Transcript for
History News Network:  Where the Past and the Present Meet!

Late Breaking News Story!

News announcer:

Good evening.  Latest reports have Atlanta journalist Henry Grady speaking to such prominent men as J.P. Morgan and H.M. Flagler of the New England Club at Delmonico’s Restaurant in New York.  Grady has been “selling” his vision of the New South to both northerners and southerners and this vision is increasingly being heralded by landowners, entrepreneurs, and newspaper editors. 

These men are known as “New South boosters,” and they believe that the South must develop an economy attuned to the industrial capitalism that already grips the North.  With the old plantation economy destroyed in the region, the South must look for a savior in industrialization. 

Grady regaled the dinner guests of the New England Club when he described the Old South as a land of “slavery and secession,” declaring that the old “South is dead.”  He went on to say that there is “now a South of union and freedom—that South, thank God, is living, breathing, and growing every hour.”

Grady continues to demonstrate his passion for his home-region through speeches and newspaper editorials, always contrasting an old South that rested on slavery and agriculture with the New South that is “thrilling with the consciousness of growing power and prosperity.” 

Grady speaks frequently to audiences around the country.  One of the most famous moments at one of his speeches involved his meeting William T. Sherman for the first time.  Sherman burned much of Georgia during his “March to the Sea” in the Civil War.  Attendees expected sparks to fly when the two men met but Grady, with his characteristic good humor, remarked instead that the people of Georgia thought Sherman a good military man but “a bit careless with fire.”

Tune back into HNN for other reports of Grady, whose wit and subtle humor continues to serve as a spokes person for the South.