This speech was made in 1899, in Boston, and
one hopes that it may have been heard by the late Charles Francis Adams,
who labored in Massachusetts for the cause of intersectional harmony,
just as Grady worked for it in Georgia.
This hour [said Grady] 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 perfect loyalty that loves and
trusts Georgia alike with Massachusetts--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.
Grady could not only write and say stirring things; he could be witty.
He once spoke at a dinner of the New England Society, in New York, at
which General Sherman was also present.
"Down in Georgia," he said, "we think of General Sherman as a great
general; but it seems to us he was a little careless with fire."
Nor was Grady less brilliant as managing editor than upon the platform.
He had the kind of enterprise which made James Gordon Bennett such a
dashing figure in newspaper life, and the New York "Herald" such a
complete _news_paper--the kind of enterprise that charters special
trains, and at all hazards gets the story it is after. Back in the early
eighties Grady was running the Atlanta "Constitution" in just that way.
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