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| Senator Justin Morrill Photo courtesy Library of Congress |
Hometown Hero: Justin Morrill
SUSAN CLOKE, Columnist
Santa Monica Mirror
September 14, 2012
Justin Morrill, 1810 – 1898, is a hero in every
American hometown. We have all benefited from his historic
piece of legislation, The Morrill Act, creating the Land Grant Colleges.
If you went to UCLA you went to a Land Grant
College. Now, 150 years
after the passage of the Act every State has at least one college or university
made possible by the Morrill Act and, with the exception of MIT and Cornell, they
are all public. If you want
to know if you went to a Land Grant college go to: http://www.highered.org/resources/land_grant_colleges.htm
The Act provided each state with 30,000 acres of
Federal land for each member in their Congressional Delegation. Since every state has two senators and
at least one representative even the smallest state received 90,000 acres. The land was then sold by the states
and the proceeds used to fund public colleges.
During the Civil War, President Lincoln signed
into law, on July 2 1862, the first Morrill Act. 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."
Every state that had remained in the Union
received a grant of 30,000 acres of public land for every member of its
Congressional Delegation. Originally sixty-nine colleges were funded by land grants,
including Cornell University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and
the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Previous attempts to pass the Act had been
blocked by legislators from Southern States. With succession, and the absence of the Southern
Legislators, Morrill again introduced the Act and was successful. In 1890, after the Civil War, Morrill
proposed and was successful in passing a second Morrill Act, specifically for
the purpose of extending the Act to the sixteen southern states that had formed
the Confederacy.
Morrill was the son of the town blacksmith in
Strafford Vermont. At the
beginning of our country’s history we had universal education only for
children. University was only for
the privileged. Morrill wanted to
go to college, but his family didn’t have the money. Instead he became a 19th century merchant and
eventually owned and operated four successful general stores, which in the 19th
century allowed him, even required him, to develop the skills of a trader, an
accountant, a lawyer, a postman, a politician and a diplomat.
He was so successful that he was able, at age
38, to retire from business, to pursue his interests in architecture and
horticulture and to become the Congressman and then the Senator from
Vermont. He started as a Whig but
became a Republican, having joined the ‘Party of Lincoln.’ At that time in history the Republican
Party was known as the “party of the working man.”
Strafford Vermont, the birthplace of Justin
Morrill www.morrillhomestead.org,
celebrated the sesquicentennial of the Morrill Act this summer with a symposium,
symposium@morrillhomestead.org,
“Carrying forward Justin Morrill’s vision for the future of higher education in
the 21st Century.”
Welcoming the audience to the symposium, Vermont
State Senator Dick McCormack said, “the austere, angular dignity and probity of
our Yankee ancestors are expressed in the architecture of this town house where
we gather together today.”
Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, Rutgers University
Professor Clement Price, and John Merrow, NPR and PBS education correspondent were
among the featured speakers.
Correspondent
John Merrow set the tone for the symposium lamenting the fall of the number of U.S.
students graduating from college and university so that we are now in 20th
place internationally. He said, “America
had historically recognized investing in people was good for the country.”
Merrow
told the audience, “The challenge of education is to create new leaders, to
create the desire to be part of something bigger than oneself. We’ve lost our way in education. We’re thinking small. Education is exploration. The job of
education is to grow citizens. Instead we have monetized education. Public support used to be in
grants but now two-thirds of graduates have debt and being in debt when you
graduate changes your life and career choices making it harder to go into
service careers as a result.
Professor
Clement Price spoke eloquently of the “coming apart of the Union and the long,
nightmarish, brutal Civil War.”
Price
lauded the 1868 Land Grant Act saying, “Morrill’s vision of a nation of
ordinary, but educated Americans was an expansion of democracy. The 2nd Morrill Act, passed
in 1890, “must be placed alongside the Emancipation Proclamation as education
was associated with a new birth of freedom” he said.
“With
emancipation from slavery the work of freedom could begin. The sons, and later the daughters, of
ordinary people could begin the path to the American century.
Price
warned, “The Legacy of Land Grant Act has been interrupted – education is at
risk and so is the American future.
When Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation there existed an ethos
of social good, the abolitionists and other reformers embraced a vision of
social good, an expansion of the American Revolution, the promise of American
citizenship. By comparison our
time is seemingly bereft.”
Vermont
Senator Patrick Leahy closed the Symposium with these words; “We cannot
overstate how much the Morrill Act made millions of people’s lives better due
to his vision and values. Morrill’s commitment to education, to agriculture, to
lifelong learning, to business, to architecture, to horticulture and to
political service defined his life.”
We
in Santa Monica have shown our commitment to education but as we begin the new
school year are we asking the right questions? Are we, in the words of the speakers at the Symposium,
“thinking big”? Are we “educating
citizens”, are we “expanding democracy” and “carrying on the work of
freedom”? Aren’t these the
questions we, and every generation, must ask and answer if we are to pass on
the values that created this nation to the next generation?
