The Morrill Act: the building of a country

First proposed in 1857 and passed in 1859, President Lincoln signed the first Morrill Act on July 2, 1862, whereby the federal government granted each state 30,000 acres of public land for each member of congress that state had. In exchange, the states would sell the land and create an endowment meant to support the establishment and perpetuation of institutes of higher learning.

UGA historian Nash Boney:

As soon as the war ended the Confederate states were allowed to get their share of public lands, which in 1866 translated into $243,000 for Georgia. For five years nothing was done with this bonanza, but just before time ran out, the state turned the funds over to the University of Georgia, which by state law had to invest them to generate an annual income of around $16,000.

Thus in 1872 the Georgia State College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts was established at the university in Athens. Technically it was a separate school, and unlike the old university, it charged no tuition and required no entrance examination. Yet in reality, the two schools were one, with the same faculty, the same facilities, the same board of trustees. Even the president of the new school, William Leroy Broun, had long been a professor of natural philosophy (science) at the university.

The sponsors of the Morrill Act had not envisioned such a close, almost parasitic relationship, which allowed the old university to soak up the interest on the original federal funds while maintaining a near total dominance over the A&M College. But this arrangement probably saved the university during the long, hard decades after the Civil War. By 1873 Georgia had over three hundred students; more than half of them were enrolled in the A&M College, which was crowded into Philosophical Hall. Certainly the new arrangement reinvigorated the university and allowed it to try to continue the reforms and expansion started in 1859.

There's more, much more, to this rich history of how our modern public university system, quite deliberately but also not without some luck, came into being. Throughout its 150th birthday this year the Morril Act will be celebrated far and wide, and we should use the occasion to remember how the people of the United States committed themselves to public education through the Morrill Land-Grant Acts, even coming out of one of the country's darkest periods.

Posted, as usual, from an office in the oldest standing structure in the Athens area.