The Morrill Act of 1862: Its Generational Impact on Higher Education and at the University of Tennessee

By: Taylor Boyer

The Morrill Act of 1862 (the “Act”) has “shaped America’s knowledge-based democracy” and opened the doors of higher education to millions of people.¹ The Act was signed by President Lincoln as a response to the growing demand for agricultural and technical education in the United States as higher education was widely unavailable for the working class.² The bill was introduced by United States Congressman Justin Morrill of Vermont during “some of the worst fighting of the Civil War” and at a time when the federal government was “cash-poor but land rich”.³ Morrill, the son of a blacksmith who had to leave high school at the age of fifteen due to his parents’ limited financial means, recognized “at the very onset of proposing his bill, the full and far-reaching implications of fundamental change in American higher education.”⁴ Having “only the modern equivalent of an elementary-school education” and thereafter self-taught, Morrill was an entrepreneur and investor, retired at age thirty-eight, and then spent the next forty-four years of his life in Congress dedicating his career to advocating for significant changes in higher education.⁵

Prior to the Act, the landscape of colleges and universities in the United States consisted of ninety-seven percent liberal arts colleges with little focus on agriculture as most were “modeled around European institutions that existed to educate the male leisure class, government, and religious leaders, along with members of the professions.”⁶ With the Act, a new concept of higher education was introduced based on the premise that everyone should have access to education and that such education was a vehicle for further opportunities.⁷ In a speech to his home state’s legislature in 1888, Morrill described the purpose of the Act as providing “an opportunity in every state for a liberal and larger education to larger numbers, not merely to those destined to sedentary professions, but to those needing higher instruction for the world’s business, for the industrial pursuits, and professions of life.”⁸

With the Act, 30,000 acres of federally controlled land was designated for every senator and representative in each state.⁹ States would then either sell the land to fund the creation of a new public college or university and create endowments with the proceeds of the sale of the real estate or states could use the land to physically expand an existing college or university.¹⁰ The institutions would then be known as “land-grant” colleges and universities also known as “LGUs” or “people’s colleges.”¹¹ These LGUs would focus their teaching on practical agriculture, mechanical arts, military tactics, and engineering in addition to the traditional liberal arts education.¹²

Today, there are 105 public and seven private LGUs including thirty-five tribal colleges and nineteen historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).¹³ These institutions include the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Clemson University, the University of Georgia, and the University of Tennessee, just to name a few.¹⁴ In total, over seventeen million acres were given to provide practical teaching focused on non-liberal arts studies.¹⁵ These LGUs enroll approximately three million students each year,¹⁶ spend more than $13 billion for “teaching, research, and public service” every year,¹⁷ and have graduated tens of millions of Americans, eleven of which have been former Presidents of the United States.¹⁸ These LGUs have notably been in the forefront of advocating for equality and inclusion as they were amongst the first to offer educational opportunities for minorities and women.¹⁹

When the time came to grant Tennessee a portion of land, there were no available public lands in Tennessee. Therefore, the University received public lands from those available in the western portion of the United States in the form of a land scrip.²⁰ By 1869, East Tennessee University, which was later renamed the University of Tennessee in 1879, received a scrip for 300,000 acres. This land was sold to one person, G.F. Lewis, an Ohio broker for approximately $0.90 per acre totaling over $270,000. The value of the total sales price in today’s dollars is said to equal over $5,000,000,000.²¹

With a portion of these funds, and in conjunction with the new mission of being accessible to all social classes and Tennesseans in general, Charles Dabney, the University of Tennessee’s eleventh President, led the expansion of the University.²² President Dabney established a college of agriculture in 1869, a new science, engineering, medical, and dental curricula, created the school of law in 1890, which in 1911 would be renamed the College of Law, doubled the size of the faculty, tripled the student body, and in 1892, oversaw the admission of women students.²³

Today, the University of Tennessee, through Chancellor Donde Plowman and President Randy Boyd, intentionally embraces the spirit of the Morrill Act and the University’s stature as a Land-Grant Institution by leaning into what it means to serve students from Tennessee and beyond and to prepare them in more practical professions that are widely considered the backbone of our country.²⁴ Introduced by a man who himself was not afforded the opportunity to be formally educated, the Act which bears his name represents the value he placed on education and the impact he knew education could have on an individual and on a nation.²⁵

   

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¹ Erin Allen, Laurels for Morrill, Libr. of Cong. Blogs, (June 19, 2012), https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2012/06/laurels-for-morrill/.

² Morrill Act of 1890, Ala. A&M Univ., https://www.aamu.edu/about/our-history/morril-act-1890.html (last visited Oct. 1, 2023); Land Grant Institutions: An Overview, Nat’l Educ. Assoc., https://www.nea.org/sites/default/files/2022-03/Land%20Grant%20Institutions%20-%20An%20Overview.pdf (last visited Oct. 1, 2023).

³ Ted Widmer, Justin Morrill, The Man Behind America’s Higher Education, The Boston Globe, (June 18, 2015), https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2015/06/18/justinmorrill/OVsD2QnwPQJrcXCb7YqZZK/story.html.

⁴ Justin S. Morrill, U.S. Senate, https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Justin_S_Morrill.htm (last visited Oct. 16, 2023).

⁵ Id.; see Allen, supra note 1.

⁶ G. Moore, The 1862 Land-Grant Colleges, The Friday Footnote, (Apr. 19, 2019), https://footnote.wordpress.ncsu.edu/2019/04/19/the-1862-land-grant-colleges-4-19-2019/; Martin C. Jischke, Adapting Justin Morrill’s Vision to a New Century, Purdue Univ., (Nov. 16, 2004), https://www.purdue.edu/uns/html3month/2004/041114.Jischke.mrl.html.

⁷ Martin C. Jischke, Adapting Justin Morrill’s Vision to a New Century, Purdue Univ., (Nov. 16, 2004), https://www.purdue.edu/uns/html3month/2004/041114.Jischke.mrl.html.

⁸ Id.

⁹ Land-grant Universities, Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/land-grant-university (last visited Oct. 1, 2023).

¹⁰ Id. See Land-Grant University FAQ, Ass’n of Pub. & Land-Grant Univ., https://www.aplu.org/about- us/history-of-aplu/what-is-a-land-grant-university/ (last visited Oct. 1, 2023).

¹¹ Donde Plowman, Investiture, Office of the Chancellor, https://chancellor.utk.edu/about-the-chancellor/investiture/ (last visited Oct. 1, 2023).

¹² Britannica, supra note 9.

¹³ Land Grant Institutions: An Overview, Nat’l Educ. Ass’n, https://www.nea.org/sites/default/files/2022-03/Land%20Grant%20Institutions%20-%20An%20Overview.pdf (last visited Oct. 1, 2023).

¹⁴ Id.

¹⁵ Morrill Act (1862), Nat’l Archives, https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/morrill-act (last visited Oct. 16, 2023); U.S. Senate, supra note 4.

¹⁶ Jischke, supra note 7.

¹⁷ Id.

¹⁸ Widmer, supra note 3.

¹⁹ Jischke, supra note 7.

²⁰ Betsey B. Creekmore, Land-Grant Endowment (Morrill Act of 1862), Volopedia, https://volopedia.lib.utk.edu/entries/land-grant-endowment-morrill-act-of-1862/ (last visited Oct. 1, 2023).

²¹ Id.; see 1869, The Univ. of Tenn., https://timeline.utk.edu/history/land-grant-designation (last visited Oct. 16, 2023).

²² Creekmore, supra note 20; History of the University of Tennessee, The Univ. of Tenn., https://tennessee.edu/history/ (last visited Oct. 1, 2023); Donde Plowman, Investiture, Office of the Chancellor, https://chancellor.utk.edu/about-the-chancellor/investiture/ (last visited Oct. 1, 2023).

²³ See supra note 22.

²⁴ Building Momentum, Cityview, https://cityviewmag.com/boyd-plowman/ (last visited Oct. 1, 2023).

²⁵ Allen, supra note 1.