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The Morrill Land-Grant Acts are
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s that allowed for the creation of land-grant colleges in U.S. states using the proceeds from sales of federally owned land, often obtained from Native American tribes through treaty, cession, or seizure. The Morrill Act of 1862 (12 Stat. 503 (1862) later codified as et seq.) was enacted during the
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, and the Morrill Act of 1890 (the Agricultural College Act of 1890 (, later codified as et seq.)) expanded this model.


Passage of original bill

Beginning in the 1830s, a political movement called for the creation of agriculture colleges. The movement was led by Professor Jonathan Baldwin Turner of Illinois College. For example, the Michigan Constitution of 1850 called for the creation of an "agricultural school", though it was not until February 12, 1855, that Michigan
governor A governor is an politician, administrative leader and head of a polity or Region#Political regions, political region, in some cases, such as governor-general, governors-general, as the head of a state's official representative. Depending on the ...
Kinsley S. Bingham signed a bill establishing the United States' first agriculture college, the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, known today as
Michigan State University Michigan State University (Michigan State or MSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan, United States. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State o ...
, which served as a model for the Morrill Act.Milestones of MSU's Sesquicentennial
". MSU University Archives and Historical Collection. Retrieved March 5, 2008.
On February 8, 1853, the Illinois Legislature adopted a resolution, drafted by Turner, calling for the Illinois congressional delegation to work to enact a land-grant bill to fund a system of industrial colleges, one in each state. Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois believed it was advisable that the bill should be introduced by an eastern congressman, and two months later Representative Justin Smith Morrill of
Vermont Vermont () is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, New York (state), New York to the west, and the Provinces and territories of Ca ...
introduced his bill. Unlike the Turner Plan, which provided an equal grant to each state, the Morrill bill allocated land based on the number of senators and representatives each state had in Congress. This was more advantageous to the more populous eastern states. The Morrill Act was first proposed in 1857, and was passed by Congress in 1859, but it was vetoed by President James Buchanan. In 1861, Morrill resubmitted the act with the amendment that the proposed institutions would teach military tactics as well as engineering and agriculture. Aided by the secession of many states that did not support the plans, the reconfigured Morrill Act was signed into law by President
Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th president of the United States, serving from 1861 until Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, his assassination in 1865. He led the United States through the American Civil War ...
on July 2, 1862.


Land-grant colleges

The purpose of the land-grant colleges was:
without excluding other scientific and classical studies and including military tactic, 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.
From the early to mid-19th century the federal government, through 162 violence-backed cessions, expropriated approximately 10.7 million acres of land from 245 tribal nations and divided it into roughly 80,000 parcels for redistribution. Under the act, each eligible state received of federal land, either within or contiguous to its boundaries, for each member of congress the state had as of the census of 1860. This land, or the proceeds from its sale, was to be used toward establishing and funding the educational institutions described above. Under provision six of the Act, "No State while in a condition of rebellion or insurrection against the government of the United States shall be entitled to the benefit of this act," in reference to the recent
secession Secession is the formal withdrawal of a group from a Polity, political entity. The process begins once a group proclaims an act of secession (such as a declaration of independence). A secession attempt might be violent or peaceful, but the goal i ...
of several Southern states and the contemporaneously raging
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. However, after the war, in the 1870s, Mississippi, Virginia, and South Carolina each assigned one African American college land grant status; these were, respectively, Alcorn University, Hampton Institute, and Claflin University. In 1890 the 1862 Act was extended to the former Confederate states (see below for more detailed information), and it was eventually extended to every state and territory, including those created after 1862. If the federal land within a state was insufficient to meet that state's land grant, the state was issued
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which authorized the state to select federal lands in other states to fund its institution. For example, New York carefully selected valuable timber land in
Wisconsin Wisconsin ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest of the United States. It borders Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michig ...
to fund
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. The resulting management of this scrip by the university yielded one third of the total grant revenues generated by all the states, even though New York received only one-tenth of the 1862 land grant. Overall, the 1862 Morrill Act allocated of land, which when sold yielded a collective endowment of $7.55 million. On September 12, 1862, the state of Iowa was the first to accept the terms of the Morrill Act which provided the funding boost needed for the fledgling State Agricultural College and Model Farm (eventually renamed Iowa State University of Science and Technology). The first land-grant institution actually created under the Act was Kansas State University, which was established on February 16, 1863, and opened on September 2, 1863. The land grant colleges transformed
engineering Engineering is the practice of using natural science, mathematics, and the engineering design process to Problem solving#Engineering, solve problems within technology, increase efficiency and productivity, and improve Systems engineering, s ...
education in America and boosted the United States into a position of leader in technical education. Before the Civil War, American colleges primarily trained students in
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and the
liberal arts Liberal arts education () is a traditional academic course in Western higher education. ''Liberal arts'' takes the term ''skill, art'' in the sense of a learned skill rather than specifically the fine arts. ''Liberal arts education'' can refe ...
. For the most part, only the relatively affluent could afford higher education, and entrance requirements often required proficiency in the dead languages of
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and
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. The first Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degrees, which typically required no Latin, came into being around 1850. American engineers were mostly educated at the United States Military Academy, on fortress construction, and their instructors were the authors of most engineering texts of the day. The Morrill Act changed all of that. Though the Congressional debates about the Act were largely focused on benefits to agriculture, the mechanic arts were specifically included in the Act's language, meaning
applied science Applied science is the application of the scientific method and scientific knowledge to attain practical goals. It includes a broad range of disciplines, such as engineering and medicine. Applied science is often contrasted with basic science, ...
s and
engineering Engineering is the practice of using natural science, mathematics, and the engineering design process to Problem solving#Engineering, solve problems within technology, increase efficiency and productivity, and improve Systems engineering, s ...
. The Act prohibited spending the endowment on constructing buildings as expensive and unnecessary, so instead the tools for engineering education increased, such as textbooks, laboratories and equipment. The number of engineers skyrocketed. Whereas in 1866 there were around 300 American men who had graduated with engineering degrees and only six reputable colleges granting them, just four years later there were 21 colleges offering engineering degrees and the total number of engineers graduated had tripled to 866. The following decade added another 2,249 engineers, and by 1911 the United States was graduating 3,000 engineers a year, with a total of 38,000 in the work force. At the time, Germany was graduating 1,800 engineers per year. The US had become the leader in technical education just 50 years after passage of the Morrill Act. With a few exceptions (including Cornell University and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...
), nearly all of the land-grant colleges are public. (Cornell University, while private, administers several state-supported statutory colleges that fulfill its public land-grant mission to the state of New York.) To maintain their status as land-grant colleges, a number of programs are required to be maintained by the college. These include programs in
agriculture Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created ...
and
engineering Engineering is the practice of using natural science, mathematics, and the engineering design process to Problem solving#Engineering, solve problems within technology, increase efficiency and productivity, and improve Systems engineering, s ...
, as well as a Reserve Officers' Training Corps program.


Expansion

The second Morrill Act (1890) was also aimed at the former Confederate states. This act required each state to show that race was not an admissions criterion, or else to designate a separate land-grant institution for African Americans. Thus, the second Morrill Act facilitated segregated education, although it also provided higher educational opportunities for African Americans who otherwise would not have had them. Among the seventy colleges and universities which eventually evolved from the Morrill Acts are several of today's historically Black colleges and universities. Though the 1890 Act granted cash instead of land, it granted colleges under that act the same legal standing as the 1862 Act colleges; hence the term "land-grant college" properly applies to both groups. Later on, other colleges such as the University of the District of Columbia and the "1994 land-grant colleges" for Native Americans were also awarded cash by Congress in lieu of land to achieve "land-grant" status. In imitation of the land-grant colleges' focus on agricultural and mechanical research, Congress later established programs of sea grant colleges (aquatic research, in 1966), urban grant colleges (urban research, in 1985), space grant colleges (space research, in 1988), and sun grant colleges (sustainable energy research, in 2003).


Agricultural experiment stations and cooperative extension service

Starting in 1887, Congress also funded
agricultural experiment station An agricultural experiment station (AES) or agricultural research station (ARS) is a scientific research center that investigates difficulties and potential improvements to food production and agribusiness. Experiment station scientists work with ...
s and various categories of agricultural and veterinary research "under direction of" the land-grant universities. Congress later recognized the need to disseminate the knowledge gained at the land-grant colleges to farmers and homemakers. The Smith–Lever Act of 1914 started federal funding of cooperative extension, with the land-grant universities' agents being sent to virtually every county of every state. In some states, the annual federal appropriations to the land-grant college under these laws exceed the current income from the investment of the sales proceeds of the original land grants. In the fiscal year 2006 USDA budget, $1.033 billion went to research and cooperative extension activities nationwide. For this purpose, then President
George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician and businessman who was the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Bush family and the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he i ...
proposed a $1.035 billion appropriation for fiscal year 2008. File:Morrill Act 150th Anniversary Celebration, June 23, 2012 36.JPG, Celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the Morrill Act, at the
Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...
, June 23, 2012 File:Morrill Act 150th Anniversary Celebration, June 23, 2012 35.jpg, James H. Billington and Vartan Gregorian at the Celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the Morrill Act, 2012


See also

* Agricultural Experiment Stations Act of 1887 * Association of Public and Land-grant Universities *
Hatch Act of 1887 The Hatch Act of 1887 (ch. 314, , enacted 1887-03-02, et seq.) gave federal funds, initially $15,000 each, to state land-grant colleges in order to create a series of agricultural experiment stations, as well as pass along new information, e ...
*
Land-grant university A land-grant university (also called land-grant college or land-grant institution) is an institution of higher education in the United States designated by a state to receive the benefits of the Morrill Land-Grant Acts, Morrill Acts of 1862 and ...
* List of land-grant universities * Manual labor college * Smith-Lever Act of 1914 *
United States Department of Agriculture The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is an executive department of the United States federal government that aims to meet the needs of commercial farming and livestock food production, promotes agricultural trade and producti ...


References


Further reading

*Cross, Coy F. ''Justin Smith Morrill, Father of the Land-Grant Colleges.'' Michigan State University Press: 1999.
online
* Singh, Vineeta. "Inclusion or acquisition? Learning about justice, education, and property from the Morrill Land-Grant Acts." ''Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies'' 43.5 (2021): 419–439. * Sorber, Nathan M. ''Land-grant colleges and popular revolt: The origins of the Morrill Act and the reform of higher education'' (Cornell University Press, 2018
online

Lee, Robert and Tristan Ahtone. 2020. "How They Did It: Exposing How U.S. Universities Profited From Indigenous Land" PulitzerCenter.org

Wallenstein, Peter. 2018. "The Morrill Land Grant College Act of 1862 : seedbed of the American system of public universities." ''Civil War Congress and the creation of modern America : a revolution on the home front.'' Ohio University Press.

Zdzienicka Fanshe, Rosalie. 2020. "The Morrill Act as Racial Contract: Settler-Colonialism and U.S. Higher Education" EScholarship.org


External links

* * A radio documentary on the Morrill Land-Grant Acts. {{Authority control 1862 in American law 37th United States Congress * History of universities and colleges in the United States United States federal agriculture legislation United States federal public land legislation