A LOSS TO THE SOUTH.
From the “Louisville Post.”
The death of Henry W. Grady, of Atlanta, after so brief an illness and in the very prime of a vigorous young manhood, will startle the whole country and will be an especial affliction to the South. Mr. Grady was a brilliant journalist, a man of brain and heart, and by his sensible and enthusiastic policy has identified himself with the interests of the New South. In fact, few men have been more largely instrumental in bringing about that salutary sentiment, now prevailing, that it is best for the South to look with hope and courage to the future, rather than to live in sad inactivity amid the ruins of the past. Mr. Grady was a warm and confident advocate of industrial advancement in the land of his birth. He wanted to see the South interlaced with railroads, her rich mineral deposits opened to development, her cities teeming with factories, her people busy, contented and prosperous. This was his mission as a man and as a journalist, and his influence has been widespread. Just at this time his loss will be doubly severe.
One morning Henry Grady, who had possessed little more than a sectional reputation, woke up to find himself famous throughout the nation. By his speech at a New York banquet he sounded the key-note of fraternal Union between North and South, and his appeal for mutual trust and confidence, with commerce and industry to cement more strongly than ever the two great sections of the country, met with a response from both sides of Mason and Dixon’s line more hearty than ever before. Many another man from the South felt the same sentiments and would have expressed them gladly. Many a man in the North felt that in the South those sentiments were sincerely held. But Grady had a peculiar opportunity, and right well did he improve it. He expressed eloquently and forcibly the feelings, the purposes, the very spirit of the New South, and in that very moment he made a reputation that is national. It was his good fortune to express to the business men as well as to the politicians of the nation the idea of an indivisible union of interests, of sentiments and of purposes, as well as of territory.
In Mr. Grady’s own State his death will be most felt. What he has done for Georgia can only be appreciated by those who compare its present activity and prosperity with the apathy and discontent which existed there a few years ago. The dead man will be sincerely mourned, but the idea which he made the fundamental one of his brief career will continue to work out the welfare of the New South.