Early attempts The idea of publicly funded agricultural colleges had existed for much of the history of the United States. President
George Washington called for public support of agricultural education in his 1796 address to
Congress. For most of the early 19th century, the idea was prevalent among the
Whig Party and what would become the
Midwest. The idea to fund agricultural colleges with public land appropriations was championed by agriculturist and professor
Jonathan Baldwin Turner of
Illinois College in the 1830s. Efforts for a federal bill were stymied by
antebellum politics.
Southern legislators blocked attempts for an agricultural college bill. However, some Northern states introduced and funded their own, years prior to the national bill. The
Michigan Constitution of 1850 called for the creation of an "agricultural school", though it was not until February 12, 1855, that Michigan
governor 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, which served as a model for the Morrill Act. 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 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.
The Morrill Act of 1862 Morrill and his Republican allies saw a new opportunity to pass an agricultural college bill. The secession of Southern states meant there would be far less opposition. In 1861, Morrill resubmitted the act with the amendment that the proposed institutions would teach military tactics as well as engineering and agriculture. The reconfigured Morrill Act was signed into law by President
Abraham Lincoln on July 2, 1862. The 1862 act provided each state land
scrip for of public land for each of its representatives and senators in Congress. Sale of this scrip funded the beginning of land-grant colleges. The act stipulated these funds be used for theendowment, 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.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 of several
Southern states and the contemporaneously raging
American Civil War. Upon reentry into the Union, states received their land scrip for an agricultural college. campus, 1878 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. The first land-grant institution actually created under the Act was
Kansas State University, which was established in 1863. Each state had wide discretion on how to use its funds. Some states added agricultural and mechanic colleges to their already existing flagship university, as with the
University of Wisconsin and the
University of Georgia. Some states created new state colleges separate from their flagship institutions, as with what would become
Mississippi State University or expanded their new agricultural colleges (as with
Michigan State University). Some states did not have a state college of any kind in 1862, and used their land-grant funds to create one, as with the
University of Nevada. Once new states were incorporated in the United States, they were able to access land-grant funds (as with the
University of Nebraska), and eventually, federal territories started their agricultural colleges before statehood. The latest school created with funds via the 1862 Act was the
University of Alaska Fairbanks, founded in 1917.
The granted land If the federal land within a state was insufficient to meet that state's land grant, the state was issued
scrip, 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 to fund
Cornell University. 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.
Morrill Act of 1890 students at work on the school farm The second Morrill Act was aimed at the former
Confederate states. By 1890, efforts to
reconstruct the South and create a biracial democracy had failed, and
white supremacy was law.
Black students were
barred from public institutions, including schools. The 1890 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. Southern states decided on the latter. 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.
Equity in Educational Land-Grant Status Act of 1994 The 1994 expansion added
tribal colleges and universities to the land-grant system. Like the 1890 schools, they are not funded via land grants but are considered land-grant schools in accordance with the 1862 Morrill Act. 1994 schools receive Congressional apportionments, are chartered by
American Indian nations, and predominantly enroll Native students. There are 35 1994 land-grant schools, as of 2023. == Related legislation ==