HENRY WOODFIN GRADY 1851-1889 Henry Woodfin Grady was born at Athens, Georgia, May 24, 1851. He was the son of a successful merchant who enlisted during the Civil War on the Confederate side and was killed near Petersburg. Grady was graduated from the State University, and after taking a post-graduate course at the University of Virginia, he became editor of a daily newspaper in Rome, Georgia. During the latter part of the Reconstruction period in the South Grady wrote a series of articles to the New York" Herald" on Southern politics. These letters, filled with unprejudiced common-sense, and the calm logic of facts-so different from the ordinary political contributions of that day-attracted wide attention at the North. In 1880 Cyrus W. Field, the New York millionaire, on his own initiative, loaned Grady sufficient capital to acquire an interest in the Atlanta Constitution.' He became editor of that paper, a position that he held until his death. Grady was an able and enterprising journalist of the modern type; but it was as an orator that he gained a national reputation which bears favorable comparison to that of the foremost orators of the nineteenth century. His first great speech of national import was delivered at the annual banquet of the New England Society, on December 22, 1887. This brilliant speech made him widely known, and his talents received recognition at both the North and South. "The South has nothing for which to apologize," was the key-note of that great speech. Accepting the results of the Civil War as facts, he was proud of the stand the South had taken in the contest, and only desired to see the sincerity and honesty of its purpose vindicated. The famous prohibition speech in Atlanta followed in 1887 and the address at the State fair of Texas, where he had an audience of a score of thousands, was delivered during the next year. The greatest and last effort of his life was his address before the Merchants' Association in Boston, delivered on December 12, 1889. His Grady was a man of a fervent nature, of vivid and active imagination, impetuous, yet self-poised. His oratory was captivating, commanding the attention of his hearers throughout without any conscious effort on his part. The tact he displayed in the discussion of sectional questions was most remarkable. His great eloquence, his abiding love for the common country and his entire sympathy with his subject, did much to set before the North the cause of the South in an impartial light. greatest claim to the nation's gratitude consists in his successful endeavors to bring the two sections of the country to a better understanding of one another and to soothe and heal the old wounds left by the animosities of the Civil War. He died December 23, 1889, after a short illness contracted on the visit he made to Boston to deliver his speech on the New South." THE NEW SOUTH Delivered at a banquet of the Boston Merchants' Association in Boston, December 12, 1889 TH HE stoutest apostle of the church, they say, is the missionary, and the missionary, wherever he unfurls his flag, will never find himself in deeper need of unction and address than I, bidden to-night to plant the standard of a Southern Democrat in Boston's banquet hall, and to discuss the problem of the races in the home of Phillips and of Sumner. But, Mr. President, if a purpose to speak in perfect frankness and sincerity; if earnest understanding of the vast interests involved; if a consecrating sense of what disaster must follow further misunderstanding and estrangement-if all these may be counted on to steady undisciplined speech and to strengthen an untried arm, then, sir, I shall find the courage to proceed. Happy am I that this mission has brought my feet, at last, to press New England's historic soil, and my eyes to the knowledge of her beauty and her thrift. Here within touch of Plymouth Rock and Bunker Hill-where Webster thundered and Longfellow sung, Emerson thought, and Channing preached -here in the cradle of American letters and almost of American liberty, I hasten to make the obeisance that every American owes New England when first he stands uncovered in her mighty presence. Strange apparition! This stern and unique figure, carved from the ocean and the wilderness, its majesty kindling and growing amid the storms of winters and of wars, until, at last, the gloom was broken, its beauty disclosed in the tranquil sunshine, and the heroic workers rested at its base, while startled kings and emperors gazed and marvelled that from the rude touch of this handful, cast on a bleak and unknown shore, should have come the embodied genius of human liberty! God bless the memory of those immortal work ers-and prosper the fortunes of their living sons-and perpetuate the inspiration of their handiwork! Two years ago, sir, I spoke some words in New York that caught the attention of the North. As I stand here to reiterate and emphasize, as I have done everywhere, every word I then uttered-to declare that the sentiments I then avowed were universally approved in the South-I realize that the confidence begotten by that speech is largely responsible for my presence here to-night. I should dishonor myself if I betrayed that confidence by uttering one insincere word, or by withholding one essential element of the truth. Apropos of this last, let me confess, Mr. President-before the praise of New England has died on my lips-that I believe the best product of her present life is the procession of seventeen thousand Vermont Democrats that for twenty-two years, undiminished by death, unrecruited by birth or conversion, have marched over their rugged hills, cast their Democratic ballots, and gone back home to pray for their unregenerate neighbors and awake to read the record of twenty-six thousand Republican majority. May the God of the helpless and heroic help them, and may their sturdy tribe increase! Far to the South, Mr. President, separated by a line-once defined in irrepressible difference, once traced in fratricidal blood, and now, thank God, but a vanishing shadow-lies the fairest and richest domain of this earth. It is the home of a brave and hospitable people. There is centred all that can please or prosper human-kind. A perfect climate above a fertile soil yields to the husbandman every product of the temperate zone. There, by night, the cotton whitens beneath the stars, and by day the wheat locks the sunshine in its bearded sheaf. In the same field the clover steals the fragrance of the wind, and the tobacco catches the quick aroma of the rains. There are mountains stored with exhaustless treasures; forests vast and primeval, and rivers that, tumbling or loitering, run wanton to the sea. Of the three essential items of all industries-cotton, iron, and wood-that region has easy control. In cotton, a fixed monoply; in iron, proven supremacy; in timber, the reserve supply of the republic. From this assured and permanent advantage, against which artificial conditions cannot long prevail, has grown an amazing system of industries. Not maintained by human contrivance of tariff or capital, afar off from the fullest and cheapest source of supply, but resting in Divine assurance, within touch of field and mine and forest-not set amid bleak hills and costly farms from which competition has driven the farmer in despair, but amid cheap and sunny lands, rich with agriculture, to which neither season nor soil has set a limit-this system of industries is mounting to a splendor that shall dazzle and illumine the world. That, sir, is the picture and the promise of my home-a land better and fairer than I have told you, and yet but a fit setting, in its material excellence, for the loyal and gentle quality of its citizenship. Against that, sir, we have New England recruiting the republic from its sturdy loins, shaking from its overcrowded hives new swarms of workers, and touching this land all over with its energy and its courage. And yet while in the Eldorado, of which I have told you, but fifteen per cent. of lands are cultivated, its mines scarcely touched, and its population so scant that, were it set equidistant, the sound of the human voice could not be heard from Virginia to Texas-while on the threshold of nearly every house in New England stands a son, seeking with troubled eyes some new land in which to carry his modest patrimony, and the homely training that is better than gold-the strange fact remains that in 1880 the South had fewer Northern-born citizens than she had in 1870 -fewer in 1870 than in 1860. Why is this? Why is it, sir, though the sectional line be now but a mist that the breath may dispel, fewer men of the North have crossed it over to the South than when it was crimson with the best blood of the republic, or even when the slaveholders stood guard every inch of its way? There can be but one answer. It is the very problem we are now to consider. The key that opens that problem will unlock to the world the fairest half of this republic, and free the halted feet of thousands whose eyes are already kindling with its beauty. Better than this, it will open the hearts of brothers for thirty years estranged, and clasp in lasting comradeship a million hands now withheld in doubt. Nothing, sir, but this problem and the suspicions it breeds, hinders a clear understanding and a perfect union. Nothing else stands between us and such love as bound Georgia and Massachusetts at Valley |