Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1890-01-03
HIS LAST WORDS.
HENRY W. GRADY'S SPEECH AT BOSTON.
BRILLIANT REVIEW OF THE POSSIBILITIES
AND THE PROBLEMS THAT LIE BEFORE
THE SOJTTH

THE SOUTH.
Henry W. Grady of Atlanta, Ga, spoke
the week before his death to notable
gathering of Bostonians. He said:
''Far to the South, MI. President,
separated from this section by a line
once defined in irrepreSSible differ
ence, once traced in fatricidal blood, and
now, thank God, but vanishing shadow
lies the fairest and richest domain of this
earth. 1t is the home of a brave and hos
pitable people. There is centered all that
can please OF prosper human kind. A per-
feet climate above fertile soil yields to
the husbandman every product OF the tenn
perate 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 exhaust
less treasures; forests, vast and primeval,
and rivers that tumb1ing OF lettering, run
wanton to the sea. Of the three essential
items of all industries, cotton, iron and
wood, that region has easy control-in cot
premacy; in timber, the reserve supply of
the republic. From this assured and per-
manent advantage, against which artificial
conditions cannot much longer prevail,
has grown an amazing system of indus
tries. Not maintained by human contri-
vance of tariff OF 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 competition has
driven the farmer in despair, but amid
cheap and sunny lands rich with agricul-
ture, to which neither season nor soil has
set limit-this system of industries is
mounting to a splendor that shall dazzle
and illumine the world. That, sir, is the
land better and fairer than [ have told you,
and yet but fit setting in its material eX-
cellence for the loyal and gentle quality
of its citizenship.
Against that, sir, we have New England,
recruiting the republic from its sturdy
loins, shaking from its overcrowded hives
new swarms of workers and touching this
land all over with its energy and its cour-
age. And yet, while in the EldoradO, OF
which have told you, but 10 per cent Of
the lands are cultivated, its mines scarcely
touched, as the population is so scant that,
were it set equi-distant, the sound OF the
human voice cannot be heard from Virgil
mia 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 pa
trimony, the strange fact remains that in
1880 the South had fewer Northern-born
citizens than she had in 1S70-feWer in 70
than in go. Why is this? Why is it, sir,
though the sectional line be now but 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, OF even when the
STAKEHOLDER stood guard every inch of its
way.
There can be but one answer. 1t 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 repub-
lie, and free the halted feet of thousands
whose eyes are already kindling with it's
beauty Better than this, it will open the
hearts of brothers for thirty years estrang-
ed, and clasp in lasting comradeship a
million hands now withheld in doubt.
Nothing, sir, but this problem and the
suspicious it breeds hinders clear under
else stands between us and such love as
bound Georgia and Massachusetts, at Val
ley Forge and Yorktown, chastened by the
sacrifices of Manassas and Gettysburg, and
illumined with the coming of better work
and nobler destiny than was ever wrought
with the sword OF sought at the lannon's
mouth.
If this does not invite your patient hear
ing tonight, hear one thing more. My peo-
pie, your brothers in the South-brothers
in blood, in destiny, in all that is best in
our past and future-are so DeSet with this
problem that their very existence depends
on its right solution. Nor are they wholly
of the republic sailed from your ports; the
slaves worked in our fields. You will not
defend the traffic, nor l the institution. But
I do here declare that in its wise and hui
name administration, in lifting the slave
to heights Of which he had not dreamed in
his savage home and giving him a happi
ness he has not yet found in freedom, our
fathers left their sons a saving and excel
lent heritage. In the storm of war this in
stitution was lost. l thank God as heartily
as you do that human slavery is gone for
ever from American soil. But the free man
remains; with him a problem without
precedent OIL parallel. Note its appalling
conditions. Two utterly dissimilar races
on the same soil-with equal political and
civil rights-almOstequ in numbers, but
terribly unequal in intelligence's response
bility; each pledged against fusion; one for
a century in serVitude to the other and
freed at last by desolating war; the eX-
pertinent sought by neither, but approach
ed by both with doubt-these are the con-
ditions. 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 task been given to
mortal stewardship. Never before in this
republic has the white race divided on the
rights of an alien race. The red man was
cut down as weed because he hindered
the way of the American citizen. The
yellow man shut out of this republic be-
cause he is an alien and inferior. The red
man was owner of the land; the yellow
man highly civilized and assimilable; but
they hindered both sections and are gone.
But the black man, affecting but one sec
ton, is clothed with every privilege of
government and pinned to the soil and my
people commanded to make good at any
hazard and at any cost his full and equal
heirship of American privilege and pros
perity. 1t matters not that every other
race has been routed or excluded without
rhyme OF reason. 1t matters not that
wherever the whites and blacks have
touched, in any era or in any cline, there
has been an irreconcilable violence. 1t
matters not that no two races, however
similar, have lived anywhere, at any time,
on the same soil with equal rights in peace.
to make good this change of American pol
icy, which has not, perhaps, changed
American prejudice, to make certain here
what has elsewhere been impossible be-
tween whites and blacks, and to reverse
under the very worst conditions the uni
versal verdict of racial history. And
driven, sir, to this superhuman task with
that accepts no excuse and suspicion that
discourages frankness and sincerity.
We do not shrink from this trial. 1t is so
interviewer 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 khoW-We
cannot solve it with less than your tolerant
and patient sympathy; with less than the
remembrance that the blood that runs in
your veins is our blood, and that, when we
have done our best, whether the issue be
lost OF won, we shall feel your strong
arms about ps and hear the beating of your
approving hearts.
The resolute, clear-headed, broad mind
ed men of the South--the men whose gent
us made glorious every page OF the first
seventy years of American history-whose
courage and fqrtit4da YOU tested in FIVE
years of the fiercest War--wlose energy,
has made bricks without straw and spread
splendor amid the ashes of their 'War-was-
ted hlines these men wear this problem
in their hearts and brains, by day and by
night. They realize, as YOU cannot, what
this problem means!wlat they owe to this
kindly and dependant race-the measure
Of their debt to the world In whose despite
they defended and maintained slavery
nd +bnuoh thei, foat GRO hipdored in its