HENRY WOODFIN GRADY was born in Athens, Georgia, May 17, 1851, and died in Atlanta, Georgia, December 23, 1889.
His father, William S. Grady, was a native of North Carolina, and lived in that State until about the year 1846, when he moved to Athens, Georgia. He was a man of vigorous energy, sterling integrity, and great independence of character. He was not literary by profession, but devoted himself to mercantile pursuits, and accumulated what was in those days considered a handsome fortune. Soon after moving to Georgia to live, he married Miss Gartrell, a woman of rare strength of character and deep religious nature. Their married life was sanctified by love of God, and made happy by a consistent devotion to each other.
They had three children, Henry Woodfin, William S., Jr., and Martha. Henry Grady’s father was an early volunteer in the Confederate Army. He organized and equipped a company, of which he was unanimously elected captain, and went at once to Virginia, where he continued in active service until he lost his life in one of the battles before Petersburg. During his career as a soldier he bore himself with such conspicuous valor, that he was accorded the rare distinction of promotion on the field for gallantry.
He fought in defense of his convictions, and fell “a martyr for conscience’ sake.”
His widow, bereft of her helpmate, faced alone the grave responsibility of rearing her three young children.
She led them in the ways of righteousness and truth, and always sweetened their lives with the tenderness of indulgence, and the beauty of devotion. Two of them still live to call her blessed.
If memorials were meant only for the day and generation in which they are written, who would venture upon the task of preparing one to Henry W. Grady? His death occasioned such wide grief, and induced such unprecedented demonstrations of sorrow, that nothing can be commensurate with those impressive evidences of the unrivaled place he held in the homage of his countrymen.
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 men. 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 were so superior, and his purposes so unselfish, that he seemed to combine all the best elements of genius, and live under the influence of Divine inspiration.
As both a writer and a speaker, he was phenomenally gifted. There was no limit, either to the power or witchery of his pen. In his masterful hand, it was as he chose, either the mighty instrument which Richelieu described, or the light wand of a poet striking off the melody of song, though not to the music of rhyme. In writing a political editorial, or an article on the industrial development of the South, or anything else to which he was moved by an inspiring sense of patriotism or conviction of duty, he was logical, aggressive, and unanswerable. When building an air-castle over the framework of his fancy, or when pouring out his soul in some romantic dream, or when sounding the depth of human feeling by an appeal for 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. As an orator, he had no equal in the South. He literally mastered his audience regardless of their character, chaining them to the train of his thought and carrying them captive to conviction. He moved upon their souls like the Divine Spirit upon the waters, either lashing them into storms of enthusiasm, or stilling them into the restful quiet of sympathy. He was like no other man—he was a veritable magician. He could invest the most trifling thing with proportions of importance not at all its own. He could transform a homely thought into an expression of beauty beneath his wondrous touch. From earliest childhood he possessed that indefinable quality which compels hero-worship.
In the untimely ending of his brilliant and useful career—an ending too sudden to be called less than tragic—there came an affliction as broad as the land he loved, and a grief well-nigh universal. Atlanta lamented her foremost citizen; Georgia mourned her peerless son; the New South agonized over the fall of her intrepid leader; and the heart of the nation was athrob with sorrow when the announcement went forth—“Henry W. Grady is dead.”