Joel Chandler Harris' life of Henry W. Grady including his writings and speeches
History
Joel Chandler Harris' life of Henry W. Grady including his writings and speeches
Grady, Henry Woodfin, 1850-1889
neighborhoods to county, from county to State, and State to Republic,
the measure of their strength and the unyielding quality of their
determination. The agricultural army of the Republic is in motion. The
rallying drumbeat has rolled over field and meadow, and from where the
wheat locks the sunshine in its bearded sheaf, and the clover carpets
the earth, and the cotton whitens beneath the stars, and the tobacco
catches the quick aroma of the rains—everywhere that patient man stands
above the soil, or bends about the furrow, the farmers are ready in
squads and companies and battalions and legions to be led against what
they hold to be an oppression that honest men would not deserve, and
that brave men would not endure. Let us not fail to comprehend the
magnitude and the meaning of this movement. It is no trifling cause that
brings the farmers into such determined and widespread organization as
this. It is not the skillful arts of the demagogue that has brought
nearly two million farmers into this perfect and pledge-bound
society—but it is a deep and abiding conviction that, in political and
commercial economy of the day, he is put at a disadvantage that keeps
him poor while other classes grow rich, and that bars his way to
prosperity and independence. General Toombs once said that the farmer,
considered the most conservative type of citizenship, is really the most
revolutionary. That the farmers of France, flocking to the towns and
cities from the unequal burdens of their farms, brought about the French
Revolution, and that about once in every century the French peasant
raided the towns. Three times the farmers of England have captured and
held London. It was the farmers of Mecklenburg that made the first
American declaration, and Putnam left his plow standing in the furrow as
he hurried to lead the embattled farmers who fought at Concord and
Lexington. I realize it is impossible that revolution should be the
outcome of our industrial troubles. The farmer of to-day does not
consider that remedy for his wrongs. I quote history to show that the
farmer, segregated and deliberate, does not move on slight provocation,
but organizes only under deep conviction, and that when once organized
and convinced, he is terribly in earnest, and is not going to rest until
his wrongs are righted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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