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.