' v ^6a Room: F
215 .G7370 1895

HENRY W.GRADY

x&fc

AND
HIS SPEECHES*

A

UNIV. OF GEORGSA LIBRARIES
Four Famous Florida Hotels
OWNED AND OPERATED BY THE
f=l_AISIT SYSTEM
ON THE
COAST OF FLORIDA..

Tampa Bay Hotel, Tampa, ria. --------------------------OPENS DECEMBER TTH, 1895.
Hotel, Winter Park, Ha.
OPENS JANUARY 18TH, 1896.
The Inn, Port Tampa, Tla.
------------------------------------OPEN ENTIRE YEAR.
Ocala House, Ocaia, ria. ------------------------------------OPENS DECEMBER 1ST, 1895.

B. W. WRENN, Passenger Traffic Manager.

.,

SAVANNAH. GA.

" .' **

,^AflPE^Hb_^

'

*

THE
SPEECHES OF HENRY W. GRADY
WITH
A SHORT BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF HIS LIFE.
" Try to live in the Sunshine. Men who stay in the shade always get mildewed."
i
ATLANTA, GA.:
CHAS. P. BYBD, PCBLISHIB 1895

HENRY W. GRADY.

T^TENRY WOOBFIN GRADY was born in Athens, Ga., May

1 * 17th, 1851, and died in Atlanta, Ga., December 23rd, 1889.

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 endow

ments 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.

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

t

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 liter

ally mastered his audience, regardless of their character, chain

ing them to the train of his thought and carrying them captive to

conviction. He moved upon their souls as the Divine spirit upon

the waters, either lashing them into storms of enthusiasm or still-

6

IN MEMORIAM.

ing them into the restful quiet of sympathy. He was unlike all other men--he was a veritable magician. He could invest the most trifling thing with proportions of importance not at all its own. From earliest childhood he possessed that indefinable quality which compels hero worship.
The swift race he ran and the lofty heights he attained, har monized well with God's munificent endowment of him. In every field that he labored his achievements were so wonderful that a faithful account of his career sounds more like the extravagance of eulogy than like a record of truth.
He was educated at the University of Georgia, graduating from that institution in 1868. During his college days he was a boy of bounding spirit, who, by an inexplicable power over his associates, made for himself an unchallenged leadership in all things with which he concerned himself. He had no fondness for any department of learning except belles-lettres. He was an omnivorous reader. Every character of Dickens was as familiar to him as a personal friend. That great novelist was his favorite author. In all the relations of college life he was universally popular. He had a real genius for putting himself en rapport with all sorts and conditions of men. His sympathy was quick-flowing' and kind. Any sight or story of suffering would touch his heart and make the tears come.
Immediately after his graduation at Athens, he went to the University of Virginia where he completed his education. After returning to his State from the University of Virginia, just before he attained his majority, he married Miss Julia King, of Athens. She was the first sweetheart of his boyhood and kept that hal lowed place always. In his domestic life he was tender and indul gent to his family, and generously hospitable to his friends. The very best side of him was always turned toward his hearth-stone, and there he dispensed the richest treasures of his soul. His home was his castle and in it his friends were always made happy by the benediction of his welcome.

IN MEMORIAM.

J

Soon after marriage he moved to Rome, Ga., and established
himself in the joint ownership and editorial management of the Rome Commercial, which paper, instead of prospering, was soon enveloped in bankruptcy, costing Mr. Grady many thousands of dollars. Shortly after this he moved to Atlanta and connected himself with the Atlanta Herald. The conduct of that paper was a revelation to Georgia journalism. He made the columns of the Herald luminous. He put into it more push and enterprise than had ever been known in that section. He sacrificed everything to daily triumph, regardless of cost or consequences. In this ven ture Mr. Grady not only sunk all of his personal fortune which remained after the Home wreck, but involved himself considera bly in debt. Thus at twenty-three years of age he was a victim to disappointment in the only two pronounced ambitions he had ever had and was depressed by the utter failure of the only two busi ness enterprises in which he had ever engaged.
While those failures and disappointments seemed cruel set backs in that day, looked at now they may be counted to have been no more than healthful discipline to bin:. They served to stir his spirit the deeper, and fill him with nobler resolve. Bravely he trampled misfortune under his feet and climbed to the high place of honor and usefulness for which he was destined.
It was but a few months after his late misfortune until he was tendered and gladly accepted a position on the editorial staff of the Atlanta Constitution. After working for a while on that paper he secured an interest in it, which fact may be said to have fixed his noble destiny. It emancipated his genius from the bondage of poverty, quickened his sensitive spirit with a new consciousness of power for good, and inspired him to untiring service in the widest fields of usefulness. Atlanta was his home altar, and there he poured out the best libations of his heart. That thriving city to-day has no municipal advantage, no public improvement, no educational institution, no industrial enterprise which does not

8

IN MEMORIAM.

either owe its beginning to his readiness of suggestion or its mature development to his sustaining influence.
The Union was the pride of his life, and for the increase of her peace -and prosperity, the deepening brotherhood of her peo ple, and development of her vast mineral resources, and the enrichment of her varied harvests, he wrote, and talked, and prayed.
In politics he was an undeniable leader, and yet never held office. High places were pressed for his acceptance times without number, but he always resolutely put them away from him, insist ing that office had no charm for him.
Such a man could not be held within the narrow limits of local reputation. It mattered not how far he traveled from home, he made himself quickly known by the power of his impressive indi viduality, or by some splendid exhibition of his genius.
By two speeches, one made at a Banquet of the New England Society in New York City, and the other at a State Fair in Dallas, Texas, he achieved for himself a, reputation which spanned the continent. The most magnificent effort of eloquence which he ever made was the soul-stirring speech delivered in Boston on " The Race Problem " just ten days before he died.
While he lived he perpetuated the political sagacity of Alex ander H. Stephens, the consummate genius of .Robert Toombs, and the impassioned eloquence of Benjamin H. Hill.
A hundred years hence, when sweet charity is stemming the tides of suffering in the world, if truth is not dumb, she will say : "This blessed work is an echo from Henry Grady's life on earth."

THE NEW SOUTH.
0 N the 21st of December, 1886, Mr. Grady, in response to an urgent invitation, delivered the following Address at the Banquet of the New England Club, New York:
" There was a South of slavery and secession--that South is dead. There is a South of union and freedom-- that South, thank God, is living, breathing, growing every hour." These words, delivered from the immortal lips of Benjamin H. Hill, at Tammany Hall, in 1866, true then and truer now, I shall make my text to-night.
Mr. President and Gentlemen : Let me express to you my appreciation of the kindness by which I am permitted to address you. I make this abrupt acknowledgment advisedly, for I feel that if, when I raise my provincial voice in this ancient and august presence, I could find courage for no more than the opening sentence, it would be well if in that sentence I had met in a rough sense my obligation as a guest, and had perished, so to speak, with courtesy on my lips and grace in my heart. Permitted, through your kindness, to catch my second wind, let me say that I appreciate the significance of being the first Southerner to speak at this board, which bears the sub stance, if it surpasses the semblance, of original New England hospitality--and honors the sentiment that in turn honors you, but in which my personality is lost, and the compliment to my people made plain.
I bespeak the utmost stretch of your courtesy to-

IO

SPEECHES OF HENRY W. GRADY.

night. ! am not troubled about those from whom I come. You remember the man whose wife sent him to a neighbor with a pitcher of milk, and who, tripping on the top step, fell with such casual interruptions as the landings afforded into the basement, and, while picking himself up, had the pleasure of hearing his wife call out: "John, did you break the pitcher ?"
"No, I didn't," said John, "but I'll be dinged if I don't."
So, while those who call me from behind may inspire me with energy, if not with courage, I ask an indulgent hearing from you. I beg that you will bring your full faith in American fairness and frankness to judgment upon what I shall say. There was an old preacher once who told some boys of the Bible lesson he was going to read in the morning. The boys, finding the place, glued together the connecting pages. The next morning he read on the bottom of one page, " When Noah was one hundred and twenty years old he took unto himself a wife, who was "--then turning the page--"140 cubits long--40 cubits wide, built of gopher wood--and covered with pitch inside and out." He was naturally puzzled at this. He read it again, verified it, and then said : " My friends, this is the first time I ever met this in the Bible, but I accept this as an evidence of the assertion' that we are fearfully and wonderfully made." If I could get you to hold such faith to-night I could proceed cheerfully to the task I otherwise approach with a sense of consecration.
Pardon me one word, Mr. President, spoken for the sole purpose of getting into the volumes that go out annu ally freighted with the rich eloquence of your speakers-- the fact that the Cavalier as well as the Puritan was on the continent in its early days, and that he was " up and able to be about." I have read your books carefully and I find

THE NEW SOUTH.

II

no mention of that fact, which seems to me an important one for preserving a sort of historical equilibrium if for nothing else.
Let me remind you that the Virginia Cavalier first challenged France on the continent--that Cavalier, John Smith, gave New England its very name, and was so pleased with the job that he has been handing his own name around ever since--and that while Myles Standish was cutting off men's ears for courting a girl without her parents' consent, and forbade men to kiss their wives on Sunday, the Cavalier was courting everything in sight, and that the Almighty has vouchsafed great increase to the Cavalier colonies, the huts in the wilderness being as full as the nests in the woods.
But having incorporated the Cavalier as a fact in your charming little books, I shall let him work out his own sal vation, as he has always done, with engaging gallantry, and we will hold no controversy as to his merits. Why should we ? Neither Puritan nor Cavalier long survived as such. The virtues and good traditions of both happily still live for the inspiration of their sons and the saving of the old fashion. But both Puritan and Cavalier were lost in the storm of the first Revolution, and the American citizen, supplanting both and stronger than either, took possession of the republic bought by their common blood and fash ioned to wisdom, and charged himself with teaching men government and establishing the voice of the people as the voice of God.
Mr friends, Dr. Talmage has told you that the typical American has yet to come. Let me tell you that he has already come. Great types, like valuable plants, are slow to flower and fruit. But from the union of the colonists, Puritans and Cavaliers, from the straightening of their purposes and the crossing of their blood, slow perfecting

12

SPEECHES OF HENRY W. GRADY.

through a century, came he who stands as the first typical American, the first who comprehended within himself all the strength and gentleness, all the majesty and grace of this republic--Abraham Lincoln. He was the sum of Puritan and Cavalier, for in his ardent nature were fused the virtues of both, and in the depths of his great soul the faults of both were lost. He was greater than Puritan, greater than Cavalier, in that he was American, and that in his honest form were first gathered the vast and thrill ing forces of his ideal government--charging it with such tremendous meaning and elevating it above human suffer ing that martyrdom, though infamously aimed, came as a fitting crown to a life consecrated from the cradle to human liberty. Let us, each cherishing the traditions and honor ing his fathers, build with reverent hands to the type of this simple but sublime life, in which all types are honored, and in our common glory as Americans there will be plenty and to spare for your forefathers and for mine.
Dr. Talmage has drawn for you, with a master's hand, the picture of your returning armies. He has told you how, in the pomp and circumstance of war, they came back to you, marching with proud and \ ictorious tread, reading their glory in a nation's eyes! Will you bear with me while I tell you of another army that sought its home at the close of the late war--an army that marched home in defeat and not in victory--in pathos and not in splendor, but in glory that equaled yours, and to hearts as loving as ever welcomed heroes home! Let me picture to you the footsore Confederate soldier, as buttoning up in his faded gray jacket the parole which was to bear testimony to his children of his fidelity and faith, he turned his face south ward from Appomatox in April, 1865. Think of him as ragged, half-starved, heavy-hearted, enfeebled by want and wounds, having fought to exhaustion, he surrenders his

THE NEW SOUTH.

13

gun, wrings the hands of his comrades in silence, and lift ing his tear-stained and pallid face for the last time to the graves that dot old Virginia hills, pulls his gray cap over his brow and begins the slow and painful journey. What does he find--let me ask you who went to your homes eager to find, in the welcome you had justly earned, full payment for four years' sacrifice--what does he find when, having followed the battle-stained cross against overwhelm ing odds, dreading death not half so much as surrender, he reaches the home he left so prosperous and beautiful ? He finds his house in ruins, his farm devastated, his slaves free, his stock killed, his barns empty, his trade destroyed, his money worthless, his social system, feudal in its mag nificence, swept away; his people without law or legal status ; his comrades slain, and the burdens of others heavy on his shoulders. Crushed by defeat, his very tra ditions are gone. Without money, credit, employment, material, or training; and beside all this, confronted with the gravest problem that ever met human intelligence-- the establishing of a status for the vast body of his liber ated slaves.
What does he do--this hero in gray with a heart of gold ? Does he sit down in sullenness and despair ? Not for a day. Surely God, who had stripped him of his pros perity, inspired him in his adversity. As ruin was never before so overwhelming, never was restoration swifter. The soldier stepped from the trenches into the furrow; horses that had charged Federal guns marched before the plow, and fields that ran red with human blood in April were green with the harvest in June; women reared in luxury cut up their dresses and made breeches for their husbands, and, with a patience and heroism that fit women always as a garment, gave their hands to work. There was little bitterness in all this. Cheerfulness and frank-

14

SPEECHES OF HENRY W. GRADY.

ness prevailed. " Bill Arp " struck the key-note when he said: " Well, I killed as many of them as they did of me, and now I'm going to work." Of the soldier returning home after defeat and roasting some corn on the roadside, who made the remark to his comrades : " You may leave the South if you want to, but I am going to Sandersville, kiss my wife and raise a crop, and if the Yankees fool with me any more, I'll whip 'em again." I want to say to Gen eral Sherman, who is considered an able man in our parts, though some people think he is a kind of careless man about fire, that from the ashes he left us in 1864 we have raised a brave and beautiful city ; that somehow or other we have caught the sunshine in the bricks and mortar of our homes, and have builded therein not one ignoble preju dice or memory.
But what is the sum of our work ? We have found out that in the summing up the free negro counts more than he did as a slave. We have planted the school house on the hilltop and made it free to white and black. We have sowed towns and cities in the place of theories, and put business above politics. We have challenged your spin ners in Massachusetts and your iron-makers in Pennsylva nia. We have learned that the $400,000,000 annually received from our cotton crop will make us rich when the supplies that make it are home-raised. We have reduced the commercial rate of interest from 24 to 6 per cent., and are floating 4 per cent, bonds. We have learned that one northern immigrant is worth fifty foreigners ; and have smoothed the path to southward, wiped out the place where Mason and Dixon's line used to be, and hung out latchstring to you and yours. We have reached the point that marks perfect harmony in every household, when the husband confesses that the pies which his wife cooks are as good as those his mother used to bake; and we admit

,

THE NEW SOUTH.

15

that the sun shines as brightly and the moon as softly as

t

it did before the war. We have established thrift in city

and country. We have fallen in love with work. We

have restored comfort to homes from which culture and

elegance never departed. We have let economy take root

and spread among us as rank as the crab-grass which

sprung from Sherman's cavalry camps, until we are ready

to lay odds on the Georgia Yankee as he manufactures

relics of the battlefield in a one-story shanty and squeezes

pure olive oil out of his cotton seed, against any down-

easter that ever swapped wooden nutmegs for flannel sau

sage in the valleys of Vermont. Above all, we know that

we have achieved in these " piping times of peace " a fuller

independence for the South than that which our fathers

sought to win in the forum by their eloquence or compel

in the field by their swords.

It is a rare privilege, sir, to have had part, however

humble, in this work. Never was nobler duty confided to

human hands than the uplifting and upbuilding of the pros

trate and bleeding South--misguided, perhaps, but beauti

ful in her suffering, and honest, brave and generous always.

In the record of her social, industrial and political illustra

tion we await with confidence the verdict of the world.

V

But what of the negro ? Have we solved the problem

\

he presents or progressed in honor and equity toward solu-

0

tion? Let the record speak to the point. No section

shows [a more prosperous laboring population than the

negroes of the South, none in fuller sympathy with the

employing and land-owning class. He shares our school

fund, has the fullest protection of our laws and the friend

ship of our people. Self-interest, as well as honor, demand

that he should have this. Our future, our very existence

depend upon our working out this problem in full and

exact justice. We understand that when Lincoln signed

l6

SPEECHES OF HENRY W. GRADY.

the emancipation proclamation, your victory was assured, for he then committed you to the cause of human liberty, against which the arms o'f man cannot prevail--while those of our statesmen who trusted to make slavery the corner stone of the Confederacy doomed us to defeat as far as they could, committing us to a cause that reason could not defend or the sword maintain in sight of advancing civili zation.
Had Mr. Toombs said, which he did not say, " that he would call the roll .of his slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill," he would have been foolish, for he might have known that whenever slavery became entangled in war it must perish, and that the chattel in human flesh ended forever in New England when your fathers--not to be blamed for parting with what didn't pay--sold their slaves to our fathers--not to be praised for knowing a paying thing when they saw it. The relations of the southern people with the negro are close and cordial. We remember with what fidelity for four years he guarded our defenseless women and child ren, whose husbands and fathers were fighting against his freedom. To his eternal credit be it said that whenever he struck a blow for his own liberty he fought in open bat tle, and when at last he raised his black and humble hands that the shackles might be struck off, those hands were innocent of wrong against his helpless charges, and worthy to be taken in loving grasp by every man who honors loy alty and devotion. Ruffians have maltreated him, rascals have misled him, philanthropists established a bank for him, but the South, with the North, protests against injus tice to this simple and sincere people. To liberty and enfranchisement is as far as law can carry the negro. The rest must be left to the conscience and common sense. It must be left to those among whom his lot is cast, with whom he is indissolubly connected, and whose prosperity

THE NEW SOUTH.

17

depends upon their possessing his intelligent sympathy and confidence. Faith has been kept with him, in spite of calumnious assertions to the contrary by those who assume to speak for us or by frank opponents. Faith will be kept with him in the future, if the South hold her reason and integrity.
But have we kept our faith with you ? In the fullest sense, yes. When Lee surrendered--I don't say when Johnson surrendered, because I understand he still alludes to the time when he met General Sherman last as the time when he determined to abandon any further prosecution of the struggle--when Lee surrendered, I say, and John son quit, the South became, and has since been, loyal to this Union. We fought hard enough to know that we were whipped, and in perfect frankness accept as final the arbitrament of the sword to which we had appealed. The South found her jewel in the toad's head of defeat. The shackles that had held her in narrow limitations fell for ever when the shackles of the negro slave were broken. Under the old regime the negroes were slaves to the South ; the South was a slave to the system. The old plantation, with its simple police regulations and feudal habit, was the only type possible under slavery. Thus was gathered in the hands of a splendid and chivalric oligarchy the substance that should have been diffused among the people, as the rich blood, under certain artificial conditions, is gathered at the heart, filling that with affluent rapture but leaving the body chill and colorless.
The old South rested everything on slavery and agri culture, unconscious that these could neither give nor maintain healthy growth. The new South presents a per fect democracy, the oligarchs leading in the popular move ment--a social system compact and closely knitted, less splendid on the surface, but stronger at the core--a hun-

18

SPEECHES OP HENRY \V. GRAt>Y.

dred farms for every plantation, fifty homes for every pal ace--and a diversified industry that meets the complex needs of this complex age.
The new South is enamored of her new work. Her soul is stirred with the breath of a new life. The light of a grander day is falling fair on her face. She is thrilling with the consciousness of growing power and prosperity. As she stands upright, full-statured and equal among the people of the earth, breathing the keen air and looking out upon the expanded horizon, she understands that her emancipation came because through the inscrutable wis dom of God her honest purpose was crossed, and her brave armies were beaten.
This is said in no spirit of time-serving or apology. The South has nothing for which to apologize. She believes that the late struggle between the States was war and not rebellion; revolution and not conspiracy, and that her convictions were as honest as yours. I should be unjust to the dauntless spirit of the South and to my own convictions if I did not make this .plain in this presence. The South has nothing to take back. In my native town of Athens is a monument that crowns its central hill--a plain, white shaft. Deep cut into its shining side is a name dear to me above the names of men--that of a brave and simple man who died in brave and simple faith. Not for all the glories of New England, from Plymouth Rock all the way, would I exchange the heritage he left me in his soldier's death. To the foot of that I shall send my children's children to reverence him who ennobled their name with his heroic blood. But, sir, speaking from the shadow of that memory which I honor as I do nothing else on earth, I say that the cause in which he suffered and for which he gave his life was adjudged by higher and fuller wisdom than his or mine, and I am glad that the omnis-

THE NEW SOUTH.

IQ

cient God held the balance of battle in His Almighty hand and that human slavery was swept forever from American soil, the American Union was saved from the wreck of war.
This message, Mr. President, comes to you from conse crated ground. Every foot of soil about the city in which I live is as sacred as a battle-ground of the republic. Every hill that invests it is hallowed to you by the blood of your brothers who died for your victory, and doubly hallowed to us by the blow of those who died hopeless, but un daunted, in defeat--sacred soil to all of us--rich with mem ories that make us purer and stronger and better--silent but staunch witnesses in its red desolation of the matchless valor of American hearts and the deathless glory of Ameri can arms--speaking an eloquent witness in its white peace and prosperity to the indissoluble union of American States and the imperishable brotherhood of the American people.
Now, what answer has New England to this message ? Will she permit the prejudice of war to remain in the hearts of the conquerors, when it has died in the hearts of the conquered ? Will she transmit this prejudice to the next generation, that in their hearts which never felt the generous ardor of conflict it may perpetuate itself? Will she withhold, save in strained courtesy, the hand which straight from his soldier's heart Grant offered to Lee at Appomatox ? Will she make the vision of a restored and happy people, which gathered above the couch of your dying captain, filling his heart with grace; touching his lips with praise, and glorifying his path to the grave-- will she make this vision on which the last sigh of his expiring soul breathed a benediction, a cheat and delusion ? If she does, the South, never abject in asking for comrade ship, must accept with dignity its refusal; but if she does

2O

SPEECHES OF HENRY W. GRADY.

not refuse to accept in frankness and sincerity this mes sage of good will and friendship, then will the prophecy of Webster, delivered in this very society forty years ago amid tremendous applause, become true, be verified in its fullest sense, when he said : " Standing hand to hand and clasping hands, we should remain united as we have been for sixty years, citizens of the same country, members of the same government, united, all united now and united forever." There have been difficulties, contentions, and controversies, but I tell you that in my judgment,
" Those opened eyes, Which like the meteors ol a troubled heaven, All of one nature, of one substance bred, Did lately meet in th' intestine shock, Shall now, in mutual well beseeming ranks, March all one way."

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS.
AT the Dallas, Texas, State Pair, on the 26th of October, 1887, Mr. Grady was the Orator of the Day. He said:
" Who saves his country, saves all things, and all things saved will bless him. Who lets his country die, lets all things die, and all things dying curse him."
These words are graven on the statue of Benjamin H. Hill in the city of Atlanta, and in their spirit I shall speak to you to-day.
Mr. President and Fellow-Citizens: I salute the first city of the grandest State of the greatest government on this earth. In paying earnest compliment to this thriv ing city, and this generous multitude, I need not cumber speech with argument or statistics. It is enough to say that my friends and myself make obeisance this morning to the chief metropolis of the State of Texas. If it but holds this pre-eminence--and who can doubt in this aus picious presence that it will--the uprising tides of Texas's prosperity will carry it to glories unspeakable. For I say in soberness, the future of this marvelous and amazing empire, that gives broader and deeper significance to state hood by accepting its modest naming, the mind of man can neither measure nor comprehend.
I shall be pardoned for resisting the inspiration of this presence and adhering to-day to blunt and rigorous speech--for there are times when fine words are paltry, and this seems to me to be such a time. So I shall turn away

22

SPEECHES OF HENRY W. GRADY.

from the thunders of the political battle upon which every American hangs intent, and repress the ardor that at this time rises in every American heart--for there are issues that strike deeper than any political theory has reached, and conditions of which partisanry has taken, and can take, but little account. Let me, therefore, with studied plainness, and with such precision as is possible--in a spirit of fraternity that is broader than party limitations, and deeper than political motive--discuss with you certain problems upon the wise and prompt solution of which depends the glory and prosperity of the South.
But why--for let us make our way slowly--why "the South." In an indivisible union--in a republic against the integrity of which sword shall never be drawn or mortal hand uplifted, and in which the rich blood gathering at the common heart is sent throbbing into every part of the body politic--why is one section held separated from the rest in alien consideration ? We can understand why this should be so in a city that has a community of local inter ests; or in a State still clothed in that sovereignty of which the debates of peace and the storm of war has not stripped her. But why should a number of States, stretch ing from Richmond to Galveston, bound together by no local interests, held in no autonomy, be thus combined and drawn to a common center ? That man would be absurd who declaimed in Buffalo against the wrongs of the Middle States, or who demanded in Chicago a convention for the West to consider the needs of that section. If then it be provincialism that holds the South together, let us outgrow it; if it be sectionalism, let us root it out of our hearts; but if it be something deeper than these and essential to our system, let us declare it with frankness, consider it with respect, defend it with firmness, and in dignity abide its consequence. What is it that holds the southern

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS.

2$

States--though true in thought and deed to the Union-- so closely bound in sympathy to-day ? For a century these States championed a governmental theory, but that, having triumphed in every forum, fell at last by the sword. They maintained an institution--but that, having been admin istered in the fullest wisdom of man, fell at last in the higher wisdom of God. They fought a war--but the prejudices of that war have died, its sympathies have broadened, and its memories are already the priceless treasure of the republic that is cemented forever with its blood. They looked out together upon the ashes of their homes and the desolation of their fields--but out of pitiful resource they have fashioned their homes anew, and plenty rides on the springing harvests. In all the past there is nothing to draw them into essential or lasting alliance-- nothing in all that heroic record that cannot be rendered unfearing from provincial hands into the keeping of Amer ican history.
But the future holds a problem, in solving which the South must stand alone; in dealing with which, she must come closer together than ambition or despair have driven her, and on the outcome of which her very existence depends. This problem is to carry within her body politic two separate races, and nearly equal in numbers. She must carry these races in peace--for discord means ruin. She must carry them separately--for assimilation means debasement. She must carry them in equal justice--for to this she is pledged in honor and in gratitude. She must carry them even unto the end, for in human probability she will never be quit of either.
This burden no other people bears to-day--on none hath it ever rested. Without precedent or companionship, the South must bear this problem, the awful responsibility of which should win the sympathy*of all human kind, and

24

SPEECHES OF HENRY W. GRADY.

the protecting watchfulness of God--alone, even unto the end. Set by this problem apart from all other peoples of the earth, and her unique position emphasized rather than relieved, as I shall show hereafter, by her material conditions, it is not only fit, but it is essential that she should hold her brotherhood unimpaired, quicken her sympathies, and in the light or in the shadows of this surpassing problem work out her own salvation in the fear of God--but of God alone.
What shall the South do to be saved ? Through what paths shall she reach the end ? Through what travail, or what splendors, shall she give to the Union this section, its wealth garnered, its resources utilized, and its rehabilitation complete- -and restore to the world this problem solved in such justice as the finite mind can measure, or finite hands administer?
In dealing with this I shall dwell on two points. First, the duty-of the South in its relation to the race problem. Second, the duty of the South in relation to its no less unique and important industrial problem. I approach this discussion with a sense of consecration. I beg your patient and cordial sympathy. And I invoke the Almighty God, that having showered on this people His fullest riches, has put their hands to this task, that He will draw near unto us, as he drew near to troubled Israel, and lead us in the ways of honor and uprightness, even through a pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night. What of the negro ? This of him. I want no better friend than the black boy who was raised by my side, and who is now trudging patiently with downcast eyes and shambling figure through his lowly way in life. I want no sweeter music than the crooning of my old "mammy," now dead and gone to rftst, as I heard it when she held me

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS.

2$

in her loving arms, and bending her old black face above me stole the cares from my brain, and led me smiling into sleep. I want no truer soul than that which moved the trusty slave, who for four years while my father fought with the armies that barred his freedom, slept every night at my mother's chamber door, holding her and her children as safe as if her husband stood guard, and ready to lay down his humble life on her threshold. History has no parallel to the faith kept by the negro in the South during the war. Often five hundred negroes to a single white man, and yet through these dusky throngs the women and children walked in safety, and the unprotected homes rested in peace. Unmarshaled the black battalions moved patiently to the fields in the morning to feed the armies their idleness would have starved, and at night gathered anxiously at the big house to "hear the news from marster," though conscious that his victory made their chains enduring. Everywhere humble and kindly; the bodyguard of the helpless; the rough companion of the little ones; the observant friend; the silent sentry in his lowly cabin; the shrewd counselor And when the dead came home, a mourner at the open grave. A thousand torches would have disbanded every Southern army, but not one was lighted. When the master going to a war in which slavery was involved said to his slave, "I leave my home and loved ones in your charge," the tenderness between man and master stood disclosed. And when the slave held that charge sacred through storm and temptation, he gave new meaning to faith and loyalty. I rejoice that when freedom came to him after years of waiting, it was all the sweeter because the black hands from which the shackles fell were stainless of a single crime against the helpless ones confided to his care.
From this root, imbedded in a century of kind and

26

SPEECHES OF HERRY \V. GRADY.

constant companionship, has sprung some foliage. As no race had ever lived in such unresisting bondage, none was ever hurried with such swiftness through freedom into power. Into hands still trembling from the blow that broke the shackles, was thrust the ballot. In less than twelve months from the day he walked down the furrow a slave, the negro dictated in legislative halls from which Davis and Calhoun had gone forth, the policy of twelve commonwealths. When his late master protested against his misrule, the federal drum beat rolled around his strong holds, and from a hedge of federal bayonets he grinned in good-natured insolence. From the proven incapacity of that day has he far advanced ? Simple, credulous, impulsive--easily led and too often easily bought, is he a safer, more intelligent citizen now than then ? Is this mass of votes, loosed from old restraints, inviting alliance or awaiting opportunity, less menacing than when its purpose was plain and its way direct ?
My countrymen, right here the South must make a decision on which very much depends. Many wise men hold that the white vote of the South should divide, the color line be beaten down, and the southern States ranged on economic or moral questions as interest or belief demands. I am compelled to dissent from this view. The worst thing, in my opinion, that could happen is that the white people of the South should stand in opposing fac tions, with the vast mass of ignorant or purchasable negro votes between. Consider such a status. If the negroes were skillfully led--and leaders would not be lacking--it would give them the balance cf power--a thing not to be considered. If their vote was not compacted, it would invite the debauching bid of factions, and drift surely to that which was the most corrupt and cunning. With the shiftless habit and rresolution of slavery days still pos-

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS.

2J

*

sessing him, the negro voter will not in this generation,

adrift from war issues, become a steadfast partisan through

conscience or conviction. In every community there are

colored men who redeem their race from this reproach, and

who vote under reason. Perhaps in time the bulk of this

race may thus adjust itself. But, through what long and

monstrous periods of political debauchery this status would

be reached, no tongue can tell.

The clear and unmistakable domination of the white

race, dominating not through violence, not through party

alliance, but through the integrity of its own vote and the

largeness of its sympathy and justice through which it

shall compel the support of the better classes of the

colored race--that is the hope and assurance of the South.

Otherwise, the negro would be bandied from one faction to

another. His credulty would be played upon, his cupidity

tempted, his impulses misdirected, his passions inflamed.

He would be forever in alliance with that faction which

was most desperate and unscrupulous. Such a state

would be worse than reconstruction, for then intelligence

was banded, and its speedy triumph assured. But with

intelligence and property divided--bidding and overbid

ding for place and patronage--irritation increasing with

each conflict--the bitterness and desperation seizing every

heart--political debauchery deepening, as each faction

staked its all in the miserable game--there would be no

end in this, until our suffrage was hopelessly sullied, our

people forever divided, and our most sacred rights sur

rendered.

One thing further should be said in perfect frankness.

Up to this point we have dealt with ignorance and corrup

tion--but beyond this point a deeper issue confronts us.

Ignorance may struggle to enlightenment, out of corrup

tion may come the incorruptible. God speed the day

28

SPEECHES OF HENRY W. GRADY.

when--every true man will work and pray for its coming-- the negro must be led to know and through sympathy to confess that his interests and the interests of the people of the South are identical. The men who, from afar off, view this subject through the cold eye of speculation or see it distorted through partisan glasses, insist that, directly or indirectly, the negro race shall be in control of the affairs of the South. We have no fears of this ; already we are attaching to us the best elements of the race, and as we proceed our alliance will broaden ; eternal pressure but irritates and impedes. Those who would put the negro race in supremacy would work against infallible decree, for the white race can never submit to its domination, because the white race is the superior race. But the supremacy of the white race of the South must be maintained forever, and the domination of the negro race resisted at all points and at all hazards--because the white race is the superior race. This is the declaration of no new truth. It has abided forever in the marrow of our bones, and shall run forever with the blood that feeds Anglo-Saxon hearts.
In political compliance the South has evaded the truth, and men have drifted from their convictions. But we can not escape this issue. It faces us wherever we turn. It is an issue that has been, and will be. The races and tribes of earth are of divine origin. Behind the laws of man and the decrees of war, stands the law of God. What God hath separated let no man join together. The Indian, the Malay, the Negro, the Caucasian, these types stand as markers of God's will. Let not man tinker with the work of the Almighty. Unity of civilization, no more than unity of faith, will never be witnessed on earth. No race has risen, or will rise, above the ordinary place. Here is the pivotal fact of this great matter--two races are made equal in law, and in political rights, between whom the caste of race has

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS.

20,

set an impassable gulf. This gulf is bridged by a statute, and the races are urged to cross thereon. This cannot be. The fiat of the Almighty has gone forth, and in eighteen centuries of history it is written. We would escape this issue if we could. From the depths of its soul the South invokes from heaven " peace on earth, and good will to man." She would not, if she could, cast this race back into the condition from which it was righteously raised. She would not deny its smallest or abridge its fullest privi lege. Not to lift this burden forever from her people would she do the least of these things. She must walk through the valley of the shadow, for God has so ordained. But He has ordained that she shall walk in that integrity of race that created His wisdom has been perpetuated in His strength. Standing in the presence of this multitude, sobered with the responsibility of the message I deliver to the young men of the South, I declare that the truth above all others to be worn unsullied and sacred in your hearts, to be surrendered to no force, sold for no price, compro mised in no necessity, but cherished and defended as the covenant of your prosperity, and the pledge of peace to your children, is that the white race must dominate for ever in the South, because it is the white race, and superior to that race by which its supremacy is threatened.
It is a race issue. Let us come to this point, and stand here. Here the air is pure and the light is clear, and here honor and peace abide. Juggling and evasion deceives not a man. Compromise and subservience has carried not a point. There is not a white man North or South who does not feel it stir in the gray matter of his brain and throb in his heart. Not a negro who does not feel its power. It is not a sectional issue. It speaks in Ohio and in Georgia. It speaks wherever the Anglo-Saxon touches an alien race. It has just spoken in universally approved legislation in

3O

SPEECHES OF HENRY \V. GRADY.

excluding the Chinamen from our gates, not for his ignor ance, vice or corruption, but because he sought to estab lish an inferior race in a republic fashioned in the wisdom and defended by the blood of a homogeneous people.
The Anglo-Saxon blood has dominated always and everywhere. It fed Alfred when he wrote the charter of English liberty; it gathered about Hampden as he stood beneath the oak; it thundered in Cromwell's veins as he fought his king; it humbled Napoleon at Waterloo; it has touched the desert and jungle with undying glory; it car ried the drumbeat of England around the world and spread on every continent the gospel of liberty and of God; it established this republic, carved it from the wilderness, conquered it from the Indians, wrested it from England, and at last, stilling its own tumult, consecrated it forever as the home of the Anglo-Saxon, and the theater of his transcending achievement. Never one foot of it can be surrendered while that blood lives in American veins, and feeds American hearts, to the domination of an alien and inferior race.
And yet that is just what is proposed. Not in twenty years have we seen a day so pregnant with fate to this sec tion as the sixth of next November. If President Cleve land is then defeated, which God forbid, I believe these States will be led through sorrows compared to which the woes of reconstruction will be as the fading dews of morn ing to the roaring flood. To dominate these States through the colored vote, with such aid as federal patronage may debauch or federal power deter, and thus through its chosen instruments perpetuate its rule, is in my opinion the settled purpose of the Republican party. I am appalled when I measure the passion in which this negro problem is judged by the leaders of the party. Fifteen years ago Vice-President Wilson said--and I honor his memory as

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS.

31

that of a courageous man : " We shall not have finished with the South until we force its people to change their thought, and think as we think." I repeat these words, for I heard them when a boy, and they fell on my ears as the knell of my people's rights--"to change their thought, and make them think as we think." Not enough to have conquered our armies--to have decimated our ranks, to have desolated our fields and reduced us to poverty, to have struck the ballot from our hands and enfranchised our slaves--to have held us prostrate under bayonets while the insolent mocked and thieves plundered--but their very souls must be rifled of their faiths, their sacred traditions cudgeled from memory, and their immortal minds beaten into subjection until thought had lost its integrity, and we were forced "to think as they think/' And just now General Sherman has said, and I honor him as a soldier:
''The negro must be allowed to vote, and his vote must be counted; otherwise, so sure as there is a God in heaven, you will have another war, more cruel than the last, when the torch and dagger will take the place of the muskets of well-ordered battal ions. Should the negro strike that blow, in seeming justice, there will be millions to assist them."
And this General took Johnston's sword in surrender! He looked upon the thin and ragged battalions in gray, that for four years had held his teeming and heroic legions at bay. Facing them, he read their courage in their depleted ranks, and gave them a soldier's parole. When he found it in his heart to taunt these heroes with this threat, why--careless as he was twenty years ago with fire, he is even more careless now with his words. If we could hope that this problem would be settled within our lives I would appeal from neither madness nor unmanliness. But when I know that, strive as I may, I must at last render this awful heritage into the untried hands of my son, already

32

SPEECHES OP HENRY W. GRADY.

dearer to me than my life, and that he must in turn bequeath it unsolved to his children, I cry out against the inhumanity that deepens its difficulties with this incen diary threat, and beclouds its real issue with inflaming passion.
This problem is not only enduring, but it is widening. The exclusion of the Chinese is the first step in the revo lution that shall save liberty and law and religion to this land, and in peace and order, not enforced on the gallows or at the bayonet's end, but proceeding from the heart of an harmonious people, shall secure in the enjoyment of the rights, and the control of this republic, the homoge neous people that established and has maintained it. The next step will be taken when some brave statesman, look ing Demagogy in the face, shall move to call to the stranger at our gates, " Who comes there ? " admitting every man who seeks a home, or honors our institutions, and whose habit and blood will run with the native current; but excluding all who seek to plant anarchy or to establish alien men or measures on our soil; and will then demand that the standard of our citizenship be lifted and the right of acquiring our suffrage be abridged. When that day comes, and God speed its coming, the position of the South will be fully understood, and everywhere approved. Until then, let us--giving the negro every right, civil and political, measured in that fullness the strong should always accord the weak--holding him in closer friendship and sympathy than he is held by those who would crucify us for his sake--realizing that on his prosperity ours depends--let us resolve that never by external pressure, or internal division, shall he establish domination, directly or indirectly, over that race that everywhere has maintained its supremacy. Let this resolution be cast on the lines of equity and justice. Let it be the pledge of honest, safe

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS.

33

and impartial administration, and we shall command the support of the colored race itself, more dependent than any other on the bounty and protection of government. Let us be wise and patient, and we shall secure through its acquiescence what otherwise we should win through con flict, and hold in insecurity.
All this is no unkindness to the negro--but rather that he may be led in equal rights and in peace to his utter, most good. Not in sectionalism--for my heart beats true to the Union, to" the glory of which your life and heart is pledged. Not in disregard of the world's opinion--for to render back this problem in the world's approval is the sum of my ambition, and the height of human achieve ment. Not in reactionary spirit--but rather to make clear that new and grander way up which the South is marching to higher destiny, and on which I would not halt her for all the spoils that have been gathered unto parties since Catiline conspired, and Cassar fought. Not in passion, my countrymen, but in reason--not in narrowness, but in breadth--that we may solve this problem in calmness and in truth, and lifting its shadows let perpetual sunshine pour down on two races, walking together in peace and contentment. Then shall this problem have proved our blessing, and the race that threatened our ruin work our salvation as it fills our fields with the best peasantry the world has ever seen. Then the South--putting behind her all the achievements of her past--and in war and in peace they beggar eulogy--may stand upright among the nations and challenge the judgment of man and the approval of God, in having worked out in their sympathy, and in His guidance, this last and surpassing miracle of human government.
What of the South's industrial problem ? When we remember that amazement followed the payment by thirty-
3

34

SPEECHES OF HENRY W. GRADY.

seven million Frenchmen of a billion dollars indemnity to Germany, that the five million whites of the South ren dered to the torch and sword three billions of property-- that thirty million dollars a year, or six hundred million dollars in twenty years, has been given willingly of our poverty as pensions for Northern soldiers, the wonder is that we are here at all. There is a figure with which his tory has dealt lightly, but that, standing pathetic and heroic in the genesis of our new growth, has interested me greatly--our soldier farmer of '65. What chance had he for the future as he wandered amid his empty barns, his stock, labor, and implements gone--gathered up the frag ments of his wreck--urging kindly his borrowed mule-- paying sixty per cent, for all that he bought, and buying all on credit--his crop mortgaged before it was planted-- his children in want, his neighborhood in chaos--working under new conditions and retrieving every error by a costly year--plodding all day down the furrow, hopeless and adrift, save when at night he went back to his broken home, where his wife, cheerful even then, renewed his courage, while she ministered to him in loving tenderness. Who would have thought as during those lonely and ter rible days he walked behind the plow, locking the sunshine in the glory of his harvest, and spreading the showers and the verdure of his field--no friend near save nature that smiled at his earnest touch, and God that sent him the message of good cheer through the passing breeze and the whispering leaves--that he would in twenty years, having carried these burdens uncomplaining, make a crop of $800,000,000. Yet this he has done, and from his bounty the South has rcbuilded her cities, and recouped her losses. While we exult in his splendid achievement, let us take account of his standing.
Whence this enormous growth ? For ten years the

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS.

35

world has been at peace. The pioneer has now replaced the soldier. Commerce has whitened new seas, and the merchant has occupied new areas. Steam has made of the earth a chess-board, on which men play for markets. Our western wheat-grower competes in London with the Russian and the East Indian. The Ohio wool grower watches the Australian shepherd, and the bleat of the now historic sheep of Vermont is answered from the steppes of Asia. The herds that emerge from the dust of your amaz ing prairies might hear in their pauses the hoof-beats of antipodean herds marching to meet them. Under Holland's dykes, the cheese and butter makers fight American dairies. The hen cackles around the world. California challenges vine-clad France. The dark continent is dis closed though meshes of light. There is competition everywhere. The husbandman, driven from his market, balances price against starvation, and undercuts his rival. This conflict often runs to panic, and profit vanishes. The Iowa farmer burning his corn for fuel is not an unusual type.
Amid this universal conflict, where stands the South ? While the producer of everything we eat or wear, in every land, is fighting through glutted markets for bare exist ence, what of the southern farmer ? In his industrial as in his political problem he is set apart--not in doubt, -but in assured independence. Cotton makes him king. Not the fleeces that Jason sought can rival the richness of this plant, as it unfurls its banners in our fields. It is gold from the instant it puts forth i s tiny shoot. The shower that whispers to it is heard around the world The tres pass of a worm on its green leaf means more to England than the advance of the Russians on her Asiatic outposts. When its fibre, current in every bank, is marketed, it renders back to the South $350,000,000 every year. Its

36

SPEECHES OF HENRY W. GRADY.

seed will yield $60,000,000 worth of oil to the press and ^40,000,000 in food for soil and beast, making the stu pendous total of 450,000,000 annual income from this crop. And now, under the Tompkins patent, from its stalk news paper is to be made at two cents per pound. Edward Atkinson once said: "If New England could grow the cotton plant, without lint, it would make her richest crop; if she held monopoly of cotton lint and seed she would control the commerce of the world."
But is our monopoly, threatened from Egypt, India and Brazil, sure and permanent ? Let the record answer. In '72 the American supply of cotton was 3,241,000 bales,-- foreign supply 3,036,000. We led our rivals by less than 200,000 bales. This year the American supply is 8,000,000 bales--from foreign sources, 2,100,000, expressed in bales of four hundied pounds each. In spite of new areas else where, of fuller experience, of better transportation, and unlimited money spent in experiment, the supply of for eign cotton has decreased since '72 nearly 1,000,000 bales, while that of the South has increased nearly 5,000,000. Further than this: Since 1872, population in Europe has increased 13 per cent., and cotton consumption in Europe has increased 50 per cent. Still further: Since 1880 cot ton consumption in Europe has increased 28 per cent., wool only 4 per cent., and flax has decreased 11 per cent. As for new areas, the uttermost missionary woos the heathen with a cotton shirt in one hand and the Bible in the other, and no savage I believe has ever been converted to one without adopting the other. To summarize: Our Ameri can fibre has increased its product nearly three-fold, while it has seen the product of its rival decrease one-third. It has enlarged its dominion in the old centers of population, supplanting flax and wool, and it peeps from the satchel of every business and religious evangelist that trots the

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS.

37

globe. In three years the American crop has increased 1,400,000 bales, and yet there is less cotton in the world to-day than at any time for twenty years. The dominion of our king is established; this princely revenue assured, not for a year, but for all time. It is the heritage that God gave us when he arched our skies, established our moun tains, girt us about with the ocean, tempered the sunshine, and measured the rain--ours and our children's forever.
Not alone in cotton, but in iron, does the South excelThe Hon. Mr. Norton, who honors this platform with his presence, once said to me: "An Englishman of the highest character predicted that the Atlantic will be whitened within our lives with sails carrying American iron and coal to England." When he made that prediction the English miners were exhausting the coal in long tunnels above which the ocean thundered. Having ores and coal stored in exhau&tless quantity, in such richness, and in such adjust ment, that iron can be made and manufacturing done cheaper than elsewhere on this continent, is to now com mand, and at last control, the world's market for iron. The South now sells iron, through Pittsburg, in New York. She has driven Scotch iron first from the interior, and finally from American ports. Within our lives she will cross the Atlantic, and fulfill the Englishman's prophecy. In 1880 the South made 212,000 tons of iron. In 1887, 845,ooo tons. She is now actually building, or has finished this year, furnaces that will produce more than her entire pro duct of last year. Birmingham alone will produce more iron in 1889 than the entire South produced in 1887. Our coal supply is exhaustless, Texas alone having 6000 square miles. In marble and granite we have no rivals, as to quan tity or quality. In lumber our riches are even vaster. More than fifty per cent, of our entire area is in forests, making the South the best timbered region in the "world.

38

SPEECHES OF HENRY \V. GRADY.

We have enough merchantable yellow pine to bring, in money, $2,500,000,000--a sum the vastness of which can only be understood when I say it nearly equaled the assessed value of the entire South, including cities, forests, farms, mines, factories and personal property of every description whatsoever. Back of this our forests of hard woods and measureless swamps of cypress and gum. Think of it. In cotton a monopoly. In iron and coal establishing a swift mastery. In granite and marble devel oping equal advantage and resource. . In yellow pine and hard woods the world's treasury. Surely the basis of the South's wealth and power is laid by the hand of the Almighty God, and its prosperity has been established by divine law which work in eternal justice and not by taxes levied on its neighbors through human statutes. Paying tribute for fifty years that under artificial conditions other sections might reach a prosperity impossible under natural laws, it has grown apace--and its growth shall endure if its people are ruled by two maxims, that reach deeper than legislative enactment, and the operation of which cannot be limited by artificial restraint, and but little hastened by artificial stimulus.
First. No one crop will make a people prosperous. If cotton held its monopoly under conditions that made other crops impossible--or under allurements that made other crops exceptional--its dominion would be despotism.
Whenever the greed for a money crop unbalances the wisdom of husbandry, the money crop is a curse. When it stimulates the general economy of the farm, it is the profiting of farming. In an unprosperous strip of Carolina, when asked the cause of their poverty, the people say, " Tobacco--for it is our only crop." In Lancaster, Pa., the richest American county by the census, when asked the cause df their prosperity, they say, " Tobacco--for it is the

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS.

39

golden crown of a diversified agriculture." The soil that produces cotton invites the grains and grasses, the orchard and the vine. Clover, corn, cotton, wheat and barley thrive in the same inclosure; the peach, the apple, the apricot and the Siberian crab in the same orchard. Herds and flocks graze ten months every year in the meadows over which winter is but a passing breath, and in which spring and autumn meet in summer's heart. Sugar-cane and oats, rice and potatoes, are extremes that come together under our skies. To raise cotton and send its princely revenues to the west for supplies, and to the east for usury, would be misfortune if soil and climate forced such a curse. When both invite independence, to remain in slavery is a crime. To mortgage our farms in Boston for money with which to buy meat and bread from western cribs and smokehouses, is folly unspeakable. I rejoice that Texas is less open to this charge than others of the cotton States. With her eighty million bushels of grain, and her sixteen million head of stock, she is rapidly learn ing that diversified agriculture means prosperity. Indeed, the South is rapidly learning the same lesson; and learned through years of debt and dependence it will never be for gotten. The best thing Georgia has done in twenty years was to raise her oat crop in one season from two million to nine million bushels, without losing a bale of her cot ton. It is more for the South that she has increased her crop of corn--that best of grains, of which Samuel J. Tilden said, "It will be the staple food of the future, and men will be stronger and better when that day comes"--by forty-three million bushels this year, than to have won a pivotal battle in the late war. In this one item she keeps at home this year a sum equal to the entire cotton crop of my State that last year went to the west.

4O

SPEECHES OF HENRY W. GRADY.

This is the road to prosperity. It is the way to manli ness and sturdiness of character. When every farmer in the South shall eat bread from his own fields and meat from his own pastures, and disturbed by no creditor, and enslaved by no debt, shall sit among his teeming gardens, and orchards, and vineyards, and dairies, and barnyards, pitching his crops in his own wisdom, and growing them in independence, making cotton his clean surplus, and selling it in his own time, and in his chosen market, and not at a master's bidding--getting his pay in cash and not in a receipted mortgage that discharges his debt, but does not restore his freedom--then shall be breaking the full ness of our day. Great is King Cotton! But to lie at his feet while the usurer and grain-raiser bind us in subjec tion, is to invite the contempt of man and the reproach of God. But to stand up before him, and amid the crops and smokehouses wrest from him the magna charta of our independence, and to establish in his name an ample and diversified agriculture, that shall honor him while it enriches us--this is to carry us as far in the way of happi ness and independence-as the farmer, working in the full est wisdom, and in the richest field, can carry any people.
But agriculture alone--no matter how rich or varied its resource*--cannot establish or maintain a people's prosperity. There is a lesson in this that Texas may learn with profit. No commonwealth ever came to greatness by producing raw material. Less can this be possible in the future than in the past. The Comstock lode is the richest spot on earth. And yet the miners, gasping for breath fifteen hundred feet below the earth's surface, get bare existence out of the splendor they dig from the earth: It goes to carry the commerce and uphold the industry of distant lands, of which the men who produce it get but dim report. Hardly more is the South profited when,

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS.

41

stripping the harvest of her cotton fields, or striking her teeming hills, or leveling her superb forests, she sends her raw material to augment the wealth and power of distant communities.
Texas produces a million and a half bales of cotton, which yield her $60,000,000. That cotton woven into common goods would add $75,000,000 to Texas's income from this crop, and employ 210,000 operatives, who would spend within her borders more than $30,000,000 in wages. Massachusetts manufactures 575,000 bales of cotton, for which she pays $31,000,000, and sells for 72,000,000, adding a value nearly equal to Texas's gross revenue from cotton, and yet Texas has a clean advantage for manufac turing this cotton of one per cent, a pound over Massachu setts. The little village of Grand Rapids began manu facturing furniture simply because it was set in a timber district. It is now a great city and sells $10,000,000 worth of furniture every year, in making which 12,500 men are employed, and a population of 40,000 people supported. The best pine districts of the world are in eastern Texas. With less competition and wider markets than Grand Rapids has, will she ship her forests at prices that barely support the wood-chopper and sawyer, to be returned in the making of which great cities are built or maintained ? When her farmers and herdsmen draw from her cities $126,000,000 as the price of her annual produce, shall this enormous wealth be scattered through distant shops and factories, leaving in the hands of Texas no more than the sustenance, support, and the narrow brokerage between buyer and seller ?' As one-crop farming cannot support the country, neither can a resource of commercial exchange support a city. Texas wants immigrants--she needs them--for if every human being in Texas were placed at

42

SPEECHES OF HENRY W. GRADV.

equi-distant points through the State no Texan could hear the sound of a human voice in your broad areas.
So how can you best attract immigration ? By furnish ing work for the artisan and mechanic if you meet the demand of your population for cheaper and essential man ufactured articles. One half million workers would be needed for this, and with their families would double the population of your State. In these mechanics and their dependents farmers would find a market for not only their staple crops but for the truck that they now despise to raise or sell, but is at least the cream of the farm. Worcester county, Mass., takes $7,200,000 of our mate rial and turns out $87,000,000 of products every year, paying $20,000,000 in wages. The most prosperous section of this world is that known as the Middle States of this republic. With agriculture and manufacturers in the balance, and their shops and factories set amid rich and ample acres, the result is such deep and diffuse prosperity as no other section can show. Suppose those States had a monopoly of cotton and coal so disposed as to command the world's markets and the treasury of the world's timber, I suppose the mind is staggered in contemplating the maj esty of the wealth and power they would attain. What have they that the South lacks?--and to her these things were added, and climate, ampler acres and rich soil. It is a curious fact that three-fourths of the population and man ufacturing wealth of this country is comprised in a narrow strip between Iowa and Massachusetts, comprising less than one-sixth of our territory, and that this strip is distant from the source of raw materials on which its growth is based, of hard climate and in a large part of sterile soil. Much of this forced and unnatural develop ment is due to slavery, which for a century fenced enter prise and capital out of the South. Mr. Thomas, who, in

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS.

43

the Lehigh Valley, owned a furnace in 1845 that set the pattern for iron-making in America, had at that time bought mines and forest where Birmingham now stands. Slavery forced him away. He settled in Pennsylvania. I have wondered what would have happened if that one man had opened his iron mines in Alabama and set his furnaces there at that time. I know what is going to happen since he has been forced to come to Birmingham and put up two furnaces nearly forty years after his survey.
Another cause that has prospered New England and the Middle States while the South languished, is the system of tariff taxes levied on the unmixed agriculture of these States for the protection of industries to our neigh bors to the North, a system on which the Hon. Roger Q. Mills--that lion of the tribe of Judah--has at last laid his mighty paw and under the indignant touch of which it trembles to its center. That system is to be revised and its duties reduced, as we all agree it should be, though I should say in perfect frankness I do not agree with Mr. Mills in it. Let us hope this will be done with care and industrious patience. Whether it stands or falls, the South has entered the industrial list to partake of his bounty if it stands, and if it falls, to rely on the favor with which nature has endowed her, and from this immutable advantage to fill her own markets and then have a talk with the world at large.
With amazing rapidity she has moved away from the one-crop idea that was once her curse. In 1880 she was esteemed prosperous. Since that time she added 393,000,ooo bushels to her grain crops, and 182,000,000 head to her live stock. This has not lost one bale of her cotton crop, which, on the contrary, has increased nearly 200,000 bales. With equal swiftness has she moved away from the folly of shipping out her ore at $3 a ton and buying it back in

44

SPEECHES OF HENRY W. GRADY.

implements at from $20 to $100 per ton ; her cotton at 10 cents a pound and buying it back in cloth at 20 to 80 cents a pound ; her timber at $8 per thousand and buying it back in furniture at ten to twenty times as much. In the past eight years $250,000,000 have been invested in new shops and factories in her States ; 225,000 artisans are now working that eight years ago were idle or worked elsewhere, and these added $227,000,000 to the value of her raw material--more than half the value of her cotton. Add to this the value of her increased grain crops and stock, and in the past eight years she has grown in her fields or created in her shops manufactures more than the value of her cotton crop. The incoming tide has begun to rise. Every train brings manufacturers from the East and West seeking to establish themselves or their sons near the raw material and in this growing market. Let the fullness of the tide roll in.
It will not exhaust our materials, nor shall we glut our markets. When the growing demand of our southern market, feeding on its own growth, is met, we shall find new markets for the South. Under our new condition many indirect laws of commerce shall be straightened. We buy from Brazil $50,000,000 worth of goods, and sell her $8,500,000. England buys only $29,000,000, and sells her $35,000,000. Of $65,000,000 in cotton goods bought by Central and South America, over $50,000,000 went to Eng land. Of $331,000,000 sent abroad by the southern half of our hemisphere, England secures over half, although we buy from that section nearly twice as much as England. Our neighbors to the south need nearly every article we make; we need nearly everything they produce. Less than 2,500 miles of road must be built to bind by rail the two American continents. When this is done, and even before, we shall find exhaustless markets to the South.

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS.

45

Texas shall command, as she stands in the van of this new movement, its richest rewards.
The South, under the rapid diversification of crops and diversification of industries, is thrilling with new life. As this new prosperity comes to us, it will bring no sweeter thought to me, and to you, my countrymen, I am sure, than that it adds not only to the comfort and happiness of our neighbors, but that it makes broader the glory and deeper the majesty, and more enduring the strength, of the Union which reigns supreme in our hearts. In this republic of ours is lodged the hope of free government on earth. Here God has rested the ark of his covenant with the sons of men. Let us--once estranged and thereby closer bound,-- let us soar above all provincial pride and find our deeper inspirations in gathering the fullest sheaves into the har vest and standing the staunchest and most devoted of its sons as it lights the path and makes clear the way through which all the people of this earth shall come in God's appointed time.
A few words to the young men of Texas. I am glad that I can speak to them at all. Men, especially young men, look back for their inspirations to what is best in their traditions. Thermopylae cast Spartan sentiments in heroic mould and sustained Spartan arms for more than a cen tury. Thermopylae had survivors to tell the story of its defeat. The Alamo had none. Though voiceless it shall speak from its dumb walls. Liberty cried out to Texas, as God called from the clouds unto Moses. Bowie and Fan ning, though dead, still live. "Their voices rang above the din of Goliad and the glory of San Jacinto, and they marched with the Texas veterans who rejoiced at the birth of Texas independence. It is the spirit of the Alamo that moved above the Texas soldiers as they charged like demi gods through a thousand battlefields, and it is the spirit of

46

SPEECHES OF HENRY W. GRADV.

the Alamo that whispers from their graves held in every State of the Union, ennobling their dust, their soil, that was crimsoned with their blood.
In the spirit of this inspiration and in the thrill of the amazing growth that surrounds you, my young friends, it will be strange if the young men of Texas do not carry the lone star in the heart of the struggle. The south needs her sons to-day more than when she summoned them to the forum to maintain her political supremacy, more than when the bugle called them to the field to defend issues put to the arbitrament of the sword. Her old body is instinct with appeal calling on us to come and give her fuller independence than she has ever sought in field or forum. It is ours to show that as she prospered with slaves she shall prosper still more with freemen; ours to see that from the lists she entered in poverty she shall emerge in prosperity; ours to carry the transcending tradi tions of the old South from which none of us can in honor or in reverence depart, unstained and unbroken into the new. Shall we fail ? Shall the blood of the old South-- the best strain that ever uplifted human endeavor--that ran like water at duty's call and never stained where it touched--shall this blood that pours into our veins through a century luminous with achievement, for the first time falter and be driven back from irresolute heat, when the old South, that left us a better heritage in manliness and courage than in broad and rich acres, calls us to settle problems ? A soldier lay wounded on a hard-fought field, the roar of the battle had died away, and he rested in the deadly stillness of its aftermath. Not a sound was heard as he lay there, sorely smitten and speechless, but the shriek of wounded and the sigh of the dying soul, as it escaped from the tumult of earth into th unspeakable peace of the stars. Off over the field flickered the lanterns of the sur-

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS.

47

geons with the litter bearers, searching that they might take away those whose lives could be saved and leave in sorrow those who were doomed to die with pleading eyes through the darkness. This poor soldier watched, unable to turn or speak as the lantern drew near. At last the light flashed in his face, and the surgeon, with kindly face, bent over him, hesitated a moment, shook his head, and was gone, leaving the poor fellow alone with death. He watched in patient agony as they went from one part of the field to another. As they came back the surgeon bent over him again. "I believe if this poor fellow lives to sun down to-morrow he will get well." And again leaving him, not to death but with hope; all night long these words fell into his heart as the dew fell from the stars upon his lips, "if he but lives till sundown, he will get well." He turned his weary head to the east and watched for the coming sun. At last the stars went out, the east trembled with radiance, and the sun, slowly lifting above the hori zon, tinged his pallid face with flame. He watched it inch by inch as it climbed slowly up the heavens. He thought of life, its hopes and ambitions, its sweetness and its raptures, and he fortified his soul against despair until the sun had reached high noon. It sloped down its slow descent, and his life was ebbing away and his heart was faltering, and he needed stronger stimulants to make him stand the struggle until the end of the day had come. He thought of his far-off home, the blessed house resting in tranquil peace with the roses climbing to its door, and the trees whispering to its windows, and dozing in the sunshine, the orchard and the little brook running like a silver thread through the forest.
"If I live till sundown I will see it again. I will walk down the shady lane: I will open the battered gate, and

48

SPEECHES OF HENRY W. GKADY.

the mocking-bird shall call to me from the orchard, and I will drink again at the old mossy spring."
And he thought of the wife who had come from the neighboring farmhouse and put her hand shyly in his, and brought sweetness to his life and light to his home.
"If I live till sundown I shall look once more into her deep and loving eyes and press her brown head once more to my aching breast."
And he thought of the old father, patient in prayer, bending lower and lower every day under his load of sor row and old age.
"If I but live till sundown I shall see him again and wind my strong arm about his feeble body, and his hands shall rest upon my head while the unspeakable healing of his blessing falls into my heart."
And he thought of the little children that clambered on his knees and tangled their little hands into his heart strings, making to him such music as the world shall not equal or heaven surpass.
"If Ilive till sundown they shall again find my parched lips with their warm mouths, and their little fingers shall run once more over my face."
And he then thought of his old mother, who gathered these children about her and breathed her old heart afresh in their brightness and attuned her old lips anew to their prattle, that she might live till her big boy came home.
"If I live till sundown I will see her again, and I will rest my head at my old place on her knees, and weep away all memory of this desolate night." And the Son of God, who had died for men, bending from the stars, put the hand that had been nailed to the cross on ebbing life and held on the staunch until the sun went down and the stars came out, and shone down in the brave man's heart and

THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS.

49

blurred in his glistening eyes, and the lanterns of the sur geons came and he was taken from death to life
The world is a battle-field strewn with the wrecks of government and institutions, of theories and of faiths that have gone down in the ravage of years. On this field lies the South, sown with her problems. Upon this field swings the lanterns of God. Amid the carnage walks tne Great Physician. Over the South he bends "If ye but live until to-morrow's sundown ye shall endure, my country men." Let us for her sake turn our faces to the east and watch as a soldier watched for the coming sun. Let us staunch her wounds and hold steadfast. The sun mounts the skies. As it descends to us, minister to her and stand constant at her side for the sake of our children, and of generations unborn that shall suffer if she fails. And when the sun has gone down and the day of her probation has ended, and the stars have rallied her heart, the lanterns shall be swung over the field and the Great Physician shall lead her up, from trouble into content, from suffering into peace, from death to life. Let every man here pledge him self in this high and ardent hour, as I pledge myself and the boy that shall follow me; every man himself and his son, hand to hand and heart to heart, that in death and earnest loyalty, in patient painstaking and care, he shall watch her interest, advance her fortune, defend her fame and guard her honor as long as life shall last. Every man in the sound of my voice, under the deeper consecration he offers to the Union, will consecrate himself to the South. Have no ambition but to be first at her feet and last at her service. No hope but, after a long life of devotion, to sink to sleep in her bosom, and as a little child sleeps at his mother's breast and rests untroubled in the light of her smile.
With such consecrated service, what could we not

5O

SPEECHES OF HENRY W. GRADY.

accomplish; what riches we should gather for her; what glory and prosperity we should render to the Union; what blessings we should gather unto the universal harvest of humanity. As I think of it, a vision of surpassing beauty unfolds to my eyes. I see a South, a home of -fifty millions of people, who rise up every day to call from blessed cities, vast hives of industry and of thrift; her country-sides the treasures from which their resources are drawn; her streams vocal with whirring spindles; her valleys tranquil in the white and gold of the harvest; her mountains showering down the music of bells, as her slowmoving flocks and herds go forth from their folds; her rulers honest and her. people loving, and her homes happy and their hearthstones bright, and their waters still, and their pastures green, and her conscience clear; her wealth diffused and poor-houses empty, her churches earnest and all creeds lost in the gospel. Peace and sobriety walking hand in hand through her borders; honor in her homes; uprightness in her midst; plenty in her fields; straight and simple faith in the hearts of her sons and daughters; her two races walking together in peace and contentment; sunshine everywhere and all the time, and night falling on her generally as from the wings of the unseen dove.
All this, my country, and more can we do for you. As I look the vision grows, the splendor deepens, the horizon falls back, the skies open their everlasting gates, and the glory of the Almighty God streams through as He looks down on His people who have given themselves unto Him and leads them from one triumph to another until they have reached a glory unspeaking, and the whirling stars, as in their courses through Arcturus they run to the milky way, shall not look down on a better people or happier land.

AGAINST CENTRALIZATION.
A DDRESS Delivered Before the Societies of the University of f\ Virginia, June 25, 1889.
MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: In thank ing you for this cordial--this Virginia--welcome, let me say that it satisfies my heart to be with you to-day. This is my alma mater Kind, in the tolerant patience with which she winnowed the chaff of idle days and idler nights that she might find for me the grain of knowledge and of truth, and in the tharity with which she sealed in sorrow rather than in anger my brief but stormy career within these walls. Kinder yet, that her old heart has turned lovingly after the lapse of twenty years to her scapegrace son in a distant State, and recalling him with this honora ble commission, has summoned him to her old place at her knees. Here at her feet, with the glory of her presence breaking all about me, let me testify that the years have but deepened my reverence and my love, and my heart has owned the magical tenderness of the emotions first kindled amid these sacred scenes. That which was unworthy has faded--that which was good has abided. Faded the mem ory of the tempestuous dyke and the riotous kalathums-- dimmed the memory of that society, now happily extinct, but then famous as "The Nippers from Peru "--forgotten even the glad exultation of those days when the neighbor ing mountaineer in the pride of his breezy heights brought down the bandaged bear to give battle to the urban dog. Forgotten all these follies, and let us hope forgiven. But,

52

SPEECHES OF HENRY W. GRADY.

enduring in heart and in brain, the exhaustless splendor of those golden days--the deep and pure inspiration of these academic shades--the kindly admonition and wisdom of the masters--the generous ardor of our mimic contests --and that loving comradeship that laughed at separation and has lived beyond the grave. Enduring and hallowed, blessed be God, the strange and wild ambitions that star tled my boyish heart as amid these dim corridors, oh ! my mother, the stirring of unseen wings in thy mighty past caught my careless ear, and the dazzling ideals of thy future were revealed to my wondering sight.
Gentlemen of the literary societies--I have no studied oration for you to-day. A life busy beyond its capacities has given scanty time for preparation. But from a loving heart I shall speak to you this morning in comradely sym pathy of that which concerns us nearly.
Will you allow me to say that the anxiety that always possesses me when I address my young countrymen is to-day quickened to the point of consecration. For the first time in man's responsibility I speak in Virginia to Virginia. Beyond its ancient glories that made it match less among States, its later martyrdom has made it the Mecca of my people. It was on these hills that our fathers gave new and deeper meaning to heroism, and advanced the world in honor! It is in these valleys that our dead lie sleeping. Out there is Appomattox, where on every ragged gray cap the Lord God Almighty laid the sword of His imperishable knighthood. Beyond is Petersburg, where he whose name I bear, and who was prince to me among men, dropped his stainless sword and yielded up his stainless life. Dear to me, sir, are the people among whom my father died--sacred to me, sir, the soil that drank his precious blood. From a heart stirred by these emo tions and sobered by these memories, let me speak to you

AGAINST CENTRALIZATION.

53

to-day, my countrymen--and God give me wisdom to speak aright and the words wherewithal to challenge and hold your attention.
We are standing in the daybreak of the second century of this Republic. The fixed stars are fading from the sky, and we grope in uncertain light. Strange shapes have come with the night. Established ways are lost--new roads perplex, and widening fields stretch beyond the sight. The unrest of dawn impels us to and fro--but Doubt stalks amid the confusion, and even on the beaten paths the shift ing crowds are halted, and from the shadows the sentries cry : " Who comes there ?" In the obscurity of the morn ing tremendous forces are at work. Nothing is steadfast or approved. The miracles of the present belie the simple truths of the past. The church is besieged from without and betrayed from within. Behind the courts smoulders the rioter's torch and looms the gibbet of the anarchists. Government is the contention of partisans and the prey of spoilsmen. Trade is restless in the grasp of monopoly, and commerce shackled with limitation. The cities are swollen and the fields are stripped. Splendor streams from the castle, and squalor crouches in the home. The universal brotherhood is dissolving, and the people are huddling into classes. The hiss of the Nihilist disturbs the covert, and the roar of the mob murmurs along the highway. Amid it all beats the great American heart undismayed, and standing fast by the challenge of his con science, the citizen of the Republic, tranquil and resolute, notes the drifting of the spectral currents, and calmly awaits the full disclosures of the day.
Who shall be the heralds of this coming day ? Who shall thread the way of honor and safety through these besetting problems? Who shall rally the people to the defense of their liberties and stir them until they shall cry

54

SPEECHES OF HENRY W. GRADY.

aloud to be led against the enemies of the Republic ? You, my countrymen, you! The university is the training camp of the future. The scholar the champion of the coming years. Napoleon over-ran Europe with drum-tap and bivouac--the next Napoleon shall form his battallions at the tap of the schoolhouse bell and his captains shall come with cap and gown. Waterloo was won at Oxford--Sedan at Berlin. So Germany plants her colleges in the shadow of the French forts, and the professor smiles amid his stu dents as he notes the sentinel stalking against the sky. The farmer has learned that brain* mix better with his soil than the waste of seabirds, and the professor walks by his side as he spreads the showers in the verdure of his field, and locks the sunshine in the glory of his harvest. A but ton is pressed by a child's finger and the work of a million men is done. The hand is nothing--the brain everything. Physical prowess has had its day and the age of reason has come. The' lion-hearted Richard challenging Saladin to single combat is absurd, for even Gog and Magog shall wage the Armageddon from their closets and look not upon the blood that runs to the bridle-bit. Science is every thing! She butchers a hog in Chicago, draws Boston within three hours of New York, renews the famished soil, routs her viewless bondsmen from the electric center of the earth, and then turns to watch the new Icarus as mounting in his flight to the sun he darkens the burnished ceiling of the sky with the shadow of his wing.
Learning is supreme and you are its prophets. Here the Olympic games of the Republic--and you its chosen athletes. It is yours then to grapple with these problems, to confront and master these dangers. Yours to decide whether the tremendous forces of this Republic shall be kept in balance, or whether unbalanced they shall bring chaos ; whether 60,000,000 men are capable of self-govern-

A0AINST CENTRALIZATION.

55

ment, or whether liberty shall be lost to them who would give their lives to maintain it. Your responsibility is appalling. You stand in the pass behind which the world's liberties are guarded. This government carries the hopes of the human race. Blot out the beacon that lights the portals of this Republic and the world is adrift again. But save the Republic; establish the light of its beacon over the troubled waters, and one by one the nations of the earth shall drop anchor and be at rest in the harbor of uni versal liberty. Let one who loves this Republic as he loves his life, and whose heart is thrilled with the majesty of its mission, speak to you now of the dangers that threaten its peace and prosperity, and the means by which they may be honorably averted.
The unmistakable danger that threatens free govern ment in America, is the increasing tendency, to concen trate in the Federal government powers and privileges that should be left with the States, and to create powers that neither the State nor Federal government should have. Let it be understood at once that in discussing this ques tion I seek to revive no dead issue. We know precisely what was put to the issue of the sword, and what was set tled thereby. The right of a State to leave this Union was denied and the denial made good forever. But the sovereignty of the States in the Union was never involved, and the Republic that survived the storm was, in the words of the Supreme Court, "an indissoluble Union of inde structible States." Let us stand on this decree and turn
our faces to the future! It is not strange that there should be a tendency to
centralization in our government. This disposition was the legacy of the war. Steam and electricity have empha sized it by bringing the people closer together. The splen dor of a central government dazzles the unthinking--its

56

SPEECHES OF HENRY W. GRADY.

opulence tempts the poor and the avaricious--its strength assures the rich and the timid--its patronage incites the spoilsmen and its powers inflame the partisan.
And so we have paternalism run mad The merchant asks the government to control the arteries of trade--the manufacturer asks that his product be protected--the rich asks for an army, and the unfortunate for help--this man for schools and that foi subsidy. The partisan proclaims, amid the clamor, that the source of largess must be the seat of power, and demands that the ballot-boxes of the States be hedged by Federal bayonets. The centrifugal force of our system is weakened, the centripetal force is increased, and the revolving spheres are veering inward from their orbits. There are strong men who rejoice in this unbalancing and deliberately contend that the center is the true repository of power and source of privilege-- men who, were they charged with the solar system, would shred the planets into the sun, and, exulting in the sudden splendor, little reck that they had kindled the conflagra tion that presages universal nights! Thus the States are dwarfed and the nation magnified--and to govern a peo ple, who can best govern themselves, the central authority is made stronger and more splendid!
Concurrent with this political drift is another move ment, less formal, perhaps, but not less dangerous--the consolidation of capital. [ hesitate to discuss this phase of the subject, for of all men I despise most cordially the demagogue who panders to the prejudice of the poor by abuse of the rich. But no man can note the encroach ment in this country of what may be called " the money power" on the rights of the individual, without feeling that the time is approaching when the issue between plu tocracy and the people will be forced to trial. The world has not seen, nor has the mind of man conceived of such

AGAINST CENTRALIZATION.

57

miraculous wealth-gathering as are every-day tales to us. Aladdin's lamp is dimmed, and Monte Christo becomes commonplace when compared to our magicians of finance and trade. The seeds of a luxury that even now surpasses that of Rome or Corinth, and has only yet put forth its first flowers, are sown in this simple republic. What shall the full fruitage be ? I do not denounce the newly rich. For most part their money came under forms of law. The irresponsibilities of sudden wealth is in many cases stead ied by that resolute good sense which seems to be an American heritage, and under-run by careless prodigality or by constant charity. Our great wealth has brought us profit and splendor. But the status itself is a menace. A home that costs $3,000,000 and a breakfast that cost $5,000 are disquieting facts to the millions who live in a hut and dine on a crust. The fact that a man ten years' from pov erty has an income of $20,000,000--and his two associates nearly as much--from the control and arbitrary pricing of an article of universal use, falls strangely on the ears of those who hear it, as they sit empty-handed, while children cry for bread. The tendency deepens the dangers sug gested by the status. What is to be the end of this swift piling up of wealth ? Twenty years ago but few cities had their millionaires. To day almost every town has its dozen. Twenty men can be named who can each buy a sovereign State at its tax-book value. The youngest nation, Amer ica, is vastly the richest, and in twenty years, in spite of war, has nearly trebled her wealth. Millions are made on the turn of a trade, and the toppling mass grows and grows, while in its shadow starvation and despair stalk among the people, and swarm with increasing legions against the citadels of human life
But the abuse of .this amazing power of consolidated wealth is its bitterest result and its pressing danger. When

58

SPEECHES OF HENRY W. QkRADY.

the agent of a dozen men, who have captured and control an article of prime necessity, meets the representatives of a million farmers from whom they have forced $3,000,ooo the year before, with no more moral right than is behind the highwayman who halts the traveler at his pis tol's point, and insolently gives them the measure of this year's rapacity, and tells them--men who live in the sweat of their brows, and stand between God and Nature--that they must submit to the infamy because they are helpless, then the first fruits of this system are gathered and have turned to ashes on the lips. When a dozen men get together in the morning and fix the price of a dozen articles of common use--with no standard but their arbitrary will, and no limit but their greed or daring--and then notify the sovereign people of this free Republic how much, in the mercy of their masters, they shall pay for the necessaries of life--then the point of intolerable shame has been reached.
We have read of the robber barons of the Rhine who from their castles sent a shot across the bow of every pass ing craft, and descending as hawks from the crags, tore and robbed and plundered the voyagers until their greed was glutted, or the strength of their victims spent. Shall this shame of Europe against which the world revolted, shall it be repeated in this free country ? And yet, when a syndicate or a trust can arbitrarily add twenty five per cent, to the cost of a single article of common use, and safely gather forced tribute from the people, until from its surplus it could buy every castle on the Rhine, or requite every baron's debauchery from its kitchen account--where is the difference--save that the castle is changed to a broker's office, and the picturesque river to the teeming streets and the broad fields of this government "of the people, by the people, and for the people ?" I do not over-

AGAINST CENTRALIZATION.

59

state the case. Economists have held that wheat, grown everywhere, could never be cornered by capital. And yet one man in Chicago tied the wheat crop in his handker chief, and held it until a sewing woman in my city, work ing for ninety cents a week> had to pay him twenty cents tax on the sack of flour she bore home in her famished hands. Three men held the cotton crop until the English spindles were stopped and the lights went out in 3,000,000 English homes. Last summer one man cornered pork until he had levied a tax of $3 per barrel on every con sumer, and pocketed a profit of millions. The Czar of Russia would not have dared to do these things. And yet they are no secrets in this free government of ours! They are known of all men, and, my countrymen, no argument can follow them, and no plea excuse them, when they fall on the men who toiling, suffer--who hunger at their work --and who cannot find food for their wives with which to feed the infants that hang famishing at their breasts. Mr. Jefferson foresaw this danger and he sought to avert it. When Virginia ceded the vast Northwest to the govern ment--before the Constitution was written--Mr. Jeffer son in the second clause of the articles of cession prohib ited forever the right of primogeniture. Virginia then nobly said, and Georgia in the cession of her territory repeated : " In granting this domain to the government and dedicating it to freedom, we prescribe that there shall be no classes in the family--no child set up at the expense of the others, no feudal estates established--but what a man hath shall be divided equally among his children."
We see this feudal tendency, swept away by Mr. Jeffer son, revived by the conditions of our time, aided by the government with its grant of enormous powers and its amazing class legislation. It has given the corporation more power than Mr. Jefferson stripped from the individ-

6O

SPEECHES OF HENRY W. GRADY.

ual, and has set up a creature without soul or conscience or limit of human life to establish an oligarchy, unrelieved by human charity and unsteadied by human responsibility. The syndicate, the trust, the corporation--these are the eldest sons of the Republic for whom the feudal right of primogeniture is revived, and who inherit its estate to the impoverishment of their brothers. Let it be noted that the alliance between those who would centralize the gov ernment and the consolidated money power is not only close but essential. The one is the necessity of the other. Establish the money power and there is universal clamor for strong government. The weak will demand it for pro tection against the people restless under oppression--the patriotic for protection against the plutocracy that scour ges and robs--the corrupt hoping to buy of one central body distant from local influences what they could not buy from the legislatures of the States sitting at their homes-- the oligarchs will demand it--as the privileged few have always demanded it--for the protection of their privileges and the perpetuity of their bounty. Thus, hand in hand, will walk--as they have always walked--the federalist and the capitalist, the centralist and the monopolist--the strong government protecting the money power, and the money power the political standing army of the government. Hand in hand, compact and organized, one creating the necessity, the other meeting it; consolidated wealth and centralizing government; stripping the many of their rights and aggrandizing the few ; distrusting the people but in touch with the plutocrats ; striking down local selfgovernment and dwarfing the citizens--and at last con fronting the people in the market, in the courts, at the ballot box--everywhere--with the infamous challenge : " What are you going to do about it ?" And so the gov ernment protects and the barons oppress, and the people

AGAINST CENTRALIZATION.

61

suffer and grow strong. And when the battle for liberty is joined--the centralist and the plutocrat, entrenched behind the deepening powers of the government, and the countless ramparts of money bags, oppose to the vague but earnest onset of the people the power of the trained phalanx and the conscienceless strength of the mercenary.
Against this tendency who shall protest? Those who believe that a central government means a strong govern ment, and a strong government means repression--those who believe that this vast Republic, with its diverse inter ests and its local ueeds, can better be governed by liberty and enlightenment diffused among the people than by powers and privileges congested at the center--those who believe that the States should do nothing that the people can do themselves and the government nothing that the States and the people can do--those who believe that the wealth of the central government is a crime rather than a virtue, and that every dollar not needed for its economical administration should be left with the people of the States --those who believe that the hearthstone of the home is the true altar of liberty and the enlightened conscience of the citizen the best guarantee of government! Those of you who note the farmer sending his sons to the city that they may escape the unequal burdens under which he has labored, thus diminishing the rural population whose leis ure, integrity and deliberation have corrected the passion and impulse and corruption of the cities--who note that while the rich are growing richer, and the poor poorer, we are lessening that great middle class that, ever since it met the returning crusaders in England with the demand that the hut of the humble should be as sacred as the cas tle of the great, has been the bulwark and glory of every English-speaking community--who know that this Repub lic, which we shall live to see with 150,000,000 people,

62

SPEECHES OF HENRY W. GRADY.

stretching from ocean to ocean, and almost from the arctic to the torrid zone, cannot be governed by any laws that a central despotism could devise or controlled by any armies it could marshal--you who know these things protest with all the earnestness of your souls against the policy and the methods that make them possible.
What is the remedy! To exalt the hearthstone--to strengthen the home--to build up the individual--to mag nify and defend the principle of local self-government. Not in deprecation of the Federal government, but to its glory--not to weaken the Republic, but to strengthen it-- not to check the rich blood that flows to its heart, but to send it full and wholesome from healthy members rather than from withered and diseased extremities.
The man who kindles the fire on the hearthstone of an honest and righteous home burns the best incense to lib erty. He does not love mankind less who loves his neigh bor most. George Eliot has said :
" A human life should be well rooted in some spot of a native ' land where it may get the love of tender kinship for the face of the earth, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, a spot where the deflniteness of early memories may be inwrought with affec tion, and spread, not by sentimental effort and reflection, but as a sweet habit of the blest."
The germ of the best patriotism is in the love that a man has for the home he inhabits, for the soil he tills, for the trees that gives him shade, and the hills that stand in his pathway. I teach my son to love Georgia--to love the soil that he stands on--the body of my old mother--the mountains that are her springing breasts, the broad acres that hold her substance, the dimpling valleys in which her beauty rests, the forests that sing her songs of lullaby and of praise, and the brooks that run with her rippling laugh ter. The love of home--deep rooted and abiding--that

AGAINST CENTRALIZATION.

63

blurs the eyes of the dying soldier with the vision of an old homestead amid green fields and clustering trees-- that follows the busy man through the clamoring world, persistent though put aside, and at last draws his tired feet from the highway and leads him through shady lanes and well-remembered paths until, amid the scenes of his boyhood, he gathers up the broken threads of his life and owns the soil his conqueror--this--this lodged in the heart of the citizen is the saving principle of our government. We note the barracks of our standing army with its rolling drum and its fluttering flag as points of strength and pro tection. But the citizen standing in the doorway of his home--contented on his threshold--his family gathered about his hearthstone--while the evening of a well-spent day closes in scenes and sounds that are dearest--he shall save the Republic when the drum tap is futile and the bar racks are exhausted.
This love shall not be pent up or provincial. The home should be consecrated to humanity, and from its roof-tree should fly the flag of the Republic. Every simple fruit gathered there--every sacrifice endured, and every victory won, should bring better joy and inspiration in the knowl edge that it will deepen the glory of our Republic and widen the harvest of humanity! Be not like the peasant of France who hates the Paris he cannot comprehend--but emulate the example of your fathers in the South, who, holding to the sovereignty of the States, yet gave to the Republic its chief glory of statesmanship, and under Jack son at New Orleans, and Taylor and Scott in Mexico, saved it twice from the storm of war. Inherit without fear or shame the principle of local self-government by which your fathers stood ! For though entangled with an institution foreign to this soil, which, thank God, not planted by their hands, is now swept away, and with a theory bravely

64

SPEECHES OF HENRY W. GRADY.

defended but now happily adjusted--that principle holds the imperishable truth that shall yet save this Republic. The integrity of the State, its rights and its powers--these, maintained with firmness, but in loyalty--these shall yet, by lodging the option of local affairs in each locality, meet the needs of this vast and complex government, and check the headlong rush to that despotism that reason could not defend, nor the armies of the Czar maintain, among a free and enlightened people. The issue is squarely made! It is centralized government and the money power on the one hand--against the integrity of the States and rights of the people on the other. At all hazard, stand with the people and the threatened States. The choice may not be easily made. Wise men may hesitate and patriotic men divide. The culture, the strength, the mightiness of the rich and strong government--these will tempt and dazzle. But be not misled. Beneath this splendor is the canker of a disturbed and oppressed people It was from the golden age of Augustus that the Roman empire staggered to its fall. The integrity of the States and the rights of the people! Stand there--there is safety--there is the broad and enduring brotherhood--there, less of glory, but more of honor! Put patriotism above partisanship--and wherever the principle that protects the States against the centralists, and the people against the plutocrats, may lead, follow without fear or faltering--for there the way of duty
and of wisdom lies ! Exalt the citizen. As the State is the unit of govern
ment he is the unit of the State. Teach him that his home is his castle, and his sovereignty rests beneath his hat. Make himself selt-respecting, self-reliant and responsible. Let him Jean on the State for nothing that his own arm can do, and on the government for nothing that his State can do. Let him cultivate independence to the point of

AGAINST CENTRALIZATION.

65

sacrifice, and learn that humble things with unbartered lib erty are better than splendors bought with its price. Let him neither surrender his individuality to government, nor merge it with the mob. Let him stand upright and fear less--a freeman born of freemen--sturdy in his own strength--dowering his family in the sweat of his brow-- loving to his State--loyal to his Republic--earnest in his allegiance wherever it rests, but building his altar in the midst of his household gods and shrining in his own heart the uttermost temple of its liberty.
Go out, determined to magnify the community in which your lot is cast. Cultivate its small economies. Stand by its young industries. Commercial dependence is a chain that galls every day. A factory built at home, a book published, a shoe or a boot made, these are steps in that diffusion of thought and interest that is needed. Teach your neighbors to withdraw from the vassalage of distant capitalists, and pay, under any sacrifice, the mortgage on the home or the land. By simple and prudent lives stay within your own resources, and establish the freedom of your community. Make every village and cross-roads as far as may be sovereign to its own wants. Learn that thriving country-sides with room for limbs, conscience, and liberty are better than great cities with congested wealth and population. Preserve the straight and simple homo geneity of our people. Welcome emigrants, but see that they come as friends and neighbors, to mingle their blood with ours, to build their houses in our fields, and to plant their Christian faith on our hills, and honoring our consti tution and reverencing our God, to confirm the simple beliefs in which we have been reared, and which we should transmit unsullied to our children. Stand by these oldfashioned beliefs. Science hath revealed no better faith than that you learned at your mother's knee--nor has

66

SPEECHES OF HENRY W. GRADY.

knowledge made a wiser and a better book than the worn old Bible that, thumbed by hands long since still, and blurred with the tears of eyes long since closed, held the simple an nals of your family and heart and conscienceof your homes.
Honor and emulate the virtues and the faith of your forefathers--who, learned, were never wise above a knowl edge of God and His gospel--who, great, were never exalted above an humble trust in God and His mercy!
Let me sum up what I have sought to say in this hur ried address. Your Republic--on the glory of which depends all that men hold dear--is menaced with great dangers. Against these dangers defend her, as you would defend the most precious concerns of your own life. Against the dangers of centralizing all political powers, put the approved and imperishable principle of local selfgovernment. Between the rich and the poor now drifting into separate camps, build up the great middle class that, neither drunk with wealth, nor embittered by poverty, shall lift up the suffering and control the strong. To the jangling of races and creeds that threaten the courts of men and the temples of God, oppose the home and the cit izen--a homogeneous and honest people--and the simple faith that sustained your fathers and mothers in their stain less lives and led them serene and smiling into the valley of the shadow.
Let it be understood in my parting words to you that I am no pessimist as to this Republic. I always bet on sun shine in America. I know that my country has reached the point of perilous greatness, and that strange forces not to be measured or comprehended are hurrying her to heights that dazzle and blind all mortal eyes--but I know that beyond the uttermost glory is enthroned the Lord God Almighty, and that when the hour of her trial has come He will lift up His everlasting gates and bend down

AGAINST CENTRALIZATION.

67

above her in mercy and in love. For with her He has surely lodged the ark of His covenant with the sons of men. Emerson wisely said, " Our whole history looks like the last effort by Divine Providence in behalf of the human race." And the Republic will endure. Centralism will be checked, and liberty saved--plutocracy overthrown and equality restored. The struggle for human rights never goes backward among English-speaking peoples. Our brothers across the sea have fought from despotism to lib erty, and in the wisdom of local self-government have planted colonies around the world. This very day Mr. Gladstone, the wisest man that has lived since your Jeffer son died--with the light of another world beating in his face until he seems to have caught the wisdom of the Infin ite and towers half human and half divine from his emi nence--this man, turning away from the traditions of his life, begs his countrymen to strip the crown of its last usurped authority, and lodge it with the people, where it belongs. The trend of the times is with us. The world moves steadily from gloom to brightness. And bending down humbly as Elisha did, and praying that my eyes shall be made to see, I catch the vision of this Republic--its mighty forces in balance, and its unspeakable glory falling on all its children--chief among the federation of Englishspeaking people--plenty streaming from its borders, and light from its mountain tops--working out its mission under God's approving eye, until the dark continents are opened--and the highways of earth established, and the shadows lifted--and the jargons of the nations stilled and the perplexities of Babel straightened--and under one lan guage, one liberty, and one God, all the nations of the world hearkening to the American drum-beat and girding up their loins, shall march amid the breaking of the mil lennial dawn into the paths of righteousness and of peace!

AT THE BOSTON BANQUET.
I N his Speech at the Annual Banquet of the Boston Merchants' Association in December, 1889, Mr. Grady said:
MR. PRESIDENT: Bidden by your invitation to a discus sion of the race problem--forbidden by occasion to make a political speech--I appreciate in trying to reconcile orders with propriety the predicament of the little maid who, bidden to learn to swim, was yet adjured, "Now, go, my darling, hang your clothes on a hickory limb, and don't go near the water."
The stoutest apostle of the church, they say, is the mis sionary, 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 discuss the problem of the races in the home of Phillips and of Sumner. But, Mr. President, if a purpose to speak in per fect frankness and sincerity; if earnest understanding of the vast interests involved; if a consecrating sense of what disaster may follow further misunderstanding and estrange ment, if these may be counted to steady undisciplined speech and to strengthen an untried arm--then, sir, I 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

AT THE B6STON BANQUET.

69

thundered and Longfellow sang, Emerson thought and Channing preached--here in the cradle of American letters, and almost of American liberty, I hasten to make the obei sance that every American owes New England when first he stands uncovered in her mighty presence. Strange appari tion ! 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 sunshine, and the heroic workers rested at its base--while startled kings and emperors gazed and marveled that from the rude touch of this handful, cast on a bleak and unknown shore, should have come the embodied genius of human govern ment, and the perfected model of human liberty! God bless the memory of those immortal workers--and prosper the fortunes of their living sons--and perpetuate the inspirations 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, 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 con fidence 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 rcy lips--that I believed the best product of her present life is the procession of 17,000 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 25,000 Repub-

7O

SPEECHES OF HENRY W. GRADY.

lican majority. May God of the helpless and the heroic help them--and may their sturdy tribe increase!
Far to the south, Mr. President, separated from this section 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 centered all that can please or prosper humankind. 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 wool--that region has easy control. In cotton, a fixed monopoly--in iron, proven supremacy--in timber, the reserve supply of the Republic. From this assured and permanent advantage, against which artificial conditions cannot much longer 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 costly farms from which competi tion 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 mount ing 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 fit setting, in its material excellence, for the loyal and

AT THE BOSTON BANQUET.

71

gentle quanty 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 15 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, the strange fact remains that in 1880 the South had fewer Northern-born citizens than she had in 1870--fewer in '70 than in '60. 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 slaveholder 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 kindled with its beauty. Better than this, it will open the hearts of brothers for thirty years estranged, and clasp in lasting comeradeship a million hands now withheld in doubt. Nothing, sir, but this problem, and the suspi cions 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 Forge and Yorktown, chastened by the sacrifices at Manassas and Gettysburg, and illumined with the coming of better work and a nobler destiny than was ever wrought with the sword or sought at the cannon's mouth.

72

SPEECHES OF HENRY W. GRADY.

If this does not invite your patient hearing to-night-- hear one thing more. My people, your brothers in the South--brothers in blood, in destiny, in all that is best in our past and future--are so beset with this problem that their very existence depends upon its right solution. Nor are they wholly to blame for its presence. The slave-ships of the Republic sailed from your ports--the slaves worked in our fields. You will not defend the traffic, nor I the institution. But I do hereby declare that in its wise and human administration, in lifting the slave to heights of which he had not dreamed in his savage home, and giving him a happiness he has not yet found in freedom--our fathers left their sons a saving and excellent heritage. In the storm of war this institution was lost. I thank God as heartily as you do that human slavery is gone forever from the American soil. But the freedom remains. With him a problem without precedent or parallel. Note its appalling conditions. Two utterly dissimilar races on the same soil--with equal political and civil rights--almost equal in numbers, but terribly unequal in intelligence and responsibility--each pledged against fusion--one for a century in servitude to the other, and freed at last by a desolating war--the experiment sought by neither, but approached by both with doubt--these are the conditions. Under these, adverse at every point, we are required to carry these two races in peace and honor to the end.
Never, sir, has such a task been given to mortal stew ardship. Never before in this Republic has the white race divided on the rights of an alien race. The red man was cut down as a weed, because he hindered the way of the American citizen. The yellow man was shut out of this Republic because he is an alien and inferior. The red man was owner of the land--the yellow man highly civilized and assimiable--but they hindered both sections and are

AT THE BOSTON BANQUET.

73

gone 1 But the black man, affecting but one section, is clothed with every privilege of government and pinned to the soil, and my people commended to make good at any hazard, and at any cost, his full and equal heirship of American privilege and prosperity. It matters not that every other race has been routed or excluded, without rhyme or reason. It matters not that wherever the whites and blacks have touched, in any era or any clime, there has been irreconcilable violence. It matters not that no two races, however similar, have lived anywhere at any time on the same soil with equal rights in peace! In spite of these things we are commanded to make good this change of American policy which has not perhaps changed Ameri can prejudice--to make certain here what has elsewhere been impossible between whites and blacks--and to reverse, under the very worst conditions, the universal verdict of raciaj history. And driven, sir, to this superhuman task with an impatience that brooks no delay--a rigor that accepts no excuse--and a suspicion that discourages frank ness and sincerity. We do not shrink from this trial. It is so interwoven with our industrial fabric that we cannot disentangle it if we would--so bound up in our honorable obligation to the world, that we would not if we could. Can we solve it ? The God who gave it into our hands, He alone can know. But this the weakest and wisest of us do know; we cannot solve it with less than your tol erant and patient sympathy--with less than the knowledge that the blood that runs in your veins is our blood--and that when we have done our best, whether the issue be lost or won, we shall feel your strong arms about us and hear the beating of your approving hearts.
The resolute, clear-headed, broad-minded men of the South--the men whose genius made glorious every page of the first seventy years of American history--whose cour-

74

SPEECHES OF HENRY W. GRADV.

age and fortitude you tested in five years of the fiercest war--whose energy has made bricks without straw and spread splendor amid the ashes of their war wasted homes--these men wear this problem in their hearts and their brains, by day and by night. They realize, as you cannot, what this problem means--what they owe to this kindly and dependent race--the measure of their debt to the world in whose despite they defended and maintained slavery. And though their feet are hindered in its under growth, and their march encumbered with its burdens, they have lost neither the patience from which comes clearness, nor the faith from which comes courage. Nor, sir, when in passionate moments is disclosed to them that vague and awful shadow, with its lurid abysses and its crimson stains, into which I pray God they may never go, are they struck with more of apprehension than is needed to complete their consecration!
Such is the temper of my people. But what of the prob lem itself ? Mr. President, we need not go one step fur ther unless you concede right here the people I speak for are as honest, as sensible, and as just as your people, seek ing as earnestly as you would in their place, to rightly solve the problem that touches them at every vital point. If you insist that they are ruffians, blindly striving with bludgeon and shotgun to plunder and oppress a race, then I shall sacrifice my self-respect and tax your patience in vain. But admit that they are men of common sense and common honesty--wisely modifying an environment they cannot wholly disregard--guiding and controlling as best they can the vicious and irresponsible of either race--com pensating error with frankness, and retrieving in patience what they lose in passion--and conscious all the time that wrong means ruin,--admit this, and we may reach an understanding to-nignt.

AT THE BOSTON BANQUET.

75

The President of the United States in his late message to Congress,- discussing the plea that the South should be left to solve this problem, asks: "Are they at work upon it ? What solution do they offer ? When will the black man cast a free ballot? When will he have the civil rights that are his ?" I shall not here protest against the partisanry that, for the first time in our history in time of peace, has stamped with the great seal of our government a stigma upon the people of a great and loyal section, though I gratefully remember that the great dead soldier, who held the helm of state for the eight stormy years of reconstruction, never found need for such a step; and though there is no personal sacrifice I would not make to remove this cruel and unjust imputation on my people from the archives of my country! But, sir, backed by a record on every page of which is progress, I venture to make earnest and respectful answer to the questions that are asked. I bespeak your patience, while with vigorous plainness of speech, seeking your judgment rather than your applause, I proceed step by step. We give to the world this year a crop of 7,500,000 bales of cotton, worth $45,000,000, and its cash equivalent in grain, grasses and fruit. This enormous crop could not have come from the hands of sullen and discontented labor. It comes from peaceful fields, in which laughter and gossip rise above the hum of industry, and contentment runs with the singing
plow. It is claimed that this ignorant labor is defrauded of its
just hire. I present the tax-books of Georgia, which show that the negro, 25 years ago a slave, has in Georgia alone 10,000,000 of assessed property, worth twice that much. Does not that record honor him, and vindicate his neigh bors ? What people, penniless, illiterate, has done so well ? For every Afro-American agitator, stirring the strife in

76

SPEECHES OF HENRY W. GRADY.

which alone he prospers, I can show you a thousand negroes, happy in their cabin homes, tilling their own land by day, and at night taking from the lips of their children the helpful message their State sends them from the schoolhouse door. And the schoolhouse itself bears testimony. In Georgia we added last year $250,000 to the school fund, making a total of more than $1,000,000--and this in the face of prejudice not yet conquered--of the fact that the whites are assessed for $368,000,000, the blacks for $10,000,000, and yet 49 per cent, of the beneficiaries are black children--and in the doubt of many wise men if education helps, or can help, our problem. Charleston, with her taxable values cut half in two since i860, pays more in proportion for public schools than Boston. Although it is easier to give much out of much than little out of little, the South with one-seventh of the taxable property of the country, with relatively larger debt, having received only one-twelfth as much public land, and having back of its tax-books none of the half billion of bonds that enrich the North--and though it pays annually $26,000,000 to your section as pensions--yet gives nearly one-sixth of the public school fund. The South since 1865 has spent $ 122,000,000 in education, and this year is pledged to $37,000,000 for state and city schools, although the blacks, paying one-thirtieth of the taxes, get nearly onehalf of the fund.
Go into our fields and see whites and blacks working side by side. On our buildings in the same squad. In our shops at the same forge. Often the blacks crowd the whites from work, or lower wages by the greater need or simpler habits, and yet are permitted because we want to bar them from no avenue in which their feet are fitted to tread. They could not there be elected orators of the white universities, as they have been here, but they do

AT THE BOSTON BANQUET.

JJ

enter there a hundred useful trades that are closed against them here. We hold it better and wiser to tend the weeds in the garden than to water the exotic in the window. In the South, there are negro lawyers, teachers, editors, den tists, doctors, preachers, mutiplying with the increasing ability of their race to support them. In villages and towns they have their military companies equipped from the armories of the State, their churches and societies built and supported largely by their neighbors. What is the testimony of the courts ? In penal legislation we have steadily reduced felonies to misdemeanors, and have led the world in mitigating punishment for crime, that we might save, as far as possible, this dependent race from its own weakness. In our penitentiary record 60 per cent, of the prosecutors are negroes, and in every court the negro criminal strikes the colored juror, that white men may judge his case. In the North, one negro in every 1865 is in jail--in the South only one in 446. In the North the percentage of negro prisoners is six times as great as native whites--in the South, only four times as great. If preju dice wrongs him in southern courts, the record shows it to be deeper in northern courts.
I assert here, and a bar as intelligent and upright as the bar of Massachusetts will solemnly indorse my asser tion, that in the southern courts, from highest to lowest, pleading for life, liberty or property, the negro has dis tinct advantage because he is a negro, apt to be over reached, oppressed--and that this advantage reaches from the juror in making his verdict to the judge in measuring his sentence. Now, Mr. President, can it be seriously maintained that we are terrorizing the people from whose willing hands come every year $1,000,000,000 of farm crops ? Or have robbed a people, who twenty-five years from unrewarded slavery have amassed in one State

78

SPEECHES OF HENRY \V. GRADY.

$20,000,000 of property ? Or that we intend to oppress the people we are arming every day ? Or deceive them when we are educating them to the utmost limit of our ability ? Or outlaw them when we work side by side with them ? Or re-enslave them under legal forms when for their bene fit we have even imprudently narrowed the limit of felonies and mitigated the severity of law? My fellow country men, as you yourself may sometimes have to appeal to the bar of human judgment for justice and for right, give to my people to-night the fair and unanswerable conclusion of these incontestible facts.
But it is claimed that [under this fair seeming there is disorder and violence. This I admit. And there will be until there is one ideal community on earth after which we may pattern. But how widely it is misjudged! It is hard to measure with exactness whatever touches the negro. His helplessness, his isolation, his century of ser vitude, these dispose us to emphasize and magnify his wrongs. This disposition, inflamed by prejudice and partisanry, has led to injustice and delusion. Lawless men may ravage a county in Iowa and it is accepted as an inci dent--in the South a drunken row is declared to be the fixed habit of the community. Regulators may whip vag. abends in Indiana by platoons, and it scarcely arrests attention--a chance collision in the South among relatively the same classes is gravely accepted as evidence that one race is destroying the other. We might as well claim that the Union was ungrateful to the colored soldiers who fol lowed its flag, because a Grand Army post in Connecticut closed its doors to a negro veteran, as for you to give racial significance to every incident in the South, or to accept exceptional grounds as the rule of our society. I am not one of those who becloud American honor with the parade of the outrages of either section, and belie American char-

AT THE BOSTON BANQUET.

7Q

acter by declaring them to be significant and representa tive. I prefer to maintain that they are neither, and stand for nothing but the passion and the sin of our poor fallen humanity. If society, like a machine, were no stronger than its weakest part, I should despair of both sections. But, knowing that society, sentient and responsible in every fibre, can mend and repair until the whole has the strength of the best, I despair of neither. These gentle men who come with me here, knit into Georgia's busy life as they are, never saw, I dare assert, an outrage committed on a negro! And if they did, not one of you would be swifter to prevent or punish. It is through them, and the men who think with them--making nine-tenths of every southern community--that these two races have been car ried thus far with less of violence than would have been possible anywhere else on earth. And in their fairness and courage and steadfastness--more than in all the laws that can be passed or all the bayonets that can be mus tered--is the hope of our future.
When will the black cast a free ballot ? When igno rance anywhere is not dominated by the will of the intelli gent ; when the laborer anywhere casts a vote unhindered by his boss; when the vote of the poor anywhere is not influenced by the power of the rich; when the strong and the steadfast do not everywhere control the suffrage of the weak and shiftless--then and not till then will the ballot of the negro be free. The white people of the South are banded, Mr. President, not in prejudice against the blacks--not in sectional estrangement, not in the hope of political dominion--but in a deep and abiding necessity. Here is this vast ignorant and purchasable vote--clannish, credulous, impulsive and passionate--tempting every art of the demagogue, but insensible to the appeal of the statesman. Wrongly started, in that it was led into aliena-

SO

SPEECHES OF HENRY W. GRADY.

tion from its neighbor and taught to rely on the protection of an outside force, it cannot be merged and lost in the two great parties through logical currents, for it lacks political conviction and even that information on which conviction must be based. It must remain a faction-- strong enough in every community to control on the slight est division of the whites. Under that division it becomes the prey of the cunning and unscrupulous of both parties. Its credulity is imposed on, its patience inflamed, its cupidity tempted, its impulses misdirected--and even its superstition made to play its part in a campaign in which every interest of society is jeopardized and every approach to the ballot-box debauched. It is against such campaigns as this--the folly and the bitterness and the danger of which every southern community has drunk deeply--that the white people of the South are banded together. Just as you in Massachusetts would be banded if 300,000 black men, not one in a hundred able to read his ballot--banded in race instinct, holding against you the memory of a century of slavery, taught by your late conquerers to dis trust and oppose you, had already travestied legislation from your statehouse, and in every species of folly or villainy had wasted your substance and exhausted your credit.
But admitting the right of the whites to unite against this tremendous menace, we are challenged with the smallness of our vote. This has long been flippantly charged to be evidence, and has now been solemnly and officially declared to be proof of political turpitude and baseness on our part. Let us see. Virginia--a State now under fierce assault for this alleged crime--cast in 1888 75 per cent, of her vote. Massachusetts, the State in which I speak, 60 per cent, of her vote. Was it suppression in Virginia and natural causes in Massachusetts? Last month Virginia

AT THE BOSTON BANQUET.

81

cast 69 per cent, of her vote, and Massachusetts, fighting in every district, cast only 46 per cent, of hers. If Virginia is condemned because 31 per cent, of her vote was silent, how shall this State escape in which 51 per cent was dumb? Let us enlarge this comparison. The sixteen southern States in 1888 cast 67 per cent of their total vote --the six New England States but 63 per cent, of theirs. By what fair rule shall the stigma be put upon one section, while the other escapes? A congressional election in New York last week, with the polling place within touch of every voter, brought out only 6000 votes of 28,000--and the lack of opposition is assigned as the natural cause. In a district in my State, in which an opposition speech has not been heard in ten years, and the polling-places are miles apart--under the unfair reasoning of which my sec tion has been a constant victim--the small vote is charged to be proof of forcible suppression. In Virginia an aver age, majority of 10,000, under hopeless division of the minority, was raised to 42,000; in Iowa, in the same elec tion, a majority of 32,000 was wiped out, and an opposition majority of 8000 was established. The change of 42,000 votes in Iowa is accepted as political revolution--in Vir ginia an increase of 30,000 on a safe majority is declared to be proof of political fraud. I charge these facts and figures home, sir, to the heart and conscience of the Ameri can people, who will not assuredly see one section con demned for what another section is excused!
If I can drive them through the prejudice of the parti san, and have them read and pondered at the fireside of the citizen, I will rest on the judgment there formed and the verdict there rendered !
It is deplorable, sir, that in both sections a larger per centage of the vote is not regularly cast, but more inexplic able that this should be so in New England than in the

h

6

82

SPEECHES OF HENRY W. GRADY.

South. What invites the negro to the ballot-box? He knows that, of all men, it has promised him most and yielded him least. His first appeal to suffrage was the promise of "forty acres and a mule." His second,, the threat that Democratic success meant his re-inslavement. Both have proved false in his experience. He looked for a home, and he got the freedman's bank. He fought under the promise of the loaf, and in victory was denied the crumbs. Discouraged and deceived, he has realized at last that his best friends are his neighbors, with whom his lot is cast, and whose prosperity is bound up in his--and that he has gained nothing in politics to compensate the loss of their confidence and sympathy that is at last his best and his enduring hope. And so, without leaders or organization--and lacking the resulute heroism of my party friends in Vermont that makes their hopeless march over the hills a high and inspiring pilgrimage--he shrewdly measures the occasional agitator, balances his little account with politics, touches up his mule and jogs down the fur row, letting the mad world jog as it will!
The negro vote can never control in the South, and it would be well if partisans in the North would understand this. I have seen the white people of a State set about by black hosts until their fate seemed sealed. But, sir, some brave man, banding them together, would rise, as Elisha rose in beleaguered Samaria, and touching their eyes with faith, bid them look abroad to see the very air "filled with the chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof." If there is any human force that cannot be withstood, it is the power of the banded intelligence and responsibility of a free community. Against it, numbers and corruption can not prevail. It cannot be forbidden in the law or divorced in force. It is the inalienable right of every free commu nity--and the just and righteous safeguard against an igno-

AT THE BOSTON BANQUET.

83

rant or corrupt suffrage. It is on this, sir, that we rely in the South. Not the cowardly menace of mask or shotgun; but the peaceful majesty of intelligence and responsibility, massed and unified for the protection of its homes and the preservation of its liberty. That, sir, is our reliance and our hope, and against it all the powers of the earth shall not prevail. It was just as certain that Virginia would come back to the unchallenged control of her white race-- that before the moral and material power of her people once more unified, opposition would crumble until its last des perate leader was left alone vainly striving to rally his dis ordered hosts--as that night should fade in the kindling glory of the sun. You may pass force bills, but they will not avail. You may surrender your own liberties to Federal election law, you may submit, in fear of a necessity that does not exist, that the very form of this government may be changed--this old State that holds in its charter the boast that "it is a free and independent common wealth"--it may deliver its election machinery into the hands of the government it helped to create--but never, sir, will a single State of this Union, North or South, be delivered again to the control of an ignorant and inferior race. We wrested our State government from negro supremacy when the Federal drumbeat rolled closer to the ballot-box and Federal bayonets hedged it deeper about than will ever again be permitted in this free government. But, sir, though the cannon of this Republic thundered in every voting district of the South, we still should find in the mercy of God the means and the courage to prevent its re-establishment!
I regret, sir, that my section, hindered with this prob lem, stands in seeming estrangement to the North. If, sir, any man will point out to me a path down which the white people of the South divided may walk in peace and honor,

84

SPEECHES OF HENRY W. GRADY.

I will take that path though I took it alone--for at the end, and nowhere else, I fear, is to be found the full prosperity of my section and the full restoration of this Union. But, sir, if the negro had not been enfranchised, the South would have been divided and the Republic united. His enfranchisement--against which I enter no protest--holds the South united and compact. What solution, then, can we offer for this problem? Time alone can disclose it to us. We simply report progress and ask your patience. If the problem be solved at all--and I firmly believe it will, though nowhere else has it been--it will be solved by the people most deeply bound in interest, most deeply pledged in honor to its solution. I had rather see my people ren der back this question rightly solved than to see them gather all the spoils over which faction has contended since Catiline conspired and Caesar fought. Meantime we treat the negro fairly, measuring to him justice in the fullness the strong should give to the weak, and leading him in the steadfast ways of citizenship that he may no longer be the prey of the unscrupulous and the sport of the thoughtless. We open to him every pursuit in which he can prosper, and seek to broaden his training and capacity. We seek to hold his confidence and friendship, and to pin him to the soil with ownership, that he may catch in the fire of his own hearthstone that sense of responsibility the shiftless can never know. And we gather him into that alliance of intelligence and responsibility that, though it now runs close to racial lines, welcomes the responsible and intelli gent of any race. By this course, confirmed in our judg ment and justified in the progress already made, we hope to progress slowly but surely to the end.
The love we feel for that race you cannot measure nor comprehend. As I attest it here, the spirit of my old black mammy from her home up there looks down to bless,

AT THE BOSTON BANQUET.

85

and through the tumult of this night steals the sweet music of her croonings as thirty years ago she held me in her black arms and led me smiling into sleep. This scene vanishes as I speak, and I catch a vision of an old Southern home, with its lofty pillars, and its white pigeons flutter ing down through the golden air. I see women with strained and anxious faces, and children alert yet helpless. I see night come down with its dangers and its apprehen sions, and in a big homely room I feel on my tired head the touch of loving hands--now worn and wrinkled, but fairer to me yet than the hands of mortal woman, and stronger yet to lead me than the hands of mortal man-- as they lay a mother's blessing there while at her knees-- the truest altar I yet have found--I thank God that she is safe in her sanctuary, because her slaves, sentinel in the silent cabin or guard at her chamber door, puts a black man's loyalty between her and danger.
I catch another vision. The crisis of battle--a soldier struck, staggering, fallen. I see a slave, scuffling through the smoke, winding his black arms about the fallen form, reckless of the hurtling death--bending his trusty face to catch the words that tremble on the stricken lips, so wrest ling meantime with agony that he would lay down his life in his master's stead. I see him by the weary bedside, ministering with uncomplaining patience, praying with all his humble heart that God will lift his master up, until death comes in mercy and in honor to still the soldier's agony and seal the soldier's life. I see him by the open grave, mute, motionless, uncovered, suffering for the death of him who in life fought against his freedom. I see him when the mound is heaped and the great drama of his life is closed, turn away and with downcast eyes and uncertain step start out into new and strange fields, faltering, strug gling, but moving on, until his shambling figure is lost in

86

SPEECHES 6F HENfcY W. GRADY.

the light of this better and brighter day. And frdm the grave comes a voice saying; "Follow him! Put your arms about him in his need, even as he put his about me. Be his friend as he was mine." And out into this new world --strange to me as to him, dazzling, bewildering both--I follow! And may God forget my people--when they for get these.
Whatever the future may hold for them--whether they plod along in the servitude from which they have never been lifted since the Cyrenian was laid hold upon by the Roman soldiers and made to bear the cross of the fainting Christ--whether they find homes again in Africa, and thus hasten the prophecy of the psalmist who said: "And sud denly Ethiopia shall hold out her hands unto God"-- whether, forever dislocated and separated, they remain a weak people beset by stronger, and exist as the Turk, who lives in the jealousy rather than in the conscience of Europe--or whether in this miraculous Republic they break through the caste of twenty conturies and, belying universal history, reach the full stature of citizenship, and in peace maintain it--we shall give them uttermost justice and abiding friendship. And whatever we do, into what ever seeming estrangement we may be driven, nothing shall disturb the love we bear this Republic, or mitigate our consecration^to its service. I stand here, Mr. Presi dent, to profess no new loyalty. When General Lee, whose heart was the temple of our hopes and whose arm was clothed with our strength, renewed his allegiance to the government at Appomattox, he spoke from a heart too great to be false, and he spoke for every honest man from Maryland to Texas. From that day to this, Hamilcar has nowhere in the South sworn young Hannibal to hatred and vengeance--but everywhere to loyalty and to love. Wit ness the soldier standing at the base of a Confederate mon-

AT THE BOSTON BANQUET.

87

ument above the graves of his comrades, his empty sleeve tossing in the April wind, adjuring the young men about him to serve as honest and loyal citizens the government against which their fathers fought. This message, deliv ered from that sacred presence, has gone home to the hearts of my fellows! And, sir, I declare here, if physical courage be always equal to human aspiration, that they would die, sir, if need be, to restore this Republic their fathers fought to dissolve!
Such, Mr. President, is this problem as we see it; such is the temper in which we approach it; such the progress made. What do we ask of you ? First, patience; out of this alone can come perfect work. Second, confidence; in this alone can you judge fairly. Third, sympathy; in this you can help us best. Fourth, give us your sons as hostages. When you plant your capital in millions, send your sons that they may help know how true are our hearts and may help to swell the Anglo-Saxon current until it can carry without danger this black infusion. Fifth, loyalty to the Republic--for there is sectionalism in loyalty as in estrangement. This hour little needs the loyalty that is loyal to one section and yet holds the other in enduring suspicion and estrangement. Give us the broad and per fect loyalty that loves and trusts Georgia alike with Mas sachusetts--that knows no south, no north, no east, no west; but endears with equal and patriotic love every foot of our soil, every State in our Union.
A mighty duty, sir, and a mighty inspiration impels every one of us to-night to lose in patriotic consecration whatever estranges, whatever divides. We, sir, are Ameri cans--and we fight for human liberty. The uplifting force of the American idea is under every throne on earth. France, Brazil--these are our victories. To redeem the earth from kingcraft and oppression--this is our mission.

88

SPEECHES OF HENRY W. GRADY.

And we shall not fail. God has sown in our soil the seed of his millennial harvest, and he will not lay the sickle to the ripening crop until his full and perfect day has come. Our history, sir, has been a constant and expanding miracle from Plymouth Rock and Jamestown all the way-- aye, even from the hour when, from the voiceless and trackless ocean, a new world rose to the sight of the inspired sailor. As we approach the fourth centennial of that stupendous day--when the old world will come to marvel and to learn, amid our gathered treasures--let us resolve to crown the miracles of our past with the spectacle of a Republic compact, united, indissoluble in the bonds of love-- loving from the lakes to the Gulf--the wounds of war healed in every heart as on every hill--serene and resplendent at the summit of human achievement and earthly glory--blazing out the path, and making clear the way up which all the nations of the earth must come in God's appointed time!

BEFORE THE BAY STATE CLUB.
DURING Mr. Grady's Visit to Boston, in 1889, he was a guest of the Bay State Club, before whom he delivered the follow ing Speech:
MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN : I am confident you will not expect a speech from me this afternoon, especially as my voice is in such a condition that I can hardly talk. I am free to say that it is not a lack of ability to talk, because I am a talker by inheritance. My father was an Irishman, my mother was a woman; both talked. I came by it honestly.
I don't know how I could take up any discussion here or any topic apart from the incidents of the past two days.

BEFORE THE BAY STATE CLUB.

89

I saw this morning Plymouth Rock. I was pulled up on top of it and was told to make a speech.
It reminded me of an old friend of mine, Judge Dooley, of Georgia, who was a very provoking fellow and was always getting challenged to duels, and never fighting them. He always got out of it by being smarter than the other fellow. One day he went out to fight a man with one leg, and he insisted on bringing along a bee gum and sticking one leg into it so he would have no more flesh exposed than his antagonist. On the occassion I am think ing of, however, he went out to fight with a man who had St. Vitus's dance, and the fellow stood before him holding the pistol cocked and primed, his hand shaking. The judge went quietly and got a forked stick and stuck it up in front of him.
"What's that for?" said the man. "I want you to shoot with a rest, so that if you hit me you will bore only one hole. If you shoot me that way you will fill me full of holes with one shot." I was reminded of that and forced to teil my friends that I could not think of speaking on top of Plymouth Rock without a rest. But I said this, and I want to say it here again, for I never knew how true it was till I had heard myself say it and had taken the evidence of my voice, as well as my thoughts--that there is no spot on earth that I had rather have seen than that. I have a boy who is the pride and the promise of my life, and God knows I want him to be a good citizen and a good man, and there is no spot in all this broad Republic nor in all this world where I had rather have him stand to learn the lessons of right citizenship, of individual liberty, of fortitude and heroism and justice, than the spot on which I stood this morning, reverent and uncovered.

C}0 '

SPEECHES OF HENRV W. GRA0Y.

Now, I do not intend to make a political speech, although when Mr. Cleveland expressed some surprise at seeing me here, I said: " Why I am at home now; I was out visiting last night." I was visiting mighty clever folks, but still I was visiting. Now I am at home.
It is the glory and the promise of Democracy, it seems to me, that its success means more than partisanry can mean. I have been told that what I said helped the Demo cratic party in this State. Well, the chief joy that I feel at that, and that you feel, is that, beyond that and above it, it helped those larger interests of the Republic, and those essential interests of humanity that for seventy years the Democratic party has stood for, being the guarantor and the defender.
Now, Mr. Cleveland last night made--I trust this will not get into the papers--one of the best Democratic speeches I ever heard in my life, and yet all around sat Republicans cheering him to the echo. It is just simply because he pitched his speech on a high key, and because he said things that no man, no matter how partisan he was, could gainsay.
Now it seems to me we do not care much for political success in the South--for a simple question of spoils or of patronage. We wanted to see one Democratic administra tion since General Lee surrendered at Appomattox, just to prove to the people of this world that the South was not the wrong-headed and impulsive and passionate section she was represented to be. I heard last night from -Mr. Cleveland, our great leader, as he sat by me, that he held to be the miracle of modern history the conservatism and the temperance and the quiet with which the South accepted his election, and the few office-seekers in comparison that came from that section to besiege and importune him.
Now it seems to me that the struggle in this country,

BEFORE THE 6AY STATE CLUK

gi

the great fight, the roar and din of which we already hear, is a fight against the consolidation of power, the concen tration of capital, the diminution of local sovereignty and the dwarfing of the individual citizen. Boston is the home of the one section of a nationalist party that claims that the remedy for all our troubles, the way in which Dives, who sits inside the gate, shall be controlled, and the poor Lazarus who sits outside shall be lifted up, is for the gov ernment to usurp the functions of the citizen and take charge of all his affairs. It is the Democratic doctrine that the citizen is the master and that the best guarantee of this government is not garnered powers at the capital, but diffused intelligence and liberty among the people.
My friend, General Collins--who, by the way, captured my whole State and absolutely conjured the ladies--when he came down there talked about this to us, and he gave us a train of thought that we have improved to advantage.
It is the pride, I believe, of the South, with her simple faith and her homogeneous people, that we elevate there the citizen above the party, and the citizen above every thing. We teach a man that his best guide at least is his own conscience, that his sovereignty rests beneath his hat, that his own right arm and his own stout heart are his bset dependence; that he should rely on his State for nothing that he can do for himself, and on his government for nothing that his State can do for him; but that he should stand upright and self-respecting, dowering his family in the sweat of his brow, loving to his State, loyal to his Republic, earnest in his allegiance whereever it rests, but building at last his altars above his own hearthstone, and shrining his own liberty in his own heart. That is a senti ment that I would not have been afraid to avow last night. And yet it is mighty good democratic doctrine, too.
I went to Washington the other day and I stood on the

Q2

SPEECHES OF HENRY W. GRADY.

Capitol hill, and my heart beat quick as I looked at the towering marble of my country's Capitol, and a mist gath ered in my eyes as I thought of its tremendous significance, of the armies and the treasury, and the judges and the President, and the Congress and the courts, and all that was gathered there; and I felt that the sun in all its course could not look down on a better sight than that majestic home of a Republic that had taught the world its best les sons of liberty. And I felt that if honor and wisdom and justice abided therein, the world would at last owe that great house, in which the ark of the covenant of my coun try is lodged, its final uplifting and its regeneration.
But a few days afterwards I went to visit a friend in the country, a modest man, with a quiet country home. It was just a simple, unpretentious house, set about with great trees and encircled in meadow and field rich with the promise of harvest; the fragrance of the pink and the hollyhock in the front yard was mingled with the aroma of the orchard and the garden, and the resonant clucking of poultry and the hum of bees. Inside was quiet, cleanli
ness, thrift and comfort. Outside there stood my friend, the master--a simple,
independent, upright man, with no mortgage on his roof, no lien on his growing crops--master of his land and mas ter of himself. There was the old father, an aged and trembling man, but happy in the heart and home of his son. And, as he started to enter his home, the hand of the old man went down on the young man's shoulder, laying there the unspeakable blessing of an honored and honorable father, and ennobling it with the knighthood of the fifth commandment. And as we approached the door the mother came, a happy smile lighting up her face, while with the rich music of her heart she bade her husband and her son welcome to their home. Beyond was the house-

BEFORE THE BAY STATE CLUB.

93

wife, busy with her domestic affairs, the loving helpmate of her husband. Down the lane came the children after the cows, singing sweetly, as like birds they sought the quiet of their nest.
So the night came down on that house, falling gently as the wing from an unseen dove. And the old man, while a startled bird called from the forest and the trees thrilled with the cricket's cry, and the stars were falling from the sky, called the family around him and took the Bible from the table and called them to their knees. The little baby hid in the folds of its mother's dress while he closed the record of that day by calling down God's blessing on that simple home. While I gazed, the vision of the marble Capitol faded; forgotten were its treasuries and its majesty; and I said: "Surely here in the house of the peo ple lodge at last the strength and the responsibility of this government, the hope and the promise of this Republic."
My friends, that is the democracy in the South; that is the democratic doctrine we preach ; a doctrine, sir, that is writ above our hearthstones. We aim to make our homes, poor as they are, self-respecting and independent. We try to make them temples of refinement, in which our daugh ters may learn that woman's best charm and strength is her gentleness and her grace, and temples of liberty in which our sons may learn that no power can justify and no treasure repay for the surrender of the slighest right of a free individual American citizen.
Now you do not know how we love you democrats. Had we better print that? Yes, we do, of course we do. If a man does not love his home folks, who should he love? We know how gallant a fight you have made here, not as hard and hopeless as our friends in Vermont, but still an up-hill fight. You have been doing better, much better.
Now, gentlemen, I have some mighty good Democrats

94

SPEECHES OF HENRY W. GRADV.

__

*

here. There is one of the fattest and best in the world

sitting right over there [pointing to his partner, Mr.

Howell.]

You want to know about the South. My friends, we

representative men will tell you about it. I just want to

say that we have had a hard time down there.

When my partner came out of the war he did'nt have

any breeches. That is an actual fact. Well, his wife, one

of the best women that ever lived, reared in the lap of

luxury, took her old woolen dress that she had worn dur

ing the war--and it had been a garment of sorrow and of

consecration and of heroism--and cut it up and made a

good pair of breeches. He started with that pair of

breeches and with $5 in gold as his capital, and he scraped

up boards from amid the ashes of his home, and built him

a shanty of which love made a home and which courtesy

made hospitable. And now I believe he has with him

three pairs of breeches and several pairs at home. We

have prospered down there.

I attended a funeral once in Pickens county in my

State. A funeral is not usually a cheerful object to me

unless I could select the subject. I think I could, perhaps,

without going a hundred miles from here, find the mater

ial for one or two cheerful funerals. Still, this funeral was

peculiarly sad. It was a poor "one gallus" fellow, whose

breeches struck him under the armpits and hit him at the

other end about the knee--he didn't believe in decollete

clothes. They buried him in the midst of a marble quarry:

they cut through solid marble to make his grave; and yet

a little tombstone they put above him was from Vermont.

They buried him in the heart of a pine forest, and yet the

pine coffin was imported from Cincinnati They buried

him within touch of an iron mine, and yet the nails in his

coffin and the iron in the shovel that dug his grave were im-

BEFORE THE BAY STATE CLUB.

95

ported from Pittsburg. They buried him by the side of
the best sheep-grazing country on the earth, and yet the
wool in the coffin bands and the coffin bands themselves
were brought from the North. The South didn't furnish a
thing on earth for that funeral but the corpse and the bole
in the ground. There they put him away and the clods
rattled down on his coffin, and they buried him in a New
York coat and a Boston pair of shoes and a pair of breeches
from Chicago and a shirt from Cincinnati, leaving him
nothing to carry into the next world with him to remind
him of the country in which he lived, and for which he
fought for four years, but the chill of blood in his veins
and the marrow in his bones.
Now we have improved on that. We have got the big-
fest marble-cutting establishment on earth within a hunred yards of the grave. We have got a half-dozen wool en mills right around it, and iron mines, and iron furnaces, and iron factories. We are coming to meet you. We are going to take a noble revenge, as my friend, Mr. Carnegie, said last night, by invading every inch of your territory with iron, as you invaded ours twenty-nine years ago.
A voice--I want to know if the tariff built up these in dustries down there ?
Mr. Grady--The tariff? Well, to be perfectly frank with you, I think it helped some; but you can bet your bottom dollar that we are Democrats straight through from the soles of our feet to the top of our heads, and Mr. Cleve land will not have if he runs again, which I am inclined to think he ought to do, a stronger following.
Now, I want to say one word about the reception we had here. It has been a constant revelation of hospitality and kindness and brotherhood from the whole people of this city to myself and my (Friends. It has touched us beyond measure.
I was struck with one thing last night. Every speaker that rose expressed his confidence in the future and lasting glory of this Republic. They may be men, and there are, who insist on getting up fratricidal strife, and who infa-

96

SPEECHES OF HENRY W. GRADY.

mously fan the embers of war that they may raise them again into a blaze. But just as certain as there is a God in the heavens, when those noisy insects of the hour have perished in the heat that gave them life, and their pestilent tongues have ceased, the great clock of this Republic will strike the slow-moving, tranquil hours, and the watchman from the street will cry, "All is well with the Republic; all is well."
We bring to you, from hearts that yearn for your confi dence and for your love, the message of fellowship from our homes. This message comes from consecrated ground. The fields in which I played were the battlefields of this Republic, hallowed to you with the blood of your soldiers
who died in victory, and doubly sacred to us with the blood of ours who died undaunted in defeat. All around my home are set the hills of Kennesaw, all around the mountains and hills down which the gray flag fluttered to defeat, and through which American soldiers from either side .charged like demigods; and I do not think I could bring you a false message from those old hills and those sacred fields--witnesses twenty years ago in their red deso lation of the deathless valor of American arms and the quenchless bravery of American hearts, and in their white peace and tranquillity to-day of the imperishable Union of the American States and the indestructible brotherhood of the American people.
It is likely that I will not again see Bostonians assem bled together. I therefore want to take this occasion to thank you, and my excellent friends of last night and those friends who accompanied us this morning for all that you have done for us since we have been in your city, and to say that whenever any of you come South just speak your name, and remember that Boston or Massachusetts is the watchword, and we will meet you at the gates.
The monarch, may forget the crown That on his head so late hath be'en;
The bridegroom may forget the bride Was made his own but yester e'en;
The mother may forget the babe That smiled so sweetly on her knee;
But forget thee will I ne'er, Glencairn, And- all that thou hast done for me.

*>
SOUTHERN RfllLWflT
GREATEST SOUTHERN SYSTEM.

IS
Entering Atlanta from all four points of the Compass.

Choice of Routes in all Directions-- North, South, East, West.

Peerless Service.

Schedules Unequaled.

> ++*++** >>>>

J. M. CULP, Traffic Hanageu '

W. ir^gEBK,

,,, 8. H. HARDWICE,

flSfcl Paa*. Ag*M.

As't Gen'1 Put. Agent.

J ...