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.”