From the “Springfield, Mass., Republican.”
The death of Henry Woodfin Grady, the brilliant young Southern editor and orator, which took place at Atlanta, Ga., was almost tragic in its suddenness; it will make a profound impression at the South, and will be deeply deplored here at the North, where he had come to be known as a florid yet forceful advocate and apologist of his section. He had lately caught the ear of the country, and while his speeches provoked critical replies, it may be said in his honor that he, more than any other Southerner, had lifted the plane of sectional debate from that of futile recriminations to more dignified and candid interchanges of opinion. That is saying much for a man who was a lad during the rebellion, and who had not passed his thirty-ninth birthday. He was a man of pronounced views, perhaps given more to pictures of prosperity than to the methods of its attainment, and when upon the platform he carried the crowd by the force of that genius for passionate appeals which his Irish ancestry and Southern training had given him in full measure. No Southerner had put the conflict of races in so reassuring a light; but he was not old enough or far-seeing enough to realize that the problem can and will be solved,—and that by Southerners.
Mr. Grady called about him a formidable group of young Democrats filled with the spirit of the New South. They believed that Georgia would rise and the South be reconstructed in the broadest sense by the multiplication of factories and the advancement of trade. These young men selected Gov. Colquitt for their standard-bearer in the State election of 1880, and Mr. Grady was made chairman of the campaign committee. Colquitt during his first term had offended the Democratic regulars, and the young men carried the war into the back country. The vote at the primaries was unprecedentedly heavy. Colquitt carried the State and was the first governor elected under the new constitution. Grady never held public office, but it was supposed that he had been selected by the Democratic leaders as Gov. Gordon’s successor, and many thought that he was angling for the second place on the Democratic national ticket in 1892.
The attention of the North was first called to the brilliant Georgian by his address at New York in June, 1887, at the annual dinner of the New England Society. His speech at the Washington Centennial banquet last spring was rather a disappointment, but he fully recovered his prestige the other day at Boston, where he shared the honors of a notable occasion with Grover Cleveland. Mr. Grady found time from his editorial work to write an occasional magazine article, but his subject was his one absorbing study—the South and its future.
HIS GREAT WORK.
From the “Boston Post.”
The death of the brilliant young Southerner whose eloquence yet rings in our ears followed so closely upon his visit to Boston that it doubtless arouses a keener sense of regret and a clearer realization of loss here than in other communities. Mr. Grady, moreover, in speaking for the New South, whose aspirations he so ably represented, while addressing the whole nation, yet brought himself more closely to New England in his arguments, his contrasts and his fervid appeals; and, whether it was admiration of his courage in combating the remnants of traditional prejudices in the heart of the section in which this feeling once was the strongest, or a sympathy with the sentiments which he expressed in such captivating language, it cannot be doubted that the warmest recognition which he has received outside his own State is that which he won from this community.
In all his efforts to spread that knowledge of the sentiments and the purposes of the South which would tend to make the restored union of the States more secure and more harmonious, Mr. Grady has addressed himself especially to New England. It was at the meeting of the New England Society in New York, in 1886, that he made the first notable speech which evoked such a ready and generous response from all sections of the country; and the last public words which he spoke in furtherance of the same purpose were those delivered upon Plymouth Rock at the end of the recent visit which he described as a pilgrimage.