Morrill Act
Sponsored by Vermont Congressman Justin Morrill, the Morrill
Act was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln
on July 2, 1862. Officially titled "An Act Donating
Public Lands to the Several States and Territories which
may provide Colleges for the Benefit of Agriculture and
the Mechanic Arts," the Morrill Act provided each
state with 30,000 acres of Federal land for each member
in their Congressional delegation. The land was then sold
by the states and the proceeds used to fund public colleges
that focused on agriculture and the mechanical arts. Sixty-nine
colleges were funded by these land grants, including Cornell
University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
and the University of Wisconsin at
Madison.
Library of
Congress Web Site | External Web
Sites | Selected
Bibliography
A
Century of Lawmaking
for a New Nation
The
Senate passed the Morrill Act by a vote of 32 to 7
on June 10, 1862. The House
of Representatives passed this act by a vote of 90
to 25 on June 17, 1862.
Search
this collection in the 37th Congress using the phrase
"donating public lands" in order to find additional
material on the Morrill Act.
Abraham
Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress
The Minnesota Legislature passed a Joint
Resolution on Congressional Donation of Lands for Agricultural
and Mechanical College on January 27, 1863.
The
Nineteenth Century in Print: Periodicals
This collection contains two Nineteenth Century articles
from The
Atlantic Monthly that discuss the Morrill Act: "Progress
in Agriculture by Education and Government Aid" from
1882 and "The
State University in America" from 1891.
October 7, 1868
Cornell University welcomed its first students on October
7, 1868. Located near Lake Cayuga in Ithaca, New York,
Cornell is one of 69 institutions founded
with federal funds under the provision of the Morrill Act of 1862.
Backgrounder
on the Morrill Act, Department of State
Our
Documents, Morrill Act, National Archives and Records
Administration
Anderson, G. Lester, ed. Land-Grant
Universities and Their Continuing Challenge. East Lansing: Michigan State University
Press, 1976. [Catalog
Record]
Cross, Coy F. Justin Smith Morrill: Father
of the Land-Grant Colleges. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press,
1999. [Catalog
Record]
Eddy, Edward Danforth. Colleges for
Our Land and Time; The Land-Grant Idea in American Education. Westport, Conn.:
Greenwood Press, 1973. [Catalog
Record]
Edmond, Joseph Bailey. The Magnificent
Charter: The Origin and Role of the Morrill Land-Grant
Colleges and Universities.
Hicksville, N.Y.: Exposition Press, 1978. [Catalog
Record]
Nevins, Allan. The Origins of the
Land-Grant Colleges and State Universities: A Brief Account
of the Morrill
Act of 1862 and Its Results. Washington: Civil War Centennial
Commission, 1962. [Catalog
Record]
Williams, Roger L. The Origins of
Federal Support for Higher Education: George W. Atherton
and the Land-Grant
College Movement. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 1991. [Catalog
Record]
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