We desire, also, to call the attention of Congress and the country to
the bounty and pension laws and to the filing of original claims. We ask
for the passage of an act extending the time for filing original claims
beyond the present limit.
This we do for the reason that many of the soldiers and sailors that
served in the war of the rebellion and their heirs, and especially
colored claimants living in parts of the country where they have but
meagre means of information, have been, and still are, ignorant of their
rights and the methods of enforcing them.
But while we urge these duties on Congress and the country, we must
never forget that any race worth living will live, and whether Congress
heeds our request in these and other particulars or not, we must
demonstrate our capacity to live by living. We must acquire property and
educate the hands and hearts and heads of our children whether we are
helped or not. Races that fail to do these things die politically and
socially, and are only fit to die.
One great source of independence that has been sought by multitudes of
our white fellow-citizens is still open to us--we refer to the public
lands in the great West. The amazing rapidity with which the public
lands are being taken up warns us that we must lay hold of this
opportunity soon, or it will be gone forever. The Government gives to
every actual settler, under certain conditions, 160 acres of land. By
addressing a letter to the United States Land Office, Washington, D.
C., any person will receive full information in regard to this subject.
Thousands of white men have settled on these lands with scarcely any
money beyond their immediate wants, and in a few years have found
themselves the lords of a 160-acre farm. Let us do likewise.