_ and the _Herald_. With Georgia Republicanism,
the Republican papers passed out of existence, and the _Sun_ soon
followed, leaving only the _Constitution_ and the _Herald_. In 1875 the
fight between the two papers became desperate. There was no morning
train on the Macon and Western road, and both papers wanted to reach
middle Georgia. The result was that both ran special engines every
morning from Atlanta to Macon, a distance of 104 miles. The expense of
these engines absorbed the entire receipts of both papers, and left them
to borrow money to pay ordinary expenses. The engines carried not over a
thousand papers.
During the month that this fight for existence endured there were many
exciting scenes. Both papers went to press about four o’clock, and it
was a race to the depot every morning. The paper which got there first
was given the main line first, and the day’s sales depended largely on
the quickness of the cart-boys.
The contest was spirited but short. Both papers were heavily involved,
and it was a question of endurance. The _Constitution_ had almost
reached the end of its row when a mortgage was foreclosed on the
_Herald_. The _Constitution_ survived with a heavy debt. In 1872 Mr. N.
P. T. Finch had bought an interest in the paper, and after the failure
of the _Herald_ Mr. Clarke retired and Mr. Finch became editor. In 1876
Captain E. P. Howell, who had had some experience in journalism as city
editor of the _Intelligencer_ in its most vigorous days, and had since
accumulated some property in the practice of law, bought with his
brother Albert a half interest in the _Constitution_, and took the
position of editor-in-chief, which he has held ever since. About the
first thing Captain Howell did was to employ Mr. Grady, and the next day
he secured Joel Chandler Harris. With this incomparable trio, associated
with Mr. Finch, the paper began editorially a new life. The remnant of
debts incurred in the fight with the _Herald_ was soon wiped out, and
from that day the _Constitution_ has enjoyed unbroken prosperity.
Strongly equipped all around, the _Constitution_ enlarged and
intensified its operations. The campaign of 1876 was on, and Mr. Grady
was sent to Florida, where he unearthed and exposed the ugly transaction
by which the electoral vote of that State was given to Hayes. The whole
nation hung upon the result with breathless interest, and newspapers
were willing to pay any price for the news. The _Constitution_ and the
New York _Herald_ were the first to unearth the fraud. On such occasions
the _Constitution_ always had the news, and soon came to be looked upon
as the most enterprising paper in the South.
With the inauguration of Hayes the South turned away from politics in
disgust, and then it was that the _Constitution_ gave a new cue to the
efforts of the people and turned their slumbering energy to the
development of Georgia and the South.
Mr. Grady, whose Washington letters had made him a national reputation,
turned his energies and his heart to development. He went about among
the people looking into their concerns and making much of every
incipient enterprise. In the agricultural regions he wrote letters that
were pastoral poems in prose, strangely mixed with an intoxicating
combination of facts and figures. When he wrote about Irish potatoes his
city editor, Josiah Carter, now editor of the Atlanta _Journal_, planted
several acres as a speculation; when he told of the profits in truck
farming there was a furore in the rural districts; and when he got out
on the stock farms and described the mild-eyed Jerseys, the stockmen
went wild, and the herds were increased, while calves sold for fabulous
prices.
Wherever he went his pen touched on industry, and as if by magic it grew
and prospered. Fruits, melons, farms, minerals, everything that was in
sight, he wrote about; and everything he wrote about became famous. It
was in this way that the _Constitution’s_ work was done. The people were
wooed into enterprises of every sort, and most of them prospered.
Mr. Grady’s work had attracted the attention of prominent men
everywhere, and in 1880 Cyrus W. Field, of New York, lent him $20,000 to
buy a fourth interest in the _Constitution_. Mr. Field has stated since
Mr. Grady’s death that he never had cause to regret the loan, as it was
promptly repaid and had been the means of enlarging Mr. Grady’s work.
Mr. Grady bought 250 shares, or $25,000 of the $100,000 of
_Constitution_ stock, from Messrs. Howell, Hemphill, and Finch, who had
previously purchased the interest of Albert Howell. The stock was then
equally owned by Captain E. P. Howell, Mr. W. A. Hemphill, Mr. N. P. T.
Finch, and Mr. Grady. The staff was then reorganized, with Captain
Howell as editor-in-chief, Mr. Grady, managing editor, and Mr. Finch and
Joel Chandler Harris as associate editors. Mr. Wallace P. Reed was added
in 1883, and Mr. Clark Howell, now managing editor, came on in 1884 as
night editor. When he was promoted to be assistant managing editor in
January, 1888, Mr. P. J. Moran, who had been with the _Constitution_
since the suspension of the _Sun_ in the early seventies, succeeded to
the position of night editor. In 1886 Mr. Finch retired, and his
interest was shared by Messrs. E. P. Howell, Hemphill, Grady, and Clark
Howell, and two new proprietors, Messrs. S. M. Inman, of Atlanta, and
James Swann. The _Constitution_ has held on its staff at different times
many of the most brilliant writers in the country, among them Sam Small,
Henry Richardson, editor of the Macon _Telegraph_, Bill Arp, Betsey
Hamilton, T. DeWitt Talmage, and a number of others. The editor of the
Atlanta _Evening Journal_ graduated from the city editorship of the
_Constitution_ in 1887, and was succeeded by Mr. J. K. Ohl, who still
has charge of the city department. Mr. R. A. Hemphill had acquired some
stock and was in the business department. The _Constitution_ under the
management of Mr. W. J. Campbell has built up a large publishing
business and now does the printing for the State. The weekly circulation
is in charge of Mr. Edward White, who has an army of agents in all parts
of the Union. The western edition in the last month has grown to large
proportions.
In 1883 the _Constitution_ had outgrown its three-story building on
Broad Street, and the company bought the present site on the corner of
Alabama and Forsyth, and began the erection of the new _Constitution_
building. It was completed in August, 1884, at a cost of $60,000
including the site, and the $30,000 perfecting press and other machinery
ran the whole cost of the plant up to $125,000. The site is the best for
its purpose in the city. In the heart of the town and on an eminence
above most other points, the editorial rooms on the fourth and fifth
floors overlook the city and the undulating country for miles around. On
the north, historic Kennesaw rises, a grim monument of valor, and the
white spires at its foot are visible to the naked eye. On the south,
Stone Mountain raises its granite dome fifteen miles away, and to the
northeast the eye reaches the first foothills of that bracing region of
the moonshiners where the Blue Ridge breaks up and makes a Switzerland
in Georgia.
In November, 1884, the _Constitution_ christened its new building with
the first news of Cleveland’s election. The Legislature then in session
filled the _Constitution_ building at night, eagerly and
enthusiastically watching the returns. When at last one morning the
result was definitely known, a joyous party went from the _Constitution_
building to the Capitol, where occurred the memorable scene when Mr.
Grady adjourned the Legislature.
A great crowd had collected about the _Constitution_ office, and when at
eleven o’clock A.M. it was known beyond a doubt that Cleveland was
elected, a brass band was brought up, and Mr. Grady and Captain Howell
headed the procession. The march through town was hilarious and
exultant. The crowd carried a huge can of red paint which was lavishly
applied to sidewalks and prominent objects on the line of march. When
the procession passed up Marietta Street its enthusiasm led it into the
Capitol where the Legislature was in session. Leading the head of the
procession to the hall of the House of Representatives, Mr. Grady passed
by the door-keeper into the main aisle. Colonel Lucius Lamar, of
Pulaski, a man of imposing presence, was in the chair. His long hair
fell over his shoulders, and his bearing was magnificent. Advancing down
the aisle Mr. Grady paused and, in the stately formula of the
door-keeper, cried, with the most imposing and dramatic manner:
“Mr. Speaker; A message from the American people.”
Catching the spirit of the invasion, the dignified Speaker said
solemnly:
“Let it be received.”
With that Mr. Grady pressed up to the speaker’s chair, and quickly
wresting the gavel from his hand, cried in imposing and exultant tones:
“In the name of God and the American people, I declare this House
adjourned to celebrate the election of Grover Cleveland, the first
Democratic President in twenty-four years.”
At this there was a whirlwind of applause, and the House broke up with
the wildest enthusiasm.
Mr. Grady often said that he and Oliver Cromwell were the only two men
who ever adjourned a legislative body in that style.
From the occupation of the new building the _Constitution_ took on
tremendous growth. Mr. Grady had conceived an idea of making the
greatest weekly in America, and since 1881 that edition had grown
prodigiously. When it was enlarged to a twelve-page form in 1881, it had
only 7200 subscribers. Special contributors were engaged, special
correspondents were sent out, and a picket line of local agents was
thrown out all over the South, while sample copies were doing missionary
work in the northwest. The first year the circulation jumped to 20,000,
the next to 35,000, and when the _Constitution_ went into its new
building in 1884 the 50,000 mark was reached. In 1887 the weekly passed
100,000, receiving 20,000 subscribers in December. In December, 1889,
while Mr. Grady was in Boston, the paper broke the record with 20,000
subscribers in one day. During the month 27,000 subscriptions were
received, and now the circulation is 146,000, of which 140,000 are
subscribers and about 6000 sample copies.
The inspiring and reconstructive work of the _Constitution_ culminated
in the Cotton Exposition of 1881. The whole country was warmed by a wave
of prosperity in 1880, and the people of the South, invigorated and
enthused, entered heartily into the purposes of the Exposition. When
they came to see that wonderful collection of resources it was a
revelation and an inspiration to them. The ball was in motion, and
through the decade it has rolled with steadily increasing momentum. The
development of the South has already gone beyond the expectation of the
most sanguine, and already this region has a firm hold on iron and
cotton, the two greatest industries on the continent.
Over all this helpful and inspiring work Captain Howell, the
editor-in-chief, had a watchful eye. His heart and his purse were
enlisted, and he backed up the vigorous work of his paper with earnest
personal work. He was concerned in the leading enterprises as organizer
and subscriber to the stock. In the flush of enthusiasm he was a
balance-wheel. He added the safe counsel of a mature business man to the
enthusiasm of his more youthful partner, and then backed him up with
money and prodigious energy.
The Kimball House burned down one Sunday in August, 1883, and
immediately the _Constitution_ set to work to raise the immense sum
needed to replace the magnificent hotel. It had been the pride of
Atlanta. Conventions and distinguished visitors from all sections of the
country had been entertained there. It was Atlanta’s reception room, and
was a necessity. It must be replaced, and the _Constitution_ threw
itself in the breach. Captain Howell became president of the new Kimball
House Company, and bent himself to the enormous task of raising
$650,000. The whole town was enthused, and Mr. Kimball’s magic services
were again called into requisition. On the 12th of August, 1884, exactly
one year from the day the old building was burned, the directors of the
new Kimball House took tea on the fifth floor, and within six months the
magnificent structure was completed. At the grand banquet which
celebrated the event Captain Howell presided, and Mr. Grady was one of
the principal speakers.
In all this development and upbuilding the other owners of the
_Constitution_ backed up its work with personal effort and financial
support. Mr. Hemphill and Mr. Inman are stockholders in almost
everything about Atlanta, and Mr. Swann, though now a resident of New
York, continues to invest his money largely in Atlanta enterprises.
Perhaps the greatest service the _Constitution_ ever did for Atlanta and
the State was its work for the location of the Capitol here. The
Constitutional Convention of 1877 left the question of location with the
people and the election was held that fall. A vigorous campaign was
precipitated almost from the adjournment of the Convention. Atlanta was
in great straits. The Capitol had been removed there from Milledgeville
by the Republicans, and the rank odor of reconstruction times and of
negro and carpet-bag rule hung over the spot where their disgraceful
transactions had been enacted. The glorious memories of the past were
associated with Milledgeville, where the great men of the century had
been in training. Macon, Augusta, Savannah, and the press of Southern
Georgia sought to array these cherished associations against Atlanta,
the dashing new city that had the audacity to set new patterns and do
things in her own vigorous way. Something had to be done; enormous
obstacles had to be overcome, and Atlanta resolved to do the work. The
city council met and decided to spare no pains or expense to get the
Capitol. A general campaign committee was organized with Captain J. W.
English at its head, and the work from that center was begun. In
addition to this a prudential committee of three was appointed and given
a _carte blanche_ to carry the election, with unlimited means at its
command. On this committee were ex-Governor, now Senator, Joseph E.
Brown, Major Campbell Wallace and Captain E. P. Howell, editor of the
_Constitution_. The advanced age of the other two members made it
necessary for Captain Howell to take the heaviest part of the work upon
his shoulders and he worked night and day. Every county in the State,
except those about Macon and Milledgeville, was covered with men talking
for Atlanta, and the whole State was flooded with Atlanta literature.
Some of the most distinguished speakers in the State were on the
hustings, and the heaviest timber was on Atlanta’s side. It was a
campaign of hard work. Every voter, white and colored, was reached by
type and talk; and when the day came Atlanta won by 44,000 votes
majority.
While the leading citizens of Atlanta, including the editors and owners
of the _Constitution_, were personally at work in the campaign, the
paper was the chief point of attack in a bitter newspaper war. Rancor
ran almost to bloodshed. Atlanta editors in those days were prepared to
talk it out or fight it out as their adversaries pleased. An editor’s
courage was in demand as constantly as his pen, and there was no milk
and water in editorials. The _Constitution_ held the fort for Atlanta,
and its flag flaunted serenely in the worst of the war.
Then came a long fight for an appropriation to build a new Capitol. The
_Constitution_ steadily advocated it, and its influence was thrown into
the Legislature to back up Mr. Rice, the Atlanta member, who introduced
the bill. Finally when a million dollars had been appropriated, the
editor, Captain Howell, was put on the Capitol Commission to succeed the
late Mr. Crane as the member from Atlanta.
Since then the _Constitution_ has been a power in political campaigns,
and its influence was triumphantly exerted in behalf of Governor
Colquitt in the famous Colquitt-Norwood campaign, when part of the
Democratic Convention split off and nominated Norwood after Colquitt had
been named by the majority. Mr. Grady took charge of Governor Colquitt’s
campaign, and to his efforts, more than to anything else, Colquitt’s
election was due. In the Bacon-Boynton campaign the _Constitution’s_
influence was exerted for Governor Boynton, and finally for Governor
McDaniel, when Major Bacon had almost run away with the nomination. When
Governor Gordon dashed into the State in 1886 Mr. Grady took charge of
the campaign headquarters in Atlanta and directed the work for Gordon.
The General’s wonderful magnetism was backed up with such prodigious
work as the State had never known. The local influentials all over the
State were largely pledged to Major Bacon, and it was thought he had the
nomination in his pocket. Week by week, as the returns came in, the
Gordon column crept up on Bacon’s, and in the closing weeks the General
swept by him with a rush.
The prohibition campaign of 1887 was one of the most remarkable episodes
in the history of Atlanta, and the division and tension among friends
and neighbors was strikingly shown by the position of the gentlemen who
owned the _Constitution_. Captain Howell, the editor in chief, was an
ardent anti, and Mr. Grady, the managing editor, was the leading
advocate of prohibition. Mr. Hemphill and Mr. Inman were for
prohibition, and other stockholders were against it. The campaign
committees on both sides loaded down the columns of the paper with
bristling communications, while the editor-in-chief and the managing
editor had thrown their whole strength into the campaign on opposite
sides. Both were on the hustings, and it so happened that both spoke the
same night, Captain Howell to an opera house full of antis, and Mr.
Grady to a big warehouse full of prohibitionists. The whole town was on
the _qui vive_; one-half the people were hurrahing for Howell and the
other were cheering for Grady. The editors drew more than the houses
would begin to hold, and their audiences were in a frenzy of delight.
The speeches were the talk of the day, and for days afterward their
arguments were discussed and repeatedly mustered into service by the
other speakers.
On the afternoon of the day they were to speak the _Evening Journal_
contained the following spirited notice under the head of “Howell and
Grady”:
Jack Spratt
Could eat no fat,
His wife could eat no lean,
Between them both
They cleared the cloth
And licked the platter clean.
The reproduction of this ancient rhyme is not intended as an
insinuation that Mr. Henry W. Grady, the silver-tongued
prohibition orator of to-night, has any of the attributes of
Jack Spratt, or that Colonel Evan P. Howell, the redoubtable
champion of the antis, has any of the peculiarities of Jack
Spratt’s conjugal associate. The idea sought to be conveyed is
that the fat and lean of prohibition will be energetically
attacked by these gentlemen to-night at the same hour from
opposite sides of the table.
It goes without saying that between them both the platter will
be licked clean, and it is to be hoped that this hearty
prohibition meal will be thoroughly digested and assimilated to
Atlanta’s system, that growth in her every tissue will be the
result.
It would be hard to select two more effective speakers and two
more entirely different.
“What is Colonel Howell’s style of oratory?” said one newspaper
man to another.
“Well,” said he, “you have heard Grady? you know how he speaks?”
“Yes.”
“Well, Grady makes you feel like you want to be an angel and
with the angels stand, and Howell makes you feel as if he were
the commander of an army, waving his sword and saying, ‘Follow
me,’ and you would follow him to the death.”
Both of these speakers will raise enthusiasm at the start. As
Grady ascends the platform the band will play “Dixie” and the
audience will be almost in a frenzy of delight. As Colonel
Howard comes forward the band will be likely to play the
“Marsellaise Hymn,”—some air that stirs the sterner nature—and
he will be received with thunders of applause.
With infinite jest and with subtle humor Mr. Grady will lead his
audience by the still waters where pleasant pastures lie; and
there he will “take the wings of the morning and fly to the
uttermost parts of the sea.”
Howell will march his audience, like an army, through flood and
fire and fell; he will cross the sea, like a Norseman, to
conquer Britain. In Grady’s flights you only hear the cherubim’s
wing; in Howell’s march the drum-beat never ceases. Grady’s
eloquence is like a cumulus cloud that rises invisible as mist
till it unfolds its white banners in the sky; Howell’s is like a
rushing mountain stream that tears every rock and crag from its
path, gathering volume as it goes.
Mr. Howell will doubtless deal in statistics; Mr. Grady will
have figures, but they will not smell of the census. They will
take on the pleasing shape that induced one of his reporters to
plant a crop of Irish potatoes on a speculation. To-night
Atlanta will be treated to a hopeful view of prohibition by the
most eloquent optimist in the country. The contrast will be
drawn with all the ruggedness of a strong, blunt man.
The day after the election, when 1100 majority had been announced
against prohibition, Captain Howell and Mr. Grady printed characteristic
cards. Captain Howell, from the standpoint of victory, gave in a few
words his reasons for his course, and closed by saying:
A word about my partners. I have differed from them on this
question, and I know that they have been prompted by the same
consciousness of duty which caused me to so differ. I love Henry
Grady as a brother, and no one appreciates more highly than I
his noble and unselfish devotion to our city; no one knows
better than I his earnestness and faithful attachment to her
welfare. Mr. Hemphill and Mr. Inman are as true and tried
citizens as Atlanta has, and are among my warmest personal
friends. Nothing that has occurred during this campaign could
mar the relations existing between us. The only regret I have
about the campaign is that I found it necessary to differ with
them, but I am confident that they will now join hands with me
in carrying out the purposes (uniting the people) as expressed
above.
Mr. Grady declared his unshaken affection for his partner, and pledged
his aid to him in his purposes to unite Atlanta and keep the sale of
liquor within bounds. As for his own part in the campaign, he expresses
himself in these remarkable words:
When everything else I have said or done is forgotten, I want
the words I have spoken for prohibition in Atlanta to be
remembered. I am prouder of my share in the campaign that has
ended in its defeat than of my share in all other campaigns that
have ended in victory. I espoused its cause deliberately, and I
have worked for its success night and day, to the very best of
my ability. My only regret is that my ability was not greater.
This reunion of the owners of the _Constitution_ was the prompt example
which set a pattern for the community. Within a year from the close of
the bitterest campaign in Atlanta’s history, one in which many a house
and many a family was divided against itself, the acrimony had almost
entirely disappeared. The wounds of the campaign were healed and the
soreness of defeat had disappeared; Atlanta was re-united, and on every
side were signs of prosperity and good-will. In another twelvemonth she
had to enlarge her girth a quarter of a mile all round; nine hundred
houses were built, every one was filled, and there was a pressing demand
for more. The _Constitution_ turned from this struggle with its owners
more strongly cemented by personal friendship than ever before, and in
the closing weeks of 1889 the paper touched a higher mark of prosperity
than it had ever known.
After Mr. Grady’s death the _Constitution_ pursued the even tenor of its
way. Saddened by that great calamity the late editor’s associates
realized that there was great work for them to do. The succession to the
management was as natural as the passing of one day into another. Mr.
Clark Howell, Jr., eldest son of the editor-in-chief, had been on the
paper six years, first as night editor and then as assistant managing
editor. In Mr. Grady’s absence he had been in charge, and in taking the
position of managing editor at twenty-six years of age, he assumed
duties and responsibilities that were not new to him. He was fortified
by an extensive personal acquaintance formed not only in his newspaper
experience, but in two terms of active service as a representative of
Fulton County in the Legislature, having been nominated for the first
term before he was twenty-one years of age.
Mr. Howell won his spurs as a newspaper man before he was twenty. On
graduating from the University of Georgia in 1883 he went to the New
York _Times_ as an apprentice in its local department. It was Captain
Howell’s policy to throw his son on his own resources, and the moderate
allowance during college days, was almost entirely withdrawn when young
Clark went to New York. A young reporter working on twelve dollars a
week was sorely put to it to make ends meet in a great city like New
York. From the New York _Times_ city department Mr. Howell went to the
Philadelphia _Press_, assisting in the news editing department. It was
while he was in Philadelphia, with very little cash, that he seized an
opportunity to make some money and a good deal of reputation. Samuel J.
Tilden was being urged to allow the use of his name for the second
Presidential nomination. He had not said yea or nay, and the country was
anxiously awaiting his decision, for his consent would have settled the
question of Democratic leadership. Mr. Howell went to New York for the
_Constitution_, and his interview with Mr. Tilden was the first
announcement of the old statesman’s determination not to enter the
contest again. That night Mr. Howell telegraphed the news to two hundred
papers, and the interview with the sage of Gramercy Park was read on two
continents. The young journalist who had scored a scoop on all the
ambitious newspaper men of the country received flattering notices from
the press, besides the comforting addition of $400 to his almost
invisible cash.
Mr. Howell then came on the _Constitution_ as night editor, and was
afterward promoted to the position of assistant managing editor. What
native ability and six years of training did for him was made manifest
very soon after he assumed his new responsibility.
For days the letters and telegrams of condolence and tributes to Mr.
Grady filled the paper, and to that and the monument movement all other
matter was, for the time, made subordinate. When at last the burden of
the people’s grief had found full expression, the _Constitution_ turned
itself with renewed vigor to its work. Captain Howell was on deck, the
new managing editor plunged into every detail, and soon a general
improvement was the result; the _Constitution_ took on new life. Then
Mr. Howell turned on all his energies and put the magnificent machinery
at his disposal up to its full speed. The daily issues drew daily
commendations of their excellence from the press, and the first
twenty-four-page Sunday’s edition was pronounced by many the best the
_Constitution_ had ever issued.
The people realized that the _Constitution_, though it had suffered a
great loss in Mr. Grady’s death, was still in strong hands, and from all
parts of its territory came renewed expressions of confidence and
sympathy. So the _Constitution_ continues its work, enlarging and
improving as it goes, ever looking to the future while it cherishes a
magnificent past which it could not and would not let die.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LETTERS AND TELEGRAMS
FROM
DISTINGUISHED PERSONS.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.
-------
NEW YORK, Dec. 23.—The New England Society celebrated to-night its 84th
anniversary and the 469th of the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers with a
dinner.
Mr. Depew spoke to the toast of “Unsolved Problems,” and in the course
of his remarks he referred to the death of Henry W. Grady. He said:
“Thirty years ago, Robert Toombs, of Georgia, one of the ablest and most
brilliant defenders of slavery, said in his place in the United States
Senate that he would yet call the roll of his bondmen at the foot of
Bunker Hill monument. To-day his slaves are citizens and voters. Within
a few days a younger Georgian, possessed of equal genius, but imbued
with sentiments so leavened that the great Senator would have held him
an enemy to the State, was the guest of Boston. With a power of
presentation and a fervor of declaration worthy of the best days and
noblest efforts of eloquence, he stood beneath the shadow of Bunker Hill
and uttered opinions justifying the suppression of the negro vote, which
were hostile to the views of every man in his audience, and yet they
gave to his argument an eager and candid hearing, and to his oratory
unstinted and generous applause. It was triumphant of Puritan principles
and Puritan pluck. They know we know that no system of suffrage can
survive the intimidation of the voter or the falsification of the
courts. Public conscience, by the approval of fraud upon the ballot and
the intelligence of a community, will soon be indifferent to the
extensions of those methods by the present office-holders to continue in
power, and the arbitrary reversing of the will of the majority will end
in anarchy and despotism.
“This is a burning question, not only in Georgia, but in New York. It is
that the government for the people shall be by the people. No matter how
grave the questions which absorb the people’s attention or engross their
time, the permanence of their solution rests upon a pure ballot.
“The telegraph brings us this evening the announcement of the death of
Henry W. Grady, and we forget all differences of opinion and remember
only his chivalry, patriotism, and his genius. He was the leader of the
New South, and died in the great work of impressing its marvelous growth
and national inspirations upon the willing ears of the North. Upon this
platform, and before this audience, two years ago, he commanded the
attention of the country and won universal fame. His death, in the
meridian of his powers and the hopefulness of his mission, at a critical
period of the removal forever of all misunderstanding and differences
between all sections of the Republic, is a national calamity. New York
mingles her tears with those of his kindred, and offers to his memory a
tribute of her profoundest admiration.”
--------------
EX-PRESIDENT CLEVELAND.
-------
NEW YORK, _December 23, 1889_.
MRS. HENRY W. GRADY: Accept the heartfelt sympathy of one who loved your
husband for what he was and for all that he had done for his people and
his country. Be assured that everywhere throughout the land warm hearts
mourn with you in your deep affliction and deplore the loss the nation
has sustained.
GROVER CLEVELAND.
--------------
HON. A. S. COLYAR.
-------
NASHVILLE, TENN., _December 26, 1889_.
MR. A. W. DAVIS, ATLANTA, GA.:
_My Dear Sir_:—I feel as if, in coming to what I had hoped to be a
joyous occasion, I am coming to the house of mourning—the home of
sorrow. Since the tragic end of the young Irish patriot, death has not
more ruthlessly invaded the land of “shining marks” than when he the
other day came to your beautiful city—a city of happiness and “high
ways”—and, as if looking with remorseless purpose into the very secrets
of domestic felicity and popular affection—took up and carried away into
the land of the unseeable the idol of a happy home and of a great city.
Not only was Henry W. Grady the idol of his own city and State, but
without office and without estate, though young in years, he had
attained a maturity of both pen and heart which brought renown as an
American patriot far beyond what place or power can give. His death is a
national calamity. In times of peace, when much of the press and many of
the public men are inviting patronage and seeking favors in fanning the
passions born of a sectional issue, to see a truly national and brave
man, who, loving his own native section, can nevertheless glory in a
common country and a common destiny for all the American people—is to
the patriot philosopher, who divines the happiness of a reunited people,
the bright star of hope rising to dissipate the prejudices of the past
and light up the pathway to the coming millions.
Unfortunately, oh, how much to be deplored! the passions of the sections
have been kept alive by the pen and tongue of the politician seeking
patronage and office.
The young man of your city whose death all patriots mourn, put himself
on a higher plane—freed from passion and rising above his own ambition,
he gave tone and temper to a national sentiment, which might be uttered
in Boston or Atlanta with equal propriety and patriotism and from the
emotions of his patriotic heart, he spoke words which, while they were
full of the manhood of his own loved South, nevertheless warmed into a
generous sympathy the North man as well as the South man, and put
American citizenship so high that the young men of the country may,
without the sacrifice of local pride, ever aspire to reach it.
As an example of Southern manhood, patriotic fervor, and a statesmanship
extending over the entire country and into the coming generations, all
sparkling with the scintillation of an intelligent courage that defied
alike the prejudices of the ignorant and the appeals of the demagogue,
he was the representative and leader of a sentiment in the South which
promised speedily a reforming of public sentiment north and south, a
turning from the shades of the past into the lighted avenues of the
future—these avenues opening to all alike without the sacrifice of
manhood or the domination of section.
I repeat, his death is a calamity, and oh, how sad and mysterious!
Truly, A. S. COLYAR.
--------------
HON. MURAT HALSTEAD.
-------
CINCINNATI, _December 24, 1889_.
MRS. H. W. GRADY:
I desire to inscribe my name among those who feel the public misfortune
of Mr. Grady’s death as a personal loss, and hope you may know how true
it is that there are no boundaries to sincere regrets and earnest
sympathies.
MURAT HALSTEAD.
--------------
HON. SAMUEL J. RANDALL.
-------
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
WASHINGTON, D. C., _December 24, 1889_.
HON. E. P. HOWELL, ATLANTA, GA.:
_My Dear Sir_:—I telegraphed briefly yesterday afternoon, immediately
upon hearing of the death of our dear friend. I do not know when I have
been more shocked than I have been at this great calamity, and I cannot
yet bring my mind to realize it. The ways of Providence are strange
indeed, but we should submit with Christian fortitude.
So young a man, with so bright a future, and capable of so much benefit
to his State and country, it is hard indeed to part with. His great
object in life was to break down sectionalism and bring the South to her
full capabilities of development. But I have not the heart to write
more.
Give Mrs. Randall’s love to Mrs. Grady and my kindest sympathy, and tell
her that as long as life lasts with us Mr. Grady’s hundred and more
kindnesses to both will never fade from our memory.
SAMUEL J. RANDALL.
--------------
MR. ANDREW CARNEGIE.
-------
NEW YORK, _December 24, 1889_.
CAPTAIN HOWELL:
Only those who stood at Mr. Grady’s side as we did and heard him at
Boston can estimate the extent of the nation’s loss in his death. It
seemed reserved for him to perform a service to his country which no
other could perform so well. Mrs. Carnegie and I share your grief and
tender to his family profound sympathy. We send a wreath in your care
which please place upon the grave of the eloquent peacemaker between the
North and South.
ANDREW CARNEGIE.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
MANY DISTINGUISHED CITIZENS.
-------
SPRINGFIELD, MASS., _December 24, 1889_.
THE HONORABLE, THE MAYOR:
Springfield shares the sorrow of her sister city. The death of such a
man as Henry Woodfin Grady is a national loss.
EDWARD S. BRADFORD, _Mayor_.
-------
NEW YORK, _December 24, 1889_.
TO MRS. HENRY GRADY:
The New York Southern Society, profoundly affected by a sense of the
public loss sustained in the death of your distinguished husband, offer
you their heartfelt sympathy in the great affliction you have suffered.
J. H. PARKER, _Vice-President_.
-------
NEW YORK, _December 23, 1889_.
GOVERNOR RUFUS B. BULLOCK:
Your dispatch is received with sincere sorrow. Thousands of our citizens
recognized in Mr. Grady a man worthy of the highest respect and esteem,
and will regard his untimely death a national calamity.
ALONZO B. CORNELL.
-------
NEW YORK, _December 24, 1889_.
EVAN HOWELL:
Please give my earnest sympathy to Mrs. Grady. The profession has lost
one of its three or four foremost members, and the country a true
patriot.
BALLARD SMITH.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that:
was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_);
was in bold by is enclosed by “equal” signs (=bold=).
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