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.
HENRY W. GRADY’S ATLANTA HOME.
WRITINGS.