Land Grant Universities

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Ted Widmer, The Unlikely Man Who Built American Higher Ed; As the Civil War raged, a Vermont congressman wrote a bill that created new public universities--and reshaped the country. Boston Globe, June 21, 2015.
www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2015/0 ... Cb7YqZZK/story.html

Except in the window of print: Both the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were born of the Morrill Act.

Note:
(a) At the end of the article is an introduction to the writer: "Ted Widmer is assistant to the president for special projects at Brown University."

That is the president of Brown University, not United States.
(b) Skip the first four paragraphs, which are inane.

(c) "He [Justin Smith Morrill] was born in the small town of Strafford, where his modest house still stands, with a charming garden and library"
(i) Justin Smith Morrill
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Smith_Morrill
(1810-1898; a Representative (1855–1867) and a Senator (1867–1898) from Vermont; was one of the founders of the Republican Party)
(ii)
(A) Strafford, Vermont
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strafford,_Vermont
(“The town of Strafford was created on August 12, 1761 by way of a royal charter which King George III of England issued to Governor Benning Wentworth of New Hampshire. The town was named after the Earl of Strafford”)

You see, the thirteen colonies that declared independence from UK in 1775 does not include Vermont, which colonies of New Hampshire and New York both claimed. Vermont declared independence from both (in 1777) and formed what later historians would call Vermont Republic (1777-1791).
(B) Strafford, Vermont. UpperValleyNHVT.com, undated
uppervalleynhvt.com/strafford-vermont/
("Along with many other towns in the Upper Valley of New Hampshire and Vermont, Strafford was chartered by New Hampshire’s Governor Benning Wentworth in 1761. The town was named after his brother, William Wentworth, who was the Earl of Strafford and served the King and was a member of Parliament in Great Britain"/ photo caption: "Justin Smith Morrill Homestead")
(C) William Wentworth, 2nd Earl of Strafford (1722–1791)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wentworth,_2nd_Earl_of_Strafford_(1722–1791)
(iii)
(A) Take notice Strafford is not the same as Stratford, which England has a dozen places with that name including Stratford-upon-Avon, a town in Warwickshire and the birthplace of William Shakespeare
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratford-upon-Avon
(The name is a combination of the Old English strǣt, meaning "street", and ford, indicating a site at which a road forded a river)

So, which strafford?  The answer: none of those listed in the Wiki page.
(B) Derivation of Local Names: Towns, Roads and Lanes. In Dick Jones (ed), The First 300; The amazing and rich history of Lower Merion. The Lower Merion Historical Society, 2000
www.lowermerionhistory.org/texts/first300/part32.html
("Strafford: Named for the Earl of Strafford which was the name of the Wentworth family estate")
(C) A forebear of William Wentworth’s was Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Wentworth,_1st_Earl_of_Strafford
(In January 1640 the king [Charles I] created him Earl of Strafford (the Wentworth family seat of Wentworth Woodhouse [qv; a country house] lay in the hundred [qv] of Strafford ([presently called] Strafforth) in the West Riding of Yorkshire)
("

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(d)
(i) The English surname Morrill is a variant of another English surname Morrell. The latter is "from the medieval personal name Morel, a diminutive vernacular form of Latin Maurus [meaning 'Moor'--the tribe that conquered the Iberian peninsula], with the hypocoristic suffix -el."
(ii) The English surname Wentworth is "from the Old English byname Wintra meaning ‘winter’ + Old English worð ‘enclosure.’ "

(e) “At the age of 8, he [Morrill; born 1810] caught a glimpse of a president, James Monroe [presidency 1817 – 1825], traveling through the countryside. Decades later, on a visit to Washington, he went for a walk in a pasture near the White House, where he met an old farmer and asked about his cows — an important form of conversation in Vermont. He turned out to be another president, Zachary Taylor.”
Zachary Taylor
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zachary_Taylor
(1784 – 1850; presidency 1849-1850; Before his presidency, Taylor was a career officer in the United States Army, rising to the rank of major general; Despite being a Southerner [born in Virginia] and a slaveholder himself, Taylor did not push for the expansion of slavery; Taylor was the last President to own slaves while in office)

So Taylor was not a farmer. And I fail to find in the Web Taylor’s encounter with Morrill.

(e) “In 1854, he [Morrill] was elected to Congress [House of Representatives] and, like many of his fellow Whigs, joined a new organization, the Republican Party.”

Whig Party (United States)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig_Party_(United_States)
(1833-1860; the party was formed in opposition to the policies of President Andrew Jackson [in office 1829–1837]; This name was chosen to echo the American Whigs [qc; also known as Patriots] of 1776, who fought for independence, and because "Whig" was then a widely recognized label of choice for people who identified as opposing tyranny_

Quote Wiki: "The party was ultimately destroyed by the question of whether to allow the expansion of slavery to the territories. With deep fissures in the party on this question, the anti-slavery faction prevented the nomination for a full-term of its own incumbent, President Fillmore, in the 1852 presidential election; instead, the party nominated General Winfield Scott. Most Whig party leaders eventually quit politics (as Abraham Lincoln did temporarily) or changed parties. The northern voter base mostly joined the new Republican Party. By the 1856 presidential election, the party was defunct. In the South, the party vanished

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(f) “Feeling the want of his own schooling, Morrill sought to open the doors of opportunity as wide as possible. He wanted college to available to all — especially to ‘the sons of toil,’ as he called those who worked to make ends meet. * * * Morrill’s act would eventually offer another 17.4 million acres [of federal land, which Native Americans had owned] to the states, on the condition that they create public universities with particular expertise in agriculture, technology, and military training. Money was to be apportioned to each state, according to the size of its Congressional delegation.

James S Morrill and Louise S Swan, Justin Smith Morrill. Fulton, NY: Morrill Press, at page 40
books.google.com/books?id=EXtkAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA40&lpg=PA40&dq=Thetford+Academy+and+Randolph+morrill&source=bl&ots=kSDSRhBthI&sig=fXC7HbRwEq0wdlYKqY8exdjzT-U&hl=en&sa=X&ei=gliHVeOuNcq7ggTL7YHgAQ&ved=0CCQQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Thetford Academy and Randolph morrill&f=false
("With the exception of two terms at Thetford Academy and one at Randolph Academy, Senator Morrill's early education wa confined wholly to that offered by the district schools of his native town. His 'schooling,' so-called, was completed at the age of fourteen or thereabouts, and yet he was not one to be unduly complimented with the words 'self made.' " He was not infrequently heard to day that it was the regret of his life that he could not have had a collegiate training, as much for the associations as for the cultural benefits")

(g) The list of land grant university in this article are: “University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology * * * University of California, the University of Wisconsin, Cornell University (no longer public) * * * Many of the most eminent African-American colleges, including Hampton and Tuskegee, also owe their origins to Morrill’s bill. Native American schools would also be added. * * * Appropriately, Morrill Halls can be found on campuses around the country.”
(i) Massachusetts Institute of Technology
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_Institute_of_Technology
(governor of Massachusetts signed in 1861 a charter for the incorporation of MIT; The new institute had a mission that matched the intent of the 1862 Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act to fund institutions "to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes," and was a land-grant school)
(ii) Hampton University (located in Hampton, Virginia; Established 1868 ["Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute" 1868 onward--according to University website, rather than from 1870 as Wikipedia suggested, which stated: "Legally chartered in 1870 as a land grant school,it was first known as 'Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute' ")  Wikipedia
(iii) Tuskegee University
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_University
(a private, historically black university located in Tuskegee, Alabama;

* Tuskegee University became land grant university in 1890 and thereafter. see 7 USC [for United States Code, the federal law] § 3221.
uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=%28title:7%20section:3221%20edition:prelim%29
(iv) One of land grant universities of private University of Delaware
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Delaware
(Eatablished 1743; Type  private, with public funding; "The school closed from 1859 until 1870. It reopened in 1870 due to the support of the Morrill Land-Grant Acts")

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(h) “Library of Congress, our most magnificent shrine to the book, owes its current location to Morrill, who so keenly felt his own lack of education. As chairman of the Senate’s finance committee * * * he conceived of Statuary Hall inside the Capitol, he approved the site of the Supreme Court”
(i) National Statuary Hall
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Statuary_Hall
(The meeting place of the US House of Representatives for nearly 50 years (1807–1857); In 1864, in accordance with legislation sponsored by Representative Justin Morrill, Congress invited each state to contribute two statues of prominent citizens for permanent display in the room, which was renamed National Statuary Hall)
(ii) United States Supreme Court Building
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Supreme_Court_Building
("When the architect Benjamin Latrobe built the second US Senate chamber directly on top of first US Senate chamber, the Supreme Court took up residence in what is now referred to as the Old Supreme Court Chamber from 1810 through 1860. It remained in the Capitol [not 'capital'] until 1935, with the exception of a period from 1812 to 1819 * * * In 1860, the Supreme Court moved to the Old Senate Chamber (as it is now known) where it remained until its move to the current Supreme Court building. In 1929, Chief Justice William Howard Taft argued successfully for the Court to have its own headquarters to distance itself from Congress as an independent branch of government, but did not live to see it built")
(iii) Coy F Cross II, Justin Smith Morrill; Father of the land-grant colleges. Michigan State University, 1997, page number not shown
books.google.com/books?id=5NYBqv3E7IMC&pg=PT143&lpg=PT143&dq=justin+senate+morrill+"supreme+court"+new+building&source=bl&ots=aHHIWRWlem&sig=JbVUC36Xy7hHiXwT8Q3thjvJkuc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=vGmHVbKtDsOZNonkg4gP&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=justin senate morrill "supreme court" new building&f=false
(”An example of the esteem with which Morrill's colleagues held him occurred in the 1886 session, after the Senate had finally approved the Library of Congress Building. * * * Morrill must have felt a sense of pride when the beautiful [Library] building opened in 1897. * * * With the funding of the Library secured, Morrill addressed another need on 3 December 1898: a separate building for the Supreme Court, which was also housed in the Capitol")

He advocated for funding of a new building for Supreme Court, but he died on Dec 28, 1898--so nothing came of it. The site he proposed--across the street from the Capitol--did eventually became the current site of Supreme Court building.