The death of Mr. Henry W. Grady, of the Atlanta Constitution, is a loss to South and North alike. The section which poured out a few days ago its tributes of regret for the leader of the Southern Confederacy may well dye its mourning a deeper hue in memory of this greater and better man, whose useful life is cut short before he had reached his prime. Mr. Grady has held a peculiar and trying position; and in it he has done more, perhaps, than any other one man to make the two sections separated by the War of the Rebellion understand each other, and to bring them from a mere observance of what we might call a political modus vivendi to a cordial and real union. It was not as a journalist, although in his profession he was both strong and brilliant, it was rather as the earnest and eloquent representative of the New South, and as the spokesman of her people that he had acquired national prominence. He was one of the few who both cared and dared to tell to the people of either section some truths about themselves and about the other that were wholesome if they were not altogether palatable. He was wholly and desperately in earnest. He had much of the devotion to his own section and his own State that characterized the Southerner before the war. But he had what they had not: a conception of national unity; of the power and glory and honor of the nation as a whole, that made him respected everywhere. Whether he appeared in Boston or in Atlanta, he was sure of an interested and sympathetic audience; and his fervid orations, if they sometimes avoided unpleasant issues and decked with flowers the scarred face of the ugly fact, did much, nevertheless, to turn the eyes of the people away from the past and toward the future.
We have been far from agreeing with Mr. Grady’s opinions, either socially or politically. The patriotic people of the North can have no sympathy with the attempt to cover with honor the memory of treason, which found in him an ardent apologist. We believe that we have gone to the limit of magnanimity when we agree to forego question and memory, and simply treat the men who led and the men who followed in the effort to destroy the nation as if that effort had never been made. And we do not hold that man as guilty of sectionalism and treason to a reunited country who talks hotly of “rebels” and sneers at “brigadiers,” as that man who speaks of these leaders of a lost cause as “patriots,” obedient to the call of duty. To that error Mr. Grady, in common with other leaders of his time, inclined the people of his section. Politically he was, of course, through good or through evil report, an uncompromising Democrat. Nor can we think his treatment of the race issue a happy one. The North has come, at last, to do justice to the South in this respect, and to acknowledge that the problem presented to her for solution in the existence there of two races, politically equal before the law but forever distinct in social and sentimental relations, is the gravest and most difficult in our history. But the mere plea to let it alone, which is the substance of Mr. Grady’s repeated appeal, is not the answer that must come. It is not worthy of the people, either North or South. It is not satisfactory, it is not final, and the present demands more of her sons. But, in presenting these points of difference, it is not intended to undervalue the work which Mr. Grady did or underestimate the value of the service that lay before him. With tongue and pen he taught his people the beauty and the value of that national unity into which we have been reborn. He sought to lead them out of the bitterness of political strife, to set their faces toward the material development that is always a serviceable factor in the solution of political problems, and to make of the new South something worthy of the name. The work that he did was worthy, and there is none who can take and fill his place. The death that plunged the South in mourning a short time ago was merely the passing of an unhealthful reminiscence. The death of Grady is a sorrow and a loss in which her people may feel that the regret and the sympathy of the North are joined with theirs.
AT THE BEGINNING OF A GREAT CAREER.
From the “Pittsburg Post.”
The death of Henry W. Grady will be received with profound regret throughout the Northern States, while in the South there will be deeper and more heartfelt sorrow than the death of Jefferson Davis called forth. The book of Mr. Davis’s life was closed before his death, but it seemed as if we were but at the beginning of Mr. Grady’s career, with a future that held out brilliant promise. He had all the characteristics of warm-blooded Southern oratory, and his magnetic periods, that touched heart and brain alike, were devoted to the single purpose of rehabilitating the South by an appeal to the generosity and justice of the North. No speech of recent years had a greater effect than his splendid oration at the New England Society dinner in New York last year on the “New South.” It was happily and appropriately supplemented by his recent address to the merchants of Boston. He was a martyr to the cause he advocated and personated, for it was in the chill atmosphere of New England he contracted the disease of which he died. Rarely has it been given to any man to gain such reputation and appreciation as fell to Mr. Grady as the outcome of his two speeches in New York and Boston. He was only thirty-eight years old; at the very beginning of what promised to be a great career, of vast benefit to his section and country. He was essentially of the New South; slavery and old politics were to him a reminiscence and tradition. At home he was frank and courageous in reminding the South of its duties and lapses. At the North he was the intrepid and eloquent defender and champion of the South. Both fields called for courage and good faith.