HENRY WOODFIN GRADY.
THE BRILLIANT SOUTHERN ORATOR AND JOURNALIST.
T is only a few times in a century that some unselfish soul, coupled with a towering genius of mind, rises in grandeur and goodness so far above his fellows as to command their almost worshipful admiration and love. Such a man was Henry W. Grady. 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 all men with whom he came into contact.
Grady was, perhaps, above all other prominent political leaders of his times, devoid of sectional animosities, and did more, by voice and pen, than any other man, during the decade of his prominence, to bridge the bloody chasm between the North and South, which designing politicians on both sides were endeavoring to keep open. Notwithstanding the fact that his father was a Southern slaveholder, and lost his life in fighting for the cause of secession, young Grady recognized the providence of God in the failure of that cause, and rejoiced in the liberation of the black man, though with his fallen shackles lay the wrecked fortune of himself, his widowed mother and his beloved Southland. The Union was the pride of Grady’s life. Daniel Webster was not more loyal to its Constitution or bolder in defending its principles. In writing or speaking on any subject to which he was moved by an inspiring sense of patriotism or conviction of duty, he was always eloquent, logical, aggressive and unanswerable. It was with logic, earnest honesty of conviction and a tongue of tender pathos and burning eloquence, together with a personal magnetism that always accompanies a great orator, that he literally mastered his audiences, regardless of their character, chaining them to the train of his thought, and carrying them captive to his convictions. Such a man could not be held within the narrow limits of any section. Wherever he went the power of his individuality quickly made him known, and his splendid genius needed only an opportunity to make him famous.
Like Patrick Henry, his great fame as an orator rested principally upon three speeches. One was made before the New England Society, at a banquet held in New York, in 1889, in which his theme was “The New South” and its message to the North. Another was at the State Fair at Dallas, Texas; but the most magnificent and eloquent effort of his life was delivered in Boston, December 13, 1889, just ten days before he died. The theme of this address was “The Race Problem,” and it is accorded by all who heard it, or have read it, as the most soul-stirring speech, and, withal, the fairest and most practical discussion of this vexed subject which has yet been presented by any man.
Henry Woodfin Grady was born in Atlanta, Georgia, May 17, 1851, and died there December 23, 1889. His father was a merchant in that city before the war, and Henry was the oldest of a family of three children. His mother, whose maiden name was Gartrell, was a woman of strong mind, quick intelligence, deep religious convictions, sweetness of disposition, and force of character happily blended. Grady was a boy of promise, and his youth was a fair index of his after-life. He was always brilliant, industrious, patriotic, enterprising, conscientious, and devoted to his parents to a marked degree. The tragic death of his father, when the boy was fourteen, profoundly affected him, but it, perhaps, hastened his own precocious growth by leaving him as the mainstay of his mother in providing for the family.
At the age of seventeen Henry Grady was graduated at the University of Georgia (1868); but he subsequently attended the University of Virginia, where he took his degree before he was twenty years old, and in less than a year was married to the sweetheart of his youth. His majority found him occupying the position of editor and part owner of the Rome (Georgia) “Commercial.” This failed, and cost the young editor nearly all his savings. Soon after this he removed to Atlanta, and connected himself with the Atlanta “Herald,” the columns of which he made the brightest in the South; but misfortune overtook its financial management and consumed all the remainder of Grady’s fortune. Thus, at twenty-three years of age, he had failed twice and was almost despairing when the old adage, “A friend in need is a friend indeed,” was now verified to him. Cyrus W. Field loaned the penniless young man twenty thousand dollars to buy a controlling interest in the Atlanta “Constitution.” He made it the greatest paper in the South.
Besides the editorial work on his own paper, Mr. Grady contributed much to others, among them the New York “Ledger,” to which he contributed a series of articles on “The New South,” the last of which was published only a few days before his death. When his brilliant and beneficent career was cut short at the early age of thirty-eight, the whole country had become interested in his work, and joined in common mourning over his loss. A fund of over twenty thousand dollars, contributed from all parts of the country, was quickly collected to build a monument to his memory. It was erected in Atlanta, Georgia, and unveiled with imposing ceremonies on October 21, 1891.
One who knew Henry W. Grady well thus writes of him: “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 are so superior, and his purposes so unselfish that he seemed to combine all the best elements of genius and live under the influence of an almost divine inspiration. When building an aircastle over the framework of his fancy, or when pouring out his soul in some romantic dream, or when sounding the depths of human feeling by an appeal for sweet 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.”
THE NEW SOUTH.[¹]
[¹] Copyright, H. C. Hudgins, publisher of “Life of Grady.”
HERE was a South of secession and slavery—that South is dead. There is a South of Union and freedom—that South is living, breathing, growing every hour.
I accept the term, “The New South,” as in no sense disparaging to the Old. Dear to me is the home of my childhood and the traditions of my people. There is a New South, not through protest against the Old, but because of new conditions, new adjustments, and, if you please, new ideas and aspirations. It is to this that I address myself. You have just heard an eloquent description of the triumphant armies of the North, and the grand review at Washington. I ask you, gentlemen, to picture, if you can, the foot-sore soldier, who, buttoning up in his faded gray jacket the parole which was taken, testimony to his children of his fidelity and faith, 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, and, lifting his tear-stained and pallid face for the last time to the graves that dot the 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 all the welcome you had justly earned, full payment for your four years’ sacrifice—what does he find, when he reaches the home he left four years before? He finds his house in ruins, his farm devastated, his slaves freed, 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 gone, without money, credit, employment, material, or training—and, besides 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 scourged him in his prosperity, inspired him in his adversity! As ruin was never before so overwhelming, never was restoration swifter.
The soldiers stepped from the trenches into the furrow; the horses that had charged upon General Sherman’s line marched before the plow, and fields that ran red with human blood in April were green with the harvest in June. From the ashes left us in 1864, we have raised a brave and beautiful city; and, somehow or other, we have caught the sunshine in the bricks and mortar of our homes and have builded therein not one single ignoble prejudice or memory.
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 South—misguided, perhaps, but beautiful in her suffering, and honest, brave, and generous always. On the records of her social, industrial, and political restoration we await with confidence the verdict of the world.
REGARD FOR THE NEGRO RACE.
From speech on the Race Problem, at annual banquet of the Boston Merchants’ Association, Dec., 1889.
HE 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 four years of the fiercest war—realize, as you cannot, what this race problem means—what they owe to this kindly and dependent race. Nor are they wholly to blame for the presence of slavery. The slave-ships sailed from your ports—the slaves once worked in your fields, and you sold them to the South. Neither of us now defends the traffic, nor the institution.
The love the whites of the South feel for the negro 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 put 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.
APPEAL FOR TEMPERANCE.[¹]
(In no cause in which his sympathies were enlisted was Mr. Grady more active and earnest than in that of temperance. The following extract is from one of his speeches delivered during the exciting local campaign in Georgia in 1887.)
[¹] Copyright, C. H. Hudgins & Co.
Y friends, hesitate before you vote liquor back into Atlanta, now that it is shut out. Don’t trust it. It is powerful, aggressive and universal in its attacks. To-night it enters an humble home to strike the roses from a woman’s cheek, and to-morrow it challenges this Republic in the halls of Congress. To-day it strikes a crust from the lips of a starving child, and to-morrow levies tribute from the government itself. There is no cottage in this city humble enough to escape it—no palace strong enough to shut it out. It defies the law when it cannot coerce suffrage. It is flexible to cajole, but merciless in victory. It is the mortal enemy of peace and order. The despoiler of men, the terror of women, the cloud that shadows the face of children, the demon that has dug more graves and sent more souls unshrived to judgment, than all the pestilences that have wasted life since God sent the plagues to Egypt, and all the wars since Joshua stood beyond Jericho. O my countrymen! loving God and humanity, do not bring this grand old city again under the dominion of that power. It can profit no man by its return. It can uplift no industry, revive no interest, remedy no wrong. You know that it cannot. It comes to turn, and it shall profit mainly by the ruin of your sons and mine. It comes to mislead human souls and crush human hearts under its rumbling wheels. It comes to bring gray-haired mothers down in shame and sorrow to their graves. It comes to turn the wife’s love into despair and her pride into shame. It comes to still the laughter on the lips of little children. It comes to stifle all the music of the home and fill it with silence and desolation. It comes to ruin your body and mind, to wreck your home, and it knows that it must measure its prosperity by the swiftness and certainty with which it wreaks this work.