In this exhibit you can learn about the new system of higher education created by the Morrill Act of 1862, which used proceeds from Native lands in the West to fund agricultural and mechanical colleges throughout the United States. By Kenny Barnes.
THE MORRILL ACT OF 1862
A vital piece of legislation in the history of United States education, the Morrill Act of 1862 allowed for the creation of the land-grant colleges and is often praised for democratizing higher education across the country. At the time, a college education was not the foundation to financial success as it is widely considered today. The vast majority of Americans, including white men, never attended. Justin Morrill himself, for whom the act is named, never attended college and still managed to find great financial success which allowed him to retire and pursue his career in politics.
With his name tied to an act that made college education a reality for thousands of working class Americans, Morrill is often regarded as a progressive champion of democracy. However, during his political career he impeded other efforts to improve the lives of individual Americans. A strong defender of capitalist industry, Morrill voted against progressive reforms including the 8-hour work day, the direct election of senators, and women’s suffrage. Serving on the Committee of Agriculture, Morrill sought to modernize the nation's agriculture by taking a more scientific approach. He envisioned land-grant colleges advancing the nation by producing specialists who would bring about agricultural and industrial innovation, and workers with productive skills. Although he often referenced his “deprivation of school” as a motivating factor for his Land-Grant Act, Morrill viewed land-grant colleges more as an opportunity to bring about greater “productivity” and “usefulness” in American workers rather than a means of democratizing education across the nation.
Justin Morrill pictured, 1855-1856. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Pictured is a family moving west in the pursuit of a homestead. The Homestead Act of 1862 allowed every adult American to claim up to 160 acres of public domain land in the west in exchange for developing and maintaining the land. Many westerners sought to preserve the land for pioneers such as them rather than see eastern schools profit from it. Photo courtesy of the National Archives.
Before 1862, prior calls had been made by Justin Morill and others for agricultural and mechanical education at the college level. In Virginia, several governors urged VMI and UVA towards agricultural chemistry and mechanical education. In December 1857, Morrill himself presented a bill that proposed “donating public lands to the several states [to create institutions of higher learning] for the benefit of agriculture and the mechanical arts.” Morrill proposed that each state would be granted 20,000 acres of federal “public domain” lands in the west for each senator and representative. States would then sell the land, invest the profits, and use the proceeds to fund land-grant colleges specializing in agricultural and mechanical arts. The House passed the bill quickly, but it ran into opposition in the Senate, as westerners sought to preserve the land for their use and southerners were concerned about federal intervention into state issues amid increasing pressure to preserve slavery in southern states. After the bill narrowly passed the Senate in 1859, President Buchanan sided with the minority opposition and vetoed it, arguing that the act overstepped federal authority.
Fast forward three years to 1862, eleven southern states had seceded from the Union, and Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans were in control of Congress and the White House. Still determined to advance American agriculture through his land-grant system, Justin Morrill presented an amended version of his 1857 Land-Grant Act. This updated proposal increased acreage awarded to states from 20,000 to 30,000 acres per electoral college vote, and required the institute to offer instruction in military tactics, a reflection of the war raging across the country at the time.
Pictured are Virginia Tech's Corps WWI Cadets in formation. VT, along with all other land-grant universities was required to offer instruction in "military tactics" in order to receive public lands from the Morrill Act.
Signed into law by President Lincoln on July 2, 1862, the act specified that states convert the land to cash and invest the proceeds at a minimum return of 5%. The annual return on investment was to be used for 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.” The phrase “of the industrial class” earned the act a reputation as the great equalizer of American higher education. In reality however, several colleges granted land-grant status continued to operate exclusively for the elite. In 1885 for example, the farmers in North Carolina complained that the University of North Carolina, their state’s original land-grant college, remained a realm of the elite, with little agricultural or mechanical education available. The Farmers’ Alliance and the Kings of Labor launched a campaign to divert funding from UNC to a new North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanical arts (today known as North Carolina State).
New York State Morrill Act Land Scrip, Piece No.1189.
States received the land from the Morrill Act in the form of scrip, pictured above. This scrip was typically then sold to speculators and proceeds were reinvested. Image courtesy of Cornell University Library.
Which schools received Morrill Act funding was decided at the state level. The majority of eastern states did not have public state universities at the time, so states either designated existing institutions (public or private) as the state’s land-grant college or used the funds to establish a new college entirely. This is where some confusion over the meaning of a land-grant college typically arrives for most people. The Morrill Act of 1862 did not create all the land-grant colleges of today. Instead it created a program that used “public land” to get states the funds required to support agricultural and mechanical colleges. As you will read later, much of the “public land” used to fund the endowments of the 52 Land-Grant Universities was obtained through conquest and broken treaties with indigenous tribes. So, while many today celebrate the Morrill Act as the democratizer of American education, we must remind ourselves of who truly paid the price.
