country is dearer than the mere victory of party, as truth is more precious than the interest of any sect. You will hear this patriotism scorned as an impracticable theory, as the dream of a cloister, as the whim of a fool. But such was the 5 folly of the Spartan Leonidas, staying with his three hundred the Persian horde and teaching Greece the self-reliance that saved her. Such was the folly of the Swiss Arnold von Winkelried, gathering into his own breast the host of Austrian spears, making his dead body the bridge of victory for his countryIo men. Such was the folly of the American Nathan Hale, gladly risking the seeming disgrace of his name, and grieving that he had but one life to give for his country. Such are the beacon lights of a pure patriotism that burn forever in men's memories and answer each other through the illuminated ages. And of 15 the same grandeur, in less heroic and poetic form, was the patriotism of Sir Robert Peel in recent history. He was the leader of a great party and the prime minister of England. The character and necessity of party were as plain to him as to any man. But when he saw that the national welfare 20 demanded the repeal of the corn laws which he had always supported, he did not quail. Amply avowing the error of a life and the duty of avowing it foreseeing the probable overthrow of his party and the bitter execration that must fall upon him, he tranquilly did his duty. With the eyes of Eng25 land fixed upon him in mingled amazement, admiration, and indignation, he rose in the House of Commons to perform as great a service as any English statesman ever performed for his country, and in closing his last speech in favor of the repeal, describing the consequences that its mere prospect had 30 produced, he loftily exclaimed: "Where there was dissatisfaction, I see contentment; where there was turbulence, I see there is peace; where there was disloyalty, I see there is loyalty. I see a disposition to confide in you, and not to agitate questions that are the foundations of your institutions,"

When all was over, when he had left office, when his party was out of power, and the fury of party execration against him was spent, his position was greater and nobler than it had ever been. Cobden said of him, "Sir Robert Peel has lost office, but he has gained a country"; and Lord Dalling said 5 of him, what may truly be said of Washington: "Above all parties, himself a party, he had trained his own mind into a disinterested sympathy with the intelligence of his country."

22. A public spirit so lofty is not confined to other ages. and lands. You are conscious of its stirrings in your souls. It 10 calls you to courageous service, and I am here to bid you obey the call. Such patriotism may be ours. Let it be your parting vow that it shall be yours. Bolingbroke described a patriot king in England; I can imagine a patriot president in America. I can see him indeed the choice of a party, and 15 called to administer the government when sectional jealousy is fiercest and party passion most inflamed. I can imagine him seeing clearly what justice and humanity, the national law and the national welfare, require him to do, and resolved to do it. I can imagine him patiently enduring not only the mad cry of 20 party hate, the taunt of "recreant" and " traitor," of " renegade" and "coward," but what is harder to bear, the amazement, the doubt, the grief, the denunciation, of those as sincerely devoted as he to the common welfare. I can imagine him pushing firmly on, trusting the heart, the intelligence, the 25 conscience of his countrymen; healing angry wounds, correcting misunderstandings, planting justice on surer foundations, and, whether his party rise or fall, lifting his country heavenward to a more perfect union, prosperity, and peace. This is the spirit of a patriotism that girds the commonwealth with 30 the resistless splendor of the moral law the invulnerable panoply of states, the celestial secret of a great nation and a happy people,

THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE

SOUTH

HENRY W. GRADY

A SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE ANNUAL BANQUET OF THE BOSTON MERCHANTS' ASSOCIATION IN DECEMBER, 1889.

INTRODUCTION

Henry Woodfin Grady, journalist and orator, was born at Athens, Georgia, April 24, 1850. He graduated from the State University at Athens at the age of eighteen, and took a postgraduate course at the University of Virginia. For some time he acted as Southern correspondent for the New York Herald, and later became editor of the Rome (Georgia) Daily Commercial and of the Atlanta Herald. His journalistic efforts were not financially successful until, in 1880, he became editor and part owner of the Atlanta Constitution. He remained with this paper until his death, December 23, 1889.

To the argument that the press in modern times has supplanted oratory, the career of Henry W. Grady is a refutation. Journalism was his profession, while his oratory was an incident; and yet his fame and influence came chiefly through the incident. It is not two decades since his last public address, the oration in this volume, was delivered, yet even now the story of his oratorical triumphs reads like a doubtful tale. On December 22, 1886, he accepted an invitation to speak on the "New South" at the annual banquet of the New England Society, in New York City. The reception of this speech, both by the immediate audience and by that larger audience reached through the press, amounted to a sensation. The night of the speech Grady was favorably known in his own section; the next morning he was receiving the

enthusiastic plaudits of the whole country. Not excepting Mr. Bryan's effort at Chicago, — and excelling it in sustained interest and influence, nothing in the history of modern oratory equals Grady's rocket-like flight to fame. Through this single speech he became a national figure, and his oratory of national renown and influence.

The better to understand Grady's oratory, let us briefly consider his equipment, and the cause to which his life was devoted.

Introduced to a Boston audience as "the incomparable orator of the day," Grady remarked, "I am a talker by inheritance: my father was an Irishman and my mother was a woman." His Irish ancestry may explain his ready wit and delicious humor, his facility and fluency in extempore speaking, and, in part, the ornateness and emotionalism that characterize his speeches. His experience as a reporter in various fields no doubt aided him in acquiring a vocabulary, in appreciating the power of words and in gaining facility in their use. Further, he must have had the oratorical instinct early developed. At the University of Georgia he took an active part in the work of the literary and debating societies, and his chief ambition was to become “ Society Orator.” At the University of Virginia his main object, says his biographer, Joel Chandler Harris, was to perfect himself in oratory.

Grady's style has been criticised as excessively ornate. This criticism is hardly applicable to the speech in this volume, and yet a leading Boston lawyer described it as a "cannon ball in full flight, fringed with flowers." But taking his speeches as a whole, there are more flowers than cannon balls. Grady's natural element was in the realm of fancy; he aimed to move and win his hearers, not to drive or force them. In the prohibition campaign in Atlanta, in 1887, Grady came out as a strong prohibitionist, while his associate on the Constitution, Captain E. P. Howell, was an equally strong anti-prohibitionist. Both were on the hustings in advocacy of their respective sides. A reporter on the Atlanta Evening Journal contrasted their oratory in the following description, which is interesting as a record of contemporary impressions:

"Howell makes you feel as if he were the commander of an army, waving his sword and saying, Follow me,' and you would follow him to the death; Grady makes you feel like you want to be an angel and with the angels stand. Howell will march his audience, like an army, through flood and fire and hell; with