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Show GENERAL GRANTS TO STATES 335 adopted as the original swampland acts of 1849 and I860.44 Agriculture College Scrip One final act donating land to all the states, not just those in which there was public land, remains to be fitted into this treatment of Federal grants to the states. Off and on since the founding of the American Republic there had been talk about the creation of a national university, an institution at which science, particularly agricultural sciences, could be taught. When the James Smithson fund of a half million dollars came to the United States there were many who hoped it might be the means of creating a technical school that could aid America in catching up with the best of technical science abroad. Failing that, educators looked to Congress where manufacturers, commercial and transportation interests, and shipping leaders were lobbying to secure subsidies. Elsewhere we have seen how the Agricultural College Act, often referred to as the Morrill Act, was introduced by Justin Smith Morrill, Representative from Vermont, was adopted and signed by Abraham Lincoln on July 2, 1862. It gave to the states not in rebellion 30,000 acres for each Representative and Senator they had in the Congress for the purpose of endowing colleges of agricultural and mechanic arts. States having no public lands were to be given scrip which they were required to sell. They were not permitted to exchange the scrip for land in western states for obvious jurisdictional reasons. Three states evaded, directly or indirectly, this restriction in the act. Rhode Island gave its scrip to Brown University, which entered 46,000 acres in Kansas and then, fearing it had violated the law, sold the remaining scrip and the land for about 42 cents an acre. Illinois conveyed its scrip 44 Land Office Reports, 1929, p. 16 and 1932, p. 22; Public Land Statistics, 1963, pp. 6, 7, 9. to the new state university, then called Illinois Industrial University, which entered some 26,000 acres in Minnesota and years later reaped a fine return when the land was sold. New York sold a portion of its scrip to Ezra Cornell who located a half million acres in Wisconsin which he, and later the trustees, held for the University he founded. The balance of the older states which were eager to obtain funds for colleges dumped their scrip in a depressed market and received well below the $1.25 an acre price. At the conclusion of the war the southern states, when "reconstructed," were given their share of agricultural college scrip and were fortunate enough, because of improved market conditions, to sell it for better prices than had prevailed during 1864-66. The five public land states of the South-Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi -although they possessed over 47 million acres of public land, had to accept scrip because the Southern Homestead Act of 1866 forbade the disposal of land in those states except as homesteads. Congress, under the leadership of George W. Julian, had been persuaded to try this modest experiment in land reform. The measure was thoroughly disliked by southerners because it prevented them from gaining control of an additional portion of their lands and because they felt its obvious discriminatory character, for it only applied to those states. Thus Florida with 17,540,374 acres of public land and Arkansas with 11,757,662 acres were both denied the right to select from these lands the acreage to which they were entitled under the Morrill Act. They had the consolation, however, of selling their scrip at much higher prices than most northern states received. The Morrill Act did not go far in placing land under the control of the public land states for only 3,520,000 acres were conveyed to them, whereas 7,700,000 acres in scrip were given to the more populous and older |