Chapter I

ORIGIN AND EFFECTS OF THE ORDINANCE OF 1787 AND THE ACT OF JULY 2, 1862

In his monograph on the Origin of American State Universities, 1903, Elmer E. Brown traces the establishment of a number of America's oldest collegiate institutions and their relation to the Colonies and States. The struggle of different States to gain directing control over private and church-controlled colleges within their borders whose charters had been granted by their legislatures or obtained from the British Crown is shown to have been fruitless. But that the peoples of the different States were determined that the colleges should offer education suitable to their needs was clearly demonstrated by the legislative efforts. The founding of new institutions by the State that should be directly responsible to the Government was the only alternative if the privately chartered institutions would not voluntarily become responsive to State direction, since the courts held it was illegal for a State to force a change of the charter by which a college was organized.

The colleges founded during colonial days, such as Harvard, 1636, College of William and Mary, 1693, Yale, 1701, Kings College (Columbia), 1754, Queens College (Rutgers), 1766, and Dartmouth College, 1769, all received some financial aid from the colonial governments in which they were located. But these institutions were chartered as private institutions, and they refused to be held responsible to the colonial, or later, to the State legislative bodies. Moreover, it was generally felt that each of the colleges belonged to some "faction, or section, or sect," and did not answer the needs of the particular Commonwealth in the matter of higher education. Colonies that did not have colleges felt an urgent need for them. Consequently, with the forming of State constitutions during and following the Revolutionary War, at least one State, North Carolina, in 1776 made provision for "at least one State-founded university," responsible to the State. Another constitution, that of Vermont, in 1777, urged the establishment of "one university in the State by the direction of the general assembly." The Legislature of Georgia passed an act on February 25, 1784, providing public lands for establishing a college and appointing trustees therefor. William Livingston, of New York, had urged the founding of such a State institution by New York when Kings College was founded. But it

was not until the University of North Carolina opened in 1795 that a regular State university was born. The opening of the Universities of Vermont and Georgia followed shortly after this-in 1800 and 1801.

It will be recalled that one of the great barriers to the formation of a closer union of the States after the Revolution was the claim to the "Northwest Territory" by Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and Virginia.1 When Virginia ceded her claim on this territory to the Central Government in order that it might become part of the public domain, the Continental Congress was in serious financial straits. It looked upon the sale of the lands in this territory as one of its best sources of revenue to pay the public war debt and its debts to the soldiers of the Continental Army. Consequently, Congress lent an open ear to proposals made by the Ohio Company, of Boston, to purchase a large tract of land in Ohio, then part of the Northwest Territory. This was especially the case, as public land had not sold as had been anticipated under the ordinance of May 20, 1785. The wise provisions of the ordinance of July 13, 1787, which stated that "Religion, morality, and knowledge being essential to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged" have been heralded far and near as the most foresighted piece of legislation ever enacted by a central government. The counterpart of this act, passed July 27, 1787, which was the "purchase act," or terms of contract with the Ohio Company, contained reservations of sections 16 and 29 of each township, respectively, for schools and religion, and two entire townships for the support of a university. Though the ordinance of 1785 had provided for the reservation of a section in each township formed in the Northwest Territory for the support of the public schools, the reservation of two townships for a university was a distinct step in advance. But at least one State government had adopted the policy of reserving land for a college before the 1787 ordinance. Vermont,2 in granting townships after the adoption of its State constitution, July 2, 1777, reserved one right of land in nearly every township for a college which the State constitution had paved the way for founding. These grants became the property of the University of Vermont. But for the perseverance of such men as Dr. Manassah Cutler, who met with the congressional committee that drafted the "ordinance" and "purchase," and who twice refused to purchase the great tract in Ohio unless the reservations above set forth were included in the bills, Congress, which thought it was giving away too much land, certainly would not have set the national precedent at

1 The Educational Significance of the Early Federal Land Grant Ordinances, Howard Cromwell Taylor. 1922. Catalogue, University of Vermont, 1921.

that time which was of such advantage in later years and has resulted in reserving at least two complete townships of land in each subsequent State formed out of the public domain for the founding of a seminary of learning or university. Thirty States have been assisted in founding universities by this act and subsequent acts, while each State has a college of agriculture, or agriculture and mechanic arts. The original 13 States, which had already been formed before the passage of the "ordinance," and Vermont, Kentucky, Maine, Texas, and West Virginia have not received land grants in pursuance of the policy set by the "ordinance" and the "purchase." None of these was a public-land State. Vermont and Texas were independent republics when admitted; Kentucky split off from Virginia during the years after the Revolution; and West Virginia split off from the same State during the first year of the War between the States. Nor was there any public land within Maine, which became a State in 1820. Consequently, none of these States received grants of land for the establishment of a seminary of learning.

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Tai: nessee? Most of the Federal grants of land for the establishment of a university were made to the States with no reservations. The only conditions were that the Territorial or State legislature representing the Territory or State to which they were granted should use the rents from the lands or the returns from sales for a university.3 Many of the States received the grants while they were still Territories and proceeded to lease the land and to establish an institution of learning while yet in the Territorial rank. A decided stimulus toward the development of a public system of education was thus set in motion by the university grants, as the higher institution could not prosper except by the establishment of a public-school system, from the primary through the high school. But the benefits from the great Federal act of July 2, 1862, which has become commonly known as the Morrill Act, or the land grant act, for the establishment of colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts could not be secured by the different Territories until they became States. In several cases the number of acres that the Territory should receive when it should become a State was allotted by the Federal Government and not infrequently the lands were located. But no benefits for such colleges from these lands could be had until statehood was achieved. A number of the Territories established colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts before becoming States, in view of the land grants that should then become theirs. But this act did not turn over the allotment of 30,000 acres for each Representative and Senator to which a State was entitled by the census of 1860 to the States, without reservations, as had most of the acts providing the university grants. This Federal

Since 1889 a minimum sale price has usually been set for the university and other lands. 4 Stat. L. XII, 503.

statute gave the land as an endowment only for the designated college, with this exception," that one-tenth of the sale price of the land could be used to purchase a site and experimental farm for the new college. It has been stated that the peoples of the different Commonwealths had wanted higher education provided which was suitable to their needs; and undoubtedly with the establishment of the State universities, responsible to the State, as the head of their school systems they had expected to get such education. But the State universities for the most part followed, in their organization and courses, in the paths of Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and the older private colleges from which their presidents, professors, and instructors were drawn. When the Northwest Territory became more settled and the agricultural class became a greater economic force; when the development of the railroads and machinery called for more skilled mechanics and engineers, then from many States and sections of the country came the cry for a more practical education for the development of the agricultural and the industrial classes. Michigan chartered the Michigan Agricultural School in 1855. Pennsylvania chartered a Farmers High School-really a scientific agricultural college-in 1854. Iowa incorporated the State Agricultural College and Model Farm in 1858. Illinois had accumulated a considerable sum of money from the sale of the State's public lands and the grant of the two townships for a university received through the State's enabling act of 1818. Though repeated efforts to found a State university through legislative action had failed, yet by 1850 agitation for the immediate establishment of an institution had become pronounced. In order to head off a plan of the private colleges to secure a division of these funds among themselves, a series of conventions were held, the first one at Granville, Ill., November 18, 1851. These resulted in the drawing up of a set of resolutions calling for higher educational institutions which should provide as liberal an education for the farmer and mechanic as did the older type of institution for professional men. These resolutions also called for cooperative effort on the part of the separate State legislatures in an attempt to secure from Congress a Federal land grant for the founding of colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts in every State of the Union. The resolutions were printed by the leading newspapers all over the Nation. They virtually embody the plan that was adopted by Congress in the Morrill Act of July 2, 1862. They were submitted to the Illinois Legislature, and Governor French of Illinois was made chairman of a committee to petition Congress on behalf of Illinois for such a grant of lands for the endowment of industrial universities for each State. The Illinois Legislature was the first legislature to

Act 2, sec. 5, July 2, 1862.

• James, Edmund, Origin of the Land Grant Act, 1910.

petition Congress for a Federal grant of land to each State for the establishment of industrial universities, though other States had petitioned for a single grant to found agricultural colleges in their own States.

Prof. Jonathan Turner, of Illinois College, Jacksonville, Ill., is shown by Edmund James to have been the leading spirit of the first convention and the main author of the resolutions urging higher industrial education as well.

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This shows the widespread demand for such institutions; and though a bill for such a purpose introduced by Mr. Morrill in the House of Representatives on December 14, 1857, passed both Houses in 1859, it was vetoed by President Buchanan. Thereafter it was not again attempted until a change of administration. Abraham Lincoln on July 2, 1862, signed the bill which had been so skillfully guided through the House of Representatives by Justin S. Morrill, of Vermont, and other adherents, though it was introduced in the Senate this time by Senator Wade, of Ohio.

It was clearly the intent of Mr. Morrill that the colleges of agriculture and mechanics to be founded under the act of July 2, 1862, should be distinct and separate State institutions. It was thought that the development of the new colleges would be hampered if made a part of the liberal arts institutions. These new institutions were to be "industrial colleges or universities." But Mr. Morrill, after a fruitless search of a year for a separate location in his own State, Vermont, gave up the attempt and the agricultural and mechanical college of that State was united with the University of Vermont. Twenty-two other States have at the present time made the agricultural and mechanical or the agricultural college a part of the State university. The policy of having one State institution of higher learning has proved to be highly successful, because jealousies, detrimental to the development and proper support of both, have frequently arisen in States having two separate institutions.

The two acts of the Continental Congress of 1787 including the seminary township grants for "an university" had set the precedent, but the act of 1862, together with the acts that have followed from it, has surpassed the original act in the magnitude of undertaking. The people of the Nation had become more potent and were more aware of their needs through the development of the country's natural resources, and progress was to have been expected. Though the minds of the legislators were diverted for the most part to the prosecution of the struggle between the States, Congress took time to deliberate upon this request of the States, and to pass the measure by which each State has subsequently directly benefited; by which

Turner, J. B., Industrial Universities for the People. James, Edmund, Origin of the Land Grant Act Appendix C.