Henry Grady, shortly after he left college, was married to Miss Jule King, daughter of Dr. Wm. King, of Athens. Two children, Gussie and Henry, bear his name. Mr. Grady’s work on the Constitution was inspirational. When he became interested he would apply himself closely, working night and day in a campaign or upon a crusade. Then he would lighten up, contenting himself with general supervision; frequently taking trips away for diversion. He was singularly temperate—not drinking wine or using tobacco; but his emotional nature kept him constantly at concert pitch. His nervous system was in perpetual strain and he sank as soon as stricken.
It was in 1877 that he made his first appearance as a speaker. His lecture that year, entitled “Patchwork Palace,” showed his fancy and talent as a talker as well as a writer. Then came his speeches in the prohibition contest in 1885. His New England banquet address in December, 1886, was his first distinctive political speech. It stamped him as an eloquent orator and made him national fame. His oration at the Augusta Exposition on Thanksgiving day last year was a perfect effort, and his Dallas address in October was a fearless and manly analysis of the race problem. It was this subject, classified and digested, that made up his Boston address, where, last week, he completed his fame and met his death. His address last year at the University of Virginia was a model of its kind.
Of late years Henry Grady had been settling down to the level of a solid worker, a close thinker and safe leader. If there was anything in his way to wide influence in earlier life, it was his irrepressible fancy and bubbling spirit. These protruded in speech and writing. But as he grew older he lopped off this redundant tegument. He never lost the artist’s touch or the poet’s enthusiasm. But age and experience brought conservatism. He became a power in politics from the day the Herald backed Gordon for the Senate in 1872. He followed Ben Hill in his campaign with great skill, and in 1880 did as much as any man to win the great Colquitt-Brown victory. In 1886 he managed Gen. Gordon’s canvass for Governor, and in 1887 planned and conducted the first successful Piedmont Exposition.
Some may say that Henry Grady died at the right time for his fame. This may be true as to others, but not as to him. They know not, who thus judge him, what was in the man. Some mature early in life and their mentality is not increased by length of years, but the mind of our dead friend was constantly developing. The evidence of this was his Boston speech, which in our opinion was the best ever delivered by him. No man could foresee the possibilities of such a mind as his. He had just reached the table land on the mountain top, from which his mental vision could calmly survey the true situation of the South, and his listening countrymen would hear his inspiring admonitions of truth, wisdom and patriotism. Mr. Grady had firmly planted his feet on the ladder of fame. He had the genius of statesmanship, and, had he lived, we have no doubt that he would have measured up to the full stature of the most gifted statesmen whose names adorn the annals of the Republic.
In speaking of the loss to this section, we do not wish to indulge in the language of exaggeration when we say that the South has lost her most gifted, eloquent and useful son. His death to Georgia is a personal bereavement. His loss to the country is a public one. He loved Georgia. He loved the South. With the ardor of a patriot he loved his whole country, and his last public words touched the patriotic heart of the people and the responsive throb came back from all sections for a re-united people and a restored Union.
Henry Grady has not lived in vain. He is dead, but his works will live after him and bear fruits in the field of patriotism.
There was one thing about Henry Grady. He never ran for office or seemed to care for public honor. In the white heat of politics for fifteen years he has been mostly concerned in helping others. The young men of the State who have sought and secured his aid in striving for public station are many. But until last year when his own name was mentioned for the national Senate he had shunned such prominence. At that time it was seriously urged against him that he had never served in the Legislature and that his training had not been in deliberative bodies. But the time was coming when he must have held high public place. The Governor’s chair or the Senator’s toga would have been his in the near future. His leadership in practical matters, in great public works, the impulse he had given the people in building up the material interests of the South were carrying him so rapidly to the front that he could not have kept out of public office. But his position at the time of his death was unique. He was a power behind the throne, mightier than the throne itself. He was a Warwick like Thurlow Weed. Whether official station could have increased his usefulness is a question. Whether his influence would have been advanced by going into politics was a problem which he had never settled in his own mind. Already he had a constituency greater than that of governor or senator. He spoke every week to more people than the chief magistrate of any state in the Union. He employed a vehicle of more power than the great seal of the State. He wrote with the pen of genius and spoke the free inspiration of an untrammeled citizen. He was under no obligations but duty and his own will. He made friends rather than votes and his reward was the love and admiration of his people—a more satisfactory return than the curule chair.
And so his death, cruel, untimely and crushing, may have been a crown to a noble, devoted and gifted life. His happiness, his influence, his reputation had little to ask in the turmoil of politics. Its uncertainties and ingratitudes would have bruised a guileless, generous heart. Not that he was unequal to it, but because he did not need public office, may we seek satisfaction in the fact that he lived and died a faithful worker and a private citizen. His last plea was for the people of a slandered section—an answer to the President that “the South was not striving to settle the negro problem.” It was an inspiration and wrung praise from friend and opponent. It cost him his life, but no man ever gave up life in nobler cause. He lived to see his State prosperous, his reputation Union-wide, his name honored and loved, his professional work full of success, and no man has gone to the grave with greater evidences of tenderness and respect.
As Grady said of Dawson, so let us say of Grady: “God keep thee, comrade; rest thy soul in peace, thou golden-hearted gentleman!”