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.