Grady, Henry Woodfin

Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)

Henry Woodfin (1850-1899), an American journalist. He was a native of Athens, Georgia, and was graduated from the University of Georgia in 1868. After various journalistic experiences, including that of Georgia correspondent for the New York Herald, he purchased an interest in the Atlanta Constitution and acted as its editor until the time of his death. Mr. Grady early attracted attention by his powers of description and the felicity of his English. His description of the Charleston earthquake led to the preparation of magazine articles. He was in demand as an after dinner speaker and as a platform orator. His vigorous, hopeful, sympathetic utterances brought him forward as one of the foremost thinkers, writers, and speakers of the reconstructed South. He was a son of Georgia, with unbounded faith in the future of the commonwealth, but his interests were national in their scope. He cherished the memory of the lost cause, but lived in the present and worked tremendously for the future. He never sought or held office. Among his noted addresses are "Just Human," delivered at Atlanta; "The New South," given before the New England Society of New York; and "The Future of the Negro," spoken before the Merchants' Association of Boston only a few days before his untimely death. We make room for a paragraph: 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 southward from Appomattox in April, 1865. Think of him as ragged, half starved, heavy-hearted, enfeebled by want and wounds, having fought to exhaustion, he surrenders his gun, wrings the hands of his comrades in silence, and lifting his tear-stained and pallid face for the last time to the graves that dot the old Virginia hills, pulls his gray cap over his brow and begins the slow and painful journey.