Reclaiming a Lost Heritage

The first European settlers who entered these marvelous lands encountered many hardships and dangers. They found sometimes harsh weather, new diseases, and a shortage of food. They brought little experience that fitted them for the struggle with Nature that followed. Instead, experience was to be gained with ax in hand for clearing forest and gun at side for self-defense. It is not surprising, then, that progress in agricultural and industrial development was slow in early America.

But here, quilted across the sweeping landscape of this wonderful country, an ocean of golden prairie and blue sky promised abundant opportunities for families craving a better way of life. Frequently discouraged but rarely defeated, these determined early settlers found great strength and inspiration in their love for fellow human beings and their appreciation of challenging frontiers.

As soon as they started a new settlement, these stalwart pioneers typically demonstrated their abiding faith in community life by building a school and a church. They sincerely believed that a firm foundation in education and religious values would enable their children and grandchildren to live happier, healthier, more productive lives.

The spirit of this common faith in and commitment to education is clearly evident in records of this emerging culture. A frontier historian, reflecting more than a century ago on early pioneer families on the Illinois prairie, wrote of their almost religious faith in the inherent power of education:

As the royal monogram on the clothing of the infant prince marks him as belonging to the royal family, so the rough schoolhouse in each settlement was the royal mark, telling that it belonged to the people foreordained by Almighty God to be the royal nation of the world. The bulk of the nation might be far away toward the eastern ocean, and the settlement might consist of but six scattered cabins -- whose occupants were struggling for daily bread -- yet the humble, log-ribbed schoolhouse was the rough-robed prophet of a future time, when on these shores, the grateful world shall see what it has never seen before -- the national power of education.

Fortunately, this national vision of the power of education has been perpetuated by each subsequent generation. The dreams and aspirations of our founders in this respect happily did not end with the one-room schoolhouse. Regardless of ethnic heritage or personal interests, the early pioneers quickly moved to add higher education and later vocational education to the spectrum of educational opportunities.

It is difficult to understand and fully appreciate the land-grant college and university system without first understanding the conditions that led to its creation. These important events and developments include:

The Declaration of Independence. A document that gave us important freedoms, including the freedom to think, discuss issues, and express views openly; the freedom to dream of how we would prefer things to be; and the freedom to pursue changes needed to achieve our dreams and ambitions.

A representative form of democracy. One that permits individual and collective needs to surface, one that requires decision-making and rule by consensus.

A commitment to education of the masses. The nation's earliest settlers -- largely European in ethnic origin -- firmly believed in the merits of education. Although many were unable to pursue their own educational goals, they struggled to ensure ample opportunities were available to their children. They persevered and they succeeded.

Education legislation enacted by the United States Congress. This provided for the establishment of elementary schools through the use of federal grants of public land, and is the origin of the term "land-grant."

This early land-grant movement was driven by a national consensus that higher education should be available to the poor as well as the rich, to women as well as men, to people of color as well as European Americans. Indeed, from the very beginning, the land-grant college and university system has had a common objective, that of extending to working people as well as others practical education based on scientific knowledge.

The population of the United States was predominantly rural during the first half of the nineteenth century. Despite their apparent isolation, farmers were not immune to the growing spirit of democracy and freedom. Wherever possible -- in speeches, letters, editorials, and elsewhere -- they voiced dissatisfaction with their economic plight, the social inequity they experienced, their political infirmity. When crops failed in 1838, agricultural needs became a pressing issue not only to farmers but to everyone in this young nation. Fortunately, this period was followed by strong economic recovery, but the ups and downs of agriculture had been brought to the attention of all.

George Washington
Presidential Address to the U.S. Congress, December 7, 1796

Interest in improving agriculture was evidenced by the organization of numerous local, state, and national agricultural associations and societies during the first half of the nineteenth century. These organizations encouraged experiments, essays, and reports of improvements in farming practices. In 1852, the United States Agricultural Society was established, with headquarters in Washington. It counted among its members some 300 societies in 31 states and five territories. The concerted support of these entities greatly influenced the eventual success of the impending attempt to secure congressional support of educational programs in agriculture and the mechanical arts (engineering).

By about 1850, consensus had developed throughout the nation favoring the establishment of colleges which would offer practical education for the young people of the agricultural and industrial classes. Although many people were involved in this movement, it was Jonathan Baldwin Turner, a visionary academic in Illinois, who conceptualized the end-product, crystallized the ideas of many people into a workable plan, and then promoted the plan through frequent speeches, published articles, and extensive travel, mostly on horseback.

Advocates of the movement to make technical college education available to people of all economic and social backgrounds were motivated by the belief that education benefits not only each individual participant, but the entire society as well.

The ultimate success of virtually all movements and programs is directly related to the will of those involved. That is, how determined they are to make things happen. The working classes were determined to have their own colleges and universities. They gave tremendous momentum to the land-grant movement. Generated by inspired individuals and encouraged groups this spirit has not been paralleled in the succeeding history of higher education.

The Northwest Ordinances of 1785 and 1787 over the next 150 years set aside more than 80 million acres of land and hundreds of millions of dollars from land leases and sales to support elementary schools, secondary schools, and colleges and universities.

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 -- one of the truly monumental documents developed during the history of our Republic -- espouses some of the liberties most cherished by Americans to this day: freedom of religion, the right to trial by jury, the repudiation of human slavery. While extending the principles of republican government to frontier territories, it also -- with a simple declaration -- laid the foundation for a national system of free education: Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.

The Northwest Ordinance was passed by the United States Congress on July 13, 1787, approximately two months before the Constitution of the United States was signed on September 17, 1787. This demonstrated very early federal interest in higher education. The Northwest Ordinance included provisions for the states that were carved from the Northwest Territory to set aside two or more townships of government-owned land per state for the support of higher education.

During the history of our Republic, there have been three types of "grants of land" designed to aid and encourage education: (1) Section Grants in the early 1800s, when Horace Mann said, A free and comprehensive education is the birthright of every child. As a strong proponent of that view, he pushed for passage of legislation that would give four sections of land per township to establish a one-room school for grades one through eight in each township. (2) In 1836, the United States Congress authorized the granting of two townships (46,080 acres) . . . to establish (a) a state university, and (b) a seminary in any state. With this came "grants of land" to establish, for example, the University of Michigan in 1837 and The University of Wisconsin in 1848. Then throughout the 1850s Jonathan Baldwin Turner of Illinois pushed for federal "grants of land" to establish colleges of agriculture and the mechanical arts for the "sons and daughters of the industrial classes". (3) In 1862, the world-renowned Land-Grant Act, providing grants of federal land to help establish land-grant colleges and universities, was signed into law.

During the first half of the nineteenth century, several pieces of legislation were passed that authorized the "granting of publicly held land" for various purposes. For example, in 1819 the United States Senate passed a bill donating federal land to the State of Connecticut for a seminary of learning for the deaf and dumb. In 1827, Congress donated land to Kentucky for the same purpose. In 1838, a township in Florida was granted to Dr. Henry Perrine to "promote the cultivation of tropical plants." In 1841, each of the new states received 500,000 acres of land. Then in 1846, Congress donated 300,000 acres to the State of Tennessee, on the condition that the state would endow and establish a college (at an expense of not less than $40,000).

Occasionally, there is a person whose views and philosophies, whose vision and leadership, whose courage and tenacity change the course of history. Jonathan Baldwin Turner certainly was one such person. Turner was born on a rocky farm near Templeton, Massachusetts. He went to New Haven, Connecticut, at the age of 22, spent two years in preparatory study, then entered Yale College (now Yale University), where he took a traditional classical education. It was fortunate for the land-grant college and university movement when, in 1833, Turner accepted a teaching position at Illinois College in Jacksonville, Illinois. There he taught rhetoric, Latin, Greek, and nearly every subject in the humanities. Illinois College had been founded in 1827 under Presbyterian auspices. Yale President Jeremiah Day personally encouraged Turner to accept the teaching position at Illinois, and promised to award him a diploma, even though Turner would leave before graduation.

Jonathan Baldwin Turner was a unique combination of classical scholar, educator, farmer, amateur scientist, orator, religionist, social reformer, entrepreneur, and rugged individualist. But most importantly he was a restless visionary, abundantly imbued with a strong missionary spirit. Throughout his life, he was a proselytizer in the three areas that consumed his interest and energy -- religion, politics, and education. In all three, Turner's ideas often were unorthodox, and this fact made him the subject of considerable criticism. In the church, he attacked many of the conventional views of his denomination. In politics, he was among the first in Illinois to speak out publicly against slavery. And in the 1830s, he plunged headlong into the crusade for universal education for those who normally did not have that opportunity -- the sons and daughters of what he called "the working class."

In each of these areas of public debate, Turner brought vigor, passion, eloquence, and imagination. He was so much the center of public turmoil that finally, in 1848, under pressure, he gave up his professorship at Illinois College. He returned to his first love -- agriculture.

Jonathan Baldwin Turner's thinking, talking, and planning for education ultimately led to concrete proposals for the creation of an industrial university. His speech before the Illinois Teachers Institute in Griggsville, Illinois, on May 13, 1850, entitled "A Plan of our State University for the Industrial Class," was a blueprint for what followed in the organization of public higher education in the United States. He proposed not only the foundation of a state university for the agricultural and general industrial classes in Illinois, but such a system in every state of the Union.

Turner's plan was influenced and guided by Jeffersonian ideals. He sought to develop young people's reasoning faculties, enlarge their minds, and cultivate their morals so that commerce, agriculture, and manufacturing could prosper to the benefit of every American. Education was truly in the public interest. The plan included three basic goals: (1) to establish colleges which would be open, at minimum cost, to laborers in agriculture, commerce, and the arts who needed educational assistance; (2) to develop curricula which would include instruction in practical and vocational subjects for the benefit of the working classes; and (3) to endow these colleges by grants of land from the enormous holdings of the federal government.

There is debate as to the extent of Jonathan Baldwin Turner's influence upon Justin Smith Morrill, who later sponsored the legislation that gave impetus to the unique land-grant college and university system. Although the legislation carries Morrill's name, many have claimed for Turner the original definition of the idea and its transmission to Morrill. Turner's personal sincerity and profound conviction for the importance of his cause is well-known. He is remembered as the "John the Baptist" of a great national movement in education. A prophet of democracy who, like Thomas Jefferson before him, recognized an educated electorate as prerequisite to a sustained, successful democracy. He was long on ideas and enthusiasm, and his philosophy and concepts remain valid today. Listen to the words and fervor of his creed, as expressed to a large audience in Monmouth, Illinois:

The sun never shown on such a nation, and such a power, as this soon would be, with such facilities of public advancement and improvement put into full and vigorous operation. Set the millions of eyes in this great Republic to watching, and intelligently observing and thinking, and there is no secret of Nature or art we cannot find out; no disease of man or beast we cannot understand; no evil we cannot remedy; no obstacle we cannot surmount; nothing lies in the power of man to do or to understand, that cannot be understood and done.

The second major group Jonathan Baldwin Turner targeted for support of his plan for the establishment and maintenance of an industrial university was the Illinois farmers. In response to a passionate plea for their support of his plan, the following resolutions were adopted by the Convention of Illinois Farmers, held November 18, 1851, at Granville, Illinois:

Resolved, that we greatly rejoice in the degree of perfection to which our various institutions, for the education of our brethren engaged in professional, scientific, and literary pursuits have already attained, and in the mental and moral elevation which those institutions have given them, and their consequent preparation and capacity for the great duties . . . of life in which they are engaged . . .
Resolved, that as representatives of the industrial classes, including cultivators of the soil, artisans, mechanics and merchants, we desire the same privileges and advantages for ourselves, our fellows and our posterity . . . as our professional brethren enjoy in theirs . . .
Resolved, that we take immediate measures for the establishment of a university . . . expressly to provide a means of applying knowledge or science to the several pursuits of the industrial classes of our state . . . as well as to teach them how to read, observe and think, and act so as to derive the same needful and wholesome mental discipline from their pursuits in life, which the professional and military classes are taught to derive, from theirs.

Turner's plan was printed and widely distributed, and it was reprinted in many newspapers, including The New York Tribune, the nation's most widely circulated newspaper at the time. The newspaper's editors responded in their September 4, 1852, issue:

The greatest idea of a higher or thorough education for the sons and daughters of farmers, mechanics and laborers, is everywhere forcing itself on the public attention. Our race needs instruction and discipline to qualify them for working, as well as for thinking and talking. It may now be ten years since a few poor and inconsiderate persons began to 'agitate' in favor of a more practical system of thorough education, whereby youth without distinction of sex should be trained for eminent usefulness in all the departments of industry. It is worthy of note that one of the most extensive of the public land states proposes a magnificent donation of public lands to each of the states. In furtherance of this idea, Illinois has taken a noble step forward, in a most liberal and patriotic spirit, for which its members will be heartily thanked by thousands throughout the Union. We feel that this step has materially hastened the scientific and practical education for all who desire and are willing to work for it. It cannot come too soon.

And the editor of the Southern Cultivator wrote in his Augusta, Georgia, newspaper:

We have been gratified by the perusal of an address delivered by Professor J. B. Turner of Jacksonville, Illinois, before a convention of farmers held in that state, in support of the establishment of a university, in which agriculture and the sciences shall be made a special branch of study. His suggestions are urged with zeal and ability, and his arguments are convincing, as to the need and importance of such institutions. There is no subject more worthy of the highest effort of the human intellect, nor one which has been, until recently, so culpably disregarded, if not condemned. The triumph of a Republic can only be successfully achieved and permanently enjoyed by a people, the mass of whom, are an enlightened yeomanry, the proprietors of the land, too independent to be bought, too enlightened to be cheated, and too powerful to be crushed. There is not a good agricultural school in the United States. The truth is, the American people have yet to commence the study of agriculture as the combination of many sciences. Agriculture is the most profound and extensive profession that the progress of society and the accumulation of knowledge have developed. Whether we consider the solid earth under our feet, the invisible atmosphere which we breathe, the wonderful growth and decay of all plants and animals, or the light, the cold, or the electricity of heaven, we contemplate but the elements of rural science. The careful investigation of the Laws that govern all ponderable and imponderable agents, is the first step in the young farmer's education. This subject is beginning to take a strong hold on the minds of the people, and we are glad to see gentlemen of the talents and influence of Professor Turner lending a hand to put the ball in motion which, ultimately, will sweep down all opposition.

The third group to which Turner turned for support of his plan for educational reform was the Illinois Industrial League. He told those attending their 1851 convention in Chicago:

. . . All of society is divided into two classes -- the professional class and the working class. Colleges of this day provide a good liberal education for the professional class, which constitutes only a small fraction of the population. Nowhere are there colleges for the great mass of people. Society has become wise enough to know that its teachers need to be educated, but it has not become wise enough to know that its workers, too, need an education. We need a system of education adapted to the needs of the common man, which would elevate him to his rightful place in society. Education should be practical, as well as academic, and it should not be the monopoly of the privileged few, but rather the right of everyone who has the desire and the ability to learn.

From 1852 forth, influential groups in Illinois reaffirmed their endorsement of the plan at their annual conventions. Most groups focused on the United States Congress. The following resolution was adopted at the third Convention of Illinois Farmers on November 24, 1852:

Resolved, that this convention memorialize Congress for the purpose of obtaining a grant of public lands to establish and endow industrial institutions in each and every state in the Union.

Other groups directed their resolutions and petitions to the Senate and House of Representatives of the State of Illinois. The fourth Convention of the Industrial League of Illinois, held in Springfield on January 8, 1853, adopted the following resolution:

. . . we would, therefore, respectfully petition the honorable Senate and House of Representatives of the State of Illinois, that they present a united memorial to the Congress now assembled at Washington to appropriate to each state in the Union an amount of public lands not less in value than $500,000, for the liberal endowment of a system of Industrial Universities, one in each state in the Union, to cooperate with each other, and with the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, for the more liberal and practical education of our industrial classes and their teachers, in their various pursuits, for the production of knowledge and literature needful in those pursuits, and development to the fullest and most perfect extent the resources of our soil and our arts, the virtue and intelligence of our people, and the true glory of our common country.
We further petition that the executive and legislature of our sister states be invited to cooperate with us in this enterprise, and that a copy of the memorial of this legislature be forwarded by the Governors and Senates of the several states.

This petition was unanimously adopted February 8, 1853, with the following preamble and resolutions:

       Of the General Assembly of the State of Illinois, relative to the establishment of industrial universities, and for the encouragement of practical and general education among the people.
       Whereas, the spirit and progress of this age and country demand the culture of the highest order of intellectual attainment in the theoretical and industrial science: and whereas, it is impossible that our commerce and prosperity will continue to increase without calling into requisition all the elements of internal thrift arising from the labors of the farmer, the mechanic, and the manufacturer, by every fostering effort within the reach of the government: and whereas, a system of industrial universities, liberally endowed in each state of the Union, cooperative with each other and the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, would develop a more liberal and practical education among the people, tend the more to intellectualize the rising generation, and eminently conduce to the virtue, intelligence, and true glory of our common country; therefore, be it:
       Resolved, by the House of Representatives, the Senate concurring herein, that our Senators in Congress be instructed, and our Representatives be requested, to use their best exertions to procure the passage of a Law of Congress donating to each State in the Union an amount of public lands not less in value than five hundred thousand dollars, for liberal endowment of a system of Industrial Universities, one in each state in the Union, to cooperate with each other, and with the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, for the more liberal and practical education of our industrial classes and their teachers; a liberal and varied education adapted to the manifold want of a practical and enterprising people, and a provision for such educational facilities, being in the manifest concurrence with the intimations of the popular will, it urgently demands the united efforts of our national strength.
       Resolved, that the Governor is hereby authorized to forward a copy of the foregoing resolutions to our Senators and Representatives in Congress, and to the Executive and Legislature of each of our sister states, inviting them to cooperate with us in this meritorious enterprise.

Now, Turner's campaign for educational reform had become truly national in scope. He and his fellow crusaders around the country recognized that they had to rely on the united efforts of like-minded groups across the nation if they were to gain congressional support for their plan.

Although Illinois was the first state to advocate a national appropriation to establish an industrial university for every state and territory, New York and other states soon asked Congress for appropriations of land to establish institutions in their respective states. For example, on April 2, 1850, the legislature of Michigan petitioned Congress for 350,000 acres of public land to establish an Agricultural College. And in February 1855 the Congress enacted a law that created the first college in the United States to offer agricultural courses for credit. That institution was an important forerunner of the national network of land-grant colleges and universities made possible by the Morrill Act of 1862. This victory represented the outcome of many years of agitation by various groups throughout the country for a new kind of higher education made possible by the creation of what were respectfully -- even reverently -- referred to as "people's colleges" and "people's universities."

Other states, some by recommendation, others by petition, asked Congress to appropriate United States Treasury funds to establish both an Agricultural Bureau and a national institution similar to those at West Point and Annapolis for the teaching of agriculture. For example, on April 20, 1852, the State of Massachusetts asked for a grant of public land in aid of a "National Normal Agricultural College, which should be to the rural sciences what the West Point Academy is to the military, for the purpose of educating teachers and professors for service in all the States of the Republic.

The New York Senate, in response to the invitation to support the Illinois Plan, passed a resolution on March 30, 1852, which was endorsed by the New York House of Representatives on April 17, 1852, asking Congress "to make grants of land to all the States for the purpose of education and for other useful public purposes."

Throughout the 1850s, Jonathan Baldwin Turner corresponded with members of the Illinois delegation in Congress, providing philosophical and conceptual information and urgings. He shared his own correspondence, speeches, and related materials, and entreated the delegates to introduce a bill supporting establishment of an "Industrial University" in each state of the Union.

Among Turner's voluminous correspondence, later organized and reviewed by his daughter Mary Turner Carriel, were two letters of special historical significance. The first was a letter from Richard Yates, member of the United States House of Representatives from Illinois, dated June 1852. In it, Yates acknowledged receipt of Turner's plan and stated that he had presented it to the National Agricultural Association, then in session in the City of Washington. This and its publication in the United States Patent Office Report gave Turner's plan wide publicity among people interested in the progress of agricultural education.

At the request of Congressman Yates, Professor Turner prepared a bill on the subject of industrial universities. But Yates concluded that it would not be politically prudent to push the matter in that session. The following fall, Yates was not re-elected to Congress, so the bill, unfortunately, was again delayed.

On October 7, 1857, Turner wrote Lyman Trumbull, United States Senator from Illinois, respectfully asking him to introduce the bill. The Senator was supportive of the concept but, because he sensed a feeling of opposition in Congress against further major grants of federal land, expressed reluctance to comply. He believed the bill would more likely pass if it were sponsored by members of Congress from some of the old States.

On December 4, 1855 -- some 18 months after the Illinois resolution had been introduced -- Justin Smith Morrill of Vermont entered the United States House of Representatives. The Illinois members, following the reasoning of Senator Trumbull, believed introduction of their bill could be entrusted to him. Representative Morrill was able, had a pleasing personality, and was a staunch friend of agriculture. He represented Vermont in the House from 1855 to 1866 and in the Senate from 1866 to 1898. In addition to the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890, he introduced the Morrill Tariff Act in 1861. Additionally, he helped to found the Republican Party and to pass the legislation that established the Library of Congress.

Just three months into his first term in Congress, Representative Morrill introduced a resolution authorizing the Committee on Agriculture to inquire into the expediency of establishing one or more National Schools upon the basis of the naval and military schools, in order that one scholar from each Congressional District and two from each State at large may receive a scientific and practical education at the public expense. The resolution was rejected.

Senator Trumbull's October 19, 1857, letter had embraced Turner's plan, but recommended it be presented by a member from one of the old states. Trumbull noted that Congress had given so much toward educational interests in the new states that they were in no frame of mind to do more, not even for Turner's plan, which embraced all the states, new and old. After considering the various strategies, Turner decided to send all documents, papers, speeches, pertinent correspondence, and pamphlets to Representative Morrill, along with the request that he introduce the bill. At first, Morrill was reluctant to do this. But after much persuasion, he consented.

The bill was introduced on December 14, 1857, but it was reported back unfavorably by the Committee on Public Lands. Morrill submitted it again, omitting the proposed grant of land to the Territories (these were later reinstated), in a spirited speech on April 20, 1858. He said: There has been no measure for years which has received so much attention in the various parts of the country as the one now under consideration, so far as the fact can be proved by petitions which have been received here from the various states, north and south, from State sessions, from county sessions and from memorials. (Congressional Globe, 35th Congress, p. 1692).

It did not pass the House, but it was introduced again the next year, when it passed the House but failed in the Senate. Finally, in 1859, it was introduced again and passed both the House and Senate. In spite of its considerable Congressional support, President James Buchanan, an independently wealthy graduate of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, vetoed the measure.

Disappointed but not discouraged, Turner conferred with his anti-slavery colleague and friend, Abraham Lincoln, about the bill President Buchanan had vetoed. Through two of his former students at Illinois College, Turner had indirectly helped Abraham Lincoln learn grammar when the future president was but a harvest hand. Before the Republican Convention of 1860, Turner told Lincoln that he believed the lawyer from the Illinois prairie would be nominated for president and then elected. To this Lincoln responded, If I am, I will sign your bill for State Universities.

Later Turner met with Lincoln's presidential opponent, Illinois Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas, from whom he extracted the commitment: If I am elected I will sign your bill. So regardless of how the people voted, Jonathan Baldwin Turner knew that, after more than a decade of arduous effort, the world's greatest plan for education of the masses was assured passage.

In June 1861, Senator Douglas wrote Turner requesting a copy of his plan and the historical background of the proposed Industrial University System. He wished to personally introduce it in the next session of Congress. Senator Douglas had long before declared, "This educational scheme of Professor Turner's is the most democratic . . . ever proposed to the mind of man!"

Turner responded with a full and complete account, and sent it to the post office with his oldest son. To Turner's surprise and dismay, Rhodolphus Turner returned with the letter, saying a telegram had just been received announcing the death of Senator Douglas in Chicago.

When Justin Smith Morrill again introduced the bill, it passed both the House and the Senate (the Senate sponsor was Ohio's Benjamin Franklin Wade), and it was the first civil bill signed into law by President Lincoln on July 2, 1862. Representative Morrill cited two principal reasons for introducing the now famous land-grant Act:

Although 1862 was a year of national crisis, the United States Congress, with commendable foresight, enacted three visionary laws -- laws that have had profound impact upon the economic and social development of our nation.

First, on May 15, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Act that established the United States Department of Agriculture. This legislation provided important footing for the development of a scientific American agriculture, upon which would rest our nation's enormously productive food and agricultural enterprise.

Second, on May 20, 1862, Lincoln signed the Homestead Act, which greatly encouraged westward expansion by opening some 200 million acres of land for agricultural settlement and development.

An Act donating public lands to the several states and territories which may provide colleges for the benefit of agriculture and the mechanic arts: Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, that there be granted to the several states, for the purpose hereinafter mentioned, an amount of public land, to be apportioned to each state, in quality equal to 30,000 acres, for each Senator and Representative in Congress to which the States are respectfully entitled by apportionment under the census of 1860; . . . And be it further enacted, that all monies derived from the sale of lands aforesaid . . . shall be invested in stocks of the United States, or of the States, or some other safe stocks, yielding not less than five percent, upon the par value of said stock; and that the money so invested shall constitute a perpetual fund, the capital of which shall remain forever undiminished, and the interest of which shall be inviolably appropriated . . . to the endowment, support, and maintenance of, at least, one college where the leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the states may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life.

All together, by 1890, the states and territories had received 11,367,832 acres of land. There were certain states, particularly in the Northeast (where the federal government did not own much land), that were empowered by the Morrill Act to select land in the west, then sell it. Money derived from the sale of this land was to be invested and the interest used in perpetuity to establish and maintain in each state and territory at least one college where the principal object would be training "in agriculture and the mechanic arts."

Some of the institutions which benefited from the Morrill Act of 1862 had already been established by the states. For example, Michigan had established an agricultural college in February 1855, and admitted its first 73 students in May 1857. In other cases, proceeds from the 1862 land-grant act were given to pre-existing institutions on condition that they would provide instruction in agriculture and the mechanic arts. Some of these were state-supported, others private institutions. In Massachusetts, the money was allocated partly to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and partly to an institution in Amherst (now the University of Massachusetts) created for the express purpose of providing agricultural education. In Connecticut, the money went first to Yale College, but later to a special institution organized to take advantage of the act. In other states, notably Minnesota and Wisconsin, the money was given to the state universities which had already been established.

The land-grant act of 1862 proved to be an emancipation proclamation for those of modest financial circumstances who were striving for a college education. Federal provisions for the land-grant institutions were made in an era when fewer than two percent of the U. S. population continued their formal education beyond the twelfth grade. For the first time, colleges were accessible to the people, and the idea of equality of educational opportunity became reality. The land-grant act of 1862 has indeed appropriately been described as our nation's "Bill of Educational Rights."

The first Morrill Act (1862), in its attempt to democratize higher education, did not exclude African-Americans. However, Southern customs, traditions, and laws requiring racial segregation prevented these newly emancipated citizens from becoming full participants in the new educational venture.

Before emancipation, some 90 percent of the approximately 4,000,000 African-Americans in this country were in slavery. Moreover, the approximately 250,000 "free blacks" were circumscribed in their social interaction with whites. Hence, the early land-grant colleges became white bastions, barring blacks from admission by custom, by law, or both. Congressman Morrill wanted these new colleges to be accessible to all of the nation's citizens, thus democratizing higher education. But as a Whig from Vermont, he probably gave minimal thought to the plight of African-Americans in the Southern and border states.

Before passage of the second Morrill Act (1890), Booker T. Washington, president of Tuskegee University, made an important observation about the circumstances and mobility of the African-American population. He said: Something must be done to stem the swelling tide which each year sweeps thousands of black men and women and children from the sunlit monotony of the plantation to the sunless inequity of the slums: from a drudgery that is not quite cheerless to competition that is altogether merciless.

Twenty-eight years after the passage of the Morrill Act of 1862, Justin Smith Morrill -- by then serving in the United States Senate -- introduced the bill that was to become popularly known as the second Morrill Act. It was presented twelve times before becoming law. Because the act stated that funds should be "equitably divided" between white and black colleges, there was strong opposition from white Southern congressmen. Specifically, the Morrill Act provided that no money shall be paid out under this Act to any State or Territory for the support and maintenance of a college where a distinction of race or color is made in the admission of students, but the establishment and maintenance of such colleges separately for white and colored students shall be held to be a compliance with the provisions of the Act, if the funds received in such State or Territory be equitably divided as hereinafter set forth . . .

The Morrill College Aid Act, passed on August 30, 1890, provided for a permanent appropriation of $15,000 per annum (to be increased by $1000 per year until it reached $25,000 annually) to every State in the Union for the more complete endowment and support of these colleges and for the benefit of agriculture and the mechanic arts as established under the Act of 1862.

Under the provision that became known as the "separate-but-equal" policy, the so-called 1890 institutions began their federally mandated mission. Tuskegee University and seventeen other institutions were funded through the 1890 Morrill Act.

Today, all fifty states, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands receive federal grants supporting land-grant colleges and universities.

The early private colleges did not emphasize research, but rather they focused on teaching and the preservation of knowledge and traditions. Neither faculty nor students were particularly interested in creating new understandings in either the realm of human experience or that of the natural world. They focused on reinforcing the cultural traditions they served.

The first federal call for adding a research dimension to higher education's mission -- indirect though it was -- came from George Washington. In his 1796 presidential message to Congress, he requested a Board of Agriculture with one of its purposes to be the encouragement of experimentation. This is not surprising since George Washington's Mount Vernon estate was a veritable experimental farm on which the owner sought ways to conserve soil, diversify cropping, and use new machinery. By careful seed selection, Washington developed an improved strain of wheat; he obtained one of the first patents on seed-sowing devices; his sheep produced nearly three times as much wool as those of his neighbors; and he was the first American to raise mules.

Thomas Jefferson, who served as a member of President Washington's cabinet and then as the third president of the United States, had an inventive mind as well as a flair for scientific experimentation. He worked out the mathematical principle of least soil resistance for an all-metal moldboard plow. He also invented a seed drill, a hemp brake, and improvements for the threshing machine. He tested varieties of at least 32 different vegetables at Monticello, and practiced horizontal plowing for soil-erosion control.

There was no agricultural research literature in the eighteenth century. Washington, Jefferson, and other early visionaries created it by conducting experiments on their own farms, then sharing the results by exchanging correspondence with interested persons in this country and abroad. They sought new seeds, new machines, improved foundation stocks, and better ways of farming. Indeed, Washington and Jefferson established a rich legacy for scientific experimentation.

Just six years after Thomas Jefferson saw the University of Virginia open with 40 students enrolled in 1825, Cyrus McCormick demonstrated his newly perfected reaper to a skeptical audience on a farm in Rockbridge County, Virginia. McCormick had at long last solved a problem that, for thousands of years, had been a major impediment in civilization's parade of progress. New developments followed quickly, producing rapid agricultural progress that would bring relief to the farm family's life of drudgery and deprivation.

Norman J. Colman, a Missouri farm magazine editor, was in 1885 appointed the first United States Commissioner of Agriculture (now Secretary of Agriculture). Colman was committed to passage of legislation that would provide funding for state agricultural experiment stations. A legislative committee comprised of three land-grant university presidents worked with Commissioner Colman in these efforts, which were endorsed by Congressman William Henry Hatch of Missouri and Senator James Z. George of Mississippi, who agreed to sponsor the proposed legislation. After considerable debate and compromise, the bill known as the "Hatch Act" was passed on March 2, 1887. It provided $15,000 per annum to establish agricultural experiment stations in connection with the land-grant colleges and universities established in the several States and Territories under the provisions of the Morrill Act approved July 2, 1862, . . . to aid in acquiring and diffusing among the people of the United States useful and practical information on subjects connected with agriculture, and to promote scientific investigations and experiments respecting the principles and applications of agricultural science.

Congressman Hatch's own farm on the outskirts of Hannibal, Missouri, was later quite appropriately acquired by the Missouri Agricultural Experiment Station. This author and many others over the years conducted research on the Hatch farm.

The Hatch Act of 1887 was a sort of "second growth" from the seed sown first by Jonathan Baldwin Turner, who also conducted experiments related to agriculture on his own farm near Butler, Illinois.

Another major contributor to passage of the Hatch Act of 1887 worthy of note was Wilbur Olin Atwater, who directed the Storrs (Connecticut) Agricultural Experiment Station from 1887 to 1902. Dr. Atwater served for 34 years as professor of chemistry at Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut. The first agricultural experiment station in the United States was established at Middletown under his direction in 1875. It was later moved to New Haven. Atwater also served as the first chief of the Office of Experiment Stations of the United States Department of Agriculture.

In 1892, with the assistance of Dr. E. B. Rosa, Professor of Physics at Wesleyan, Atwater constructed the first human-respiration calorimeter. Atwater conducted classic research on the energy value of various food materials a century ago. The "Atwater factors" for carbohydrates, fats, and protein were derived from the heats of combustion of the three classes of nutrients as they occur in foods comprising average human and animal diets.

Agriculture is this nation's oldest and largest primary industry. It is the oldest industry because the most basic ingredients for the necessities of life -- food, clothing, and shelter -- are supplied by people on the land. It is largest because progressive people worked together in the spirit of a free-enterprise system and in concert with the men and women of the land-grant college and university system to create a globally competitive industry, all the while improving their own lot in life. Using less than 1 percent of the world's agricultural labor force, United States farmers and ranchers produce over 8 percent of the world's food grains, 27 percent of the feed grains, 21 percent of the beef, and 28 percent of the poultry. On average, each United States producer provides food for more than 130 people in the world. For healthy, safe, convenient foods, United States consumers spend only about 11 percent of their total personal disposable income -- the best food bargain, by far, in the world.

But this has not always been the case. For nearly three centuries this nation's agriculture expanded horizontally across the continent. New land was the frontier of agriculture in the United States prior to the twentieth century. Then farsighted supporters of agriculture in Congress and elsewhere realized that population pressures and soil depletion would eventually lead to the need for more productive plants and animals. Believing that research leading to new knowledge would show the way, they enacted the Hatch Act in 1887 (Section 1.5), which authorized establishment of agricultural experiment stations. During the twentieth century, research has determined the frontiers of agriculture. Increased food and fiber production no longer depends on new acres. Now it depends upon vertical expansion -- greater productivity per acre and unit of input.

When Alexis de Tocqueville of France toured the United States of America in 1831, he could not have foreseen the potential power of research in general and the high-impact changes agricultural research in particular could bring about in a democratic society. If he had, he would not have made this statement in his book Democracy In America: "Agriculture is perhaps, of all the useful arts, that which improves most slowly among democratic nations."

All over the world, the words "American Agriculture" evoke an image of abundance and economic success. Agriculture is highly important -- economically and strategically -- to the United States and to the world. The strategic importance of our food, agriculture, and natural resource system will increase as we enter the twenty-first century.

The developments already reviewed rightfully serve as a source of pride for all Americans, especially those associated with the land-grant college and university system. But there remains one additional link in the chain of progress to be noted. It was this link, added 27 years after the Hatch Act was passed into law, that made it possible for the earlier legislation to pay enormous dividends. The coupling of research with a workable way to disseminate and popularize the knowledge generated through the aegis of the Hatch Act was the key that unlocked the full potential of the visionaries from Turner to Morrill to Hatch. That key was the Smith-Lever Act of 1914, which Secretary of Agriculture David F. Houston called One of the most striking educational measures ever adopted by any government.

Houston believed that nothing short of a comprehensive attempt to make rural life attractive, comfortable, and profitable would solve the chronic problems of agriculture and rural life. He viewed the Smith-Lever Act as the mechanism through which the intellectual and social aspects of rural life could be improved. Specifically, the Smith-Lever Act facilitated the distribution of information on research results to the user group. The Act provided for cooperative financing of the present-day county extension agent system under the direction of land-grant colleges and universities. Not only does this system communicate new research findings from the agricultural experiment station staff to farmers and others, it encourages problems identified on farms and ranches and other areas to be brought to the attention of the station staff for research, study, and resolution.

The purpose of the Smith-Lever Act, as stated by Congress, was . . . to aid in diffusing among the people of the United States useful and practical information on subjects relating to agriculture and home economics and to encourage the application of the same. To assure that the appropriated funds were used for outreach purposes, the Act stipulated further that agricultural extension was to . . . consist of the giving of instruction and practical demonstrations in agriculture and home economics to persons not attending or residents in said colleges in the several communities, and imparting to such persons information on said subjects through field demonstrations, publications, and otherwise.

Beginning with an initial appropriation of $600,000, each state was to receive $10,000 annually. Federal funds were to be available in amounts not to exceed 50 percent of the cost of extension; the rest was to be provided by state, county, and local authorities, as well as by other contributions from within the state. This mechanism of joint funding is in keeping with the term "cooperative extension" -- a cooperative venture among federal, state, local, and individual funding support -- a system of adult and youth education that has become a model for the rest of the world (Sections 8.2 and 8.3).

Just as the original land-grant act of 1862 and the second Morrill Act of 1890 were attempts to democratize higher education, so too was the initiative to secure land-grant status for the nation's tribal colleges. The Tribally Controlled Community College Act of 1978 stimulated development of the variety of technical two-year, four-year, and graduate schools presently located in or near tribal reservations. Their success in meeting community needs, coupled with a prevailing climate of strong self-determination, led the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) to approach the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC) to consider the potential of a cooperative effort to secure land-grant status for their twenty-nine tribal colleges. Employing the same argument used during the successful campaign by the University of the District of Columbia, the Pacific Island territories, and the Virgin Islands to achieve land-grant status, the Native Americans noted that their reservations, held in trust for American Indian tribes, were the only areas under the U.S. flag that had not participated in the land-grant college program.

During the spring of 1993, the leadership of AIHEC and NASULGC met to discuss opportunities that the granting of land-grant status to the tribal colleges would provide the members of both organizations. At the onset of the meetings, NADULGC President C. Peter Magrath pledged full support of the effort to achieve land-grant status for the Native American-controlled colleges when he emphatically stated, "It is simply the right thing to do." Shortly thereafter, the Board of Directors of NASULGC approved a resolution "endorsing the quest by this nation's tribal colleges for federal legislation conferring land-grant status upon these colleges."

In November 1993, the AIHEC and NASULGC jointly testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs in favor of land-grant status for the tribal colleges. In January 1994, Magrath created a special task force on tribal colleges and land-grant status to strengthen cooperation between the present NASULGC member schools and the tribal colleges. Task force chairman Michael P. Malone (president of Montana State University) and other NASULGC member institution presidents met with their tribal college counterparts in Kansas City, Missouri, to discuss issues of mutual interest.

In October 1994, Congress passed legislation conferring land-grant status on the twenty-nine Native American tribal colleges as a provision of the Elementary and Secondary Reauthorization Act. The bill authorized a $23 million endowment over a period of five years. The colleges will receive annual interest payments from this endowment. Additionally, the legislation authorized a $1.7 million challenge grant program for higher education initiatives in agriculture and natural resources and $50,000 per school for higher education in agriculture and natural resources. The legislation also provided $5 million that will go to the Cooperative Extension Service of the 1862 land-grant institutions in states that have tribal colleges. The 1862 institutions are to cooperate with the tribal colleges in setting up joint agricultural extension programs focused on the needs of Native Americans.

A month after the passage of the bill granting land-grant status to the tribal colleges, the NASULGC board voted to admit AIHEC as a member of the National Association. Thus, in January 1995 the AIHEC became the newest member of NASULGC, the nation's oldest higher education association (Section 14.2).

The twenty-nine tribal colleges are located in twelve states. Most are two-year colleges and technical schools, but three are four-year institutions and one offers a master's degree. While some of the tribal colleges may differ in scope and nature from most other NASULGC institutions, they have an outstanding record in providing educational opportunities to American Indian people. Therefore, their role and mission are highly compatible with the legendary land-grant mission of providing and promoting educational opportunities where they are needed.

The land-grant college and university movement that began so nobly in 1862 in providing "democracy's colleges" is now in the present era demonstrating once again its ability to adapt and change to meet new educational challenges and contingencies for a new century.

The history related in this chapter emphasizes the fact that sound ideas are not always implemented in a timely manner. Twelve years passed from the time Jonathan Baldwin Turner first publicly disclosed his plan for the "Industrial University" and the passage of his plan in 1862. The Land-Grant Act of 1890 was presented 12 times before it passed and was signed into law. Although good ideas may be suppressed for a long time, with the determination, leadership, and tenacity of visionary individuals they are finally embraced by enough people to come to fruition. Indeed, in a democracy, a good idea does not die. The person who spawned and espoused it may be ridiculed and even destroyed, but if the idea is sound, it cannot be killed. In time, some one will see that it resurfaces.

The federal Land-Grant Act of 1862 marked the beginning of one of the most comprehensive and far-reaching provisions for the endowment of higher education ever devised and adopted. It enabled higher education in this great nation to evolve from being a privilege of a minority to a right of the masses. The "land-grant" institutions quickly came to be recognized as "the people's colleges."

Land-grant colleges and universities made all human endeavors legitimate subject matter for scholarship and scientific investigation. Prior to their establishment, academic endeavors were confined largely to history, theology, the arts and letters, the law, and medicine. This stupendous paradigm shift in the character of academe was profoundly democratic. It meant that research could provide scientific insights into -- and answers to -- people's everyday problems. Then, with the advents of the Hatch Act of 1887 and the Smith-Lever Act of 1914, federally funded provisions were made to support not only organized research in agriculture and engineering, but to distribute new knowledge directly to the public through the Cooperative Extension Service as well.

From their inception, the land-grant universities developed in accord with the intentional philosophical bent of service to the public. As these respective institutions have grown and expanded over the years to serve more and more people, groups, business firms, and industry and trade organizations of the entire states in which they are located, new alliances and contracts have been forged with the community, and these have engendered essential public support. This has represented a dramatic shift from the early American tradition in higher education.

Land-grant institutions truly created a new social force in world history. Never before had universities been so closely linked with the daily lives of their clients and constituents. The university campus came to be recognized as one of the most heavily traveled crossroads in America -- an intersection traversed by farmers and ranchers, by homemakers, by persons in other businesses and industries, and by politicians, as well as by students from every part of every state, not to mention many other states and nations. The cloister and the ivory tower, largely male-dominated, were replaced by academic and practical opportunities open to all.

Supporting the land-grant movement was a contribution of the German model to American universities. The German model gave academic respectability to the "land-grant" concept, as German intellectualism and American populism were merged in the new land-grant universities. Pure intellect and raw pragmatism made a successful alliance. In the new land-grant institutions, emphasis was on the application of learning in the service of the best interests of the people.

Again, the unique and most lasting legacy of the land-grant college and university system has been service to the public. That public service is what has forged and maintained the strong partnership between land-grant institutions and the citizens who support them.

Inscribed on a plaque honoring John Milton Gregory, the first president of the University of Illinois, are the following words: If you seek his monument look about you! The University of Illinois, one of this nation's premier land-grant institutions, is a monument not only to President Gregory but to other pioneer educators as well whose aim it has been to make higher education accessible by all people. For it is the people -- the entities who matter most in a democratic, free-enterprise society -- whose lives and professional pursuits have been touched in often remarkable ways by these special land-grant institutions. Indeed, the very course of this great nation for over a century has been determined in large part by the fruits of our marvelous land-grant system of higher education.

From Campbell, John R. Reclaiming a Lost Heritage: Land-Grant and Other Higher Education Initiatives for the Twenty-first Century. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1995.

Reclaiming a Lost Heritage

AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE OF THE LAND-GRANT UNIVERSITY SYSTEM