Given the fact that George Edmonston Jr., former editor of E-clips and the Oregon Stater, has retired and assumed the title of History and Traditions Editor of the Oregon Stater, he is closing out his involvement with E-clips by sharing a list of the 20 historical events he considers to be the most important in school history. He'll cover one event each week.

#7 The Morrill Act of 1862

Also known as the Land Grant Act, this seminal piece of legislation was introduced during the Civil War by U.S. Representative Justin Smith Morrill of Vermont and signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln on July 2, 1862.

In essence, the act granted the states 30,000 acres of public land for each senator and representative under apportionment based on the 1860 census, with instructions to use the proceeds from the sale of these lands to establish at least one college in each state to teach agriculture and the mechanical arts (engineering). A further proviso required these schools to also offer training in military science.

In proposing the legislation, Morrill had more than crops, guns and slide rules in mind. What he knew, along with many others, was that American education was poised for fundamental change, one that would rid the country of a dichotomy in educational opportunities that had existed for almost 200 years.

Prior to Morrill, the children of the nation's elite could pursue higher education with ease. A network of privately endowed institutions, with most of the prestigious schools clustered on the upper East Coast, was there for the taking, while the children of the lower and middle classes had few chances to further their learning beyond the rudiments.

Now with Morrill the law of the land, a new kind of college, the land-grant college, was in the making, one offering a broader curriculum to far more students than was ever possible, or even desired, under the old model. The effect was, and has been, nothing short of revolutionary.

Unfortunately, lawmakers in many parts of the country were slow to realize the potential of Morrill's dream. Oregon, for example, let the legislation lie dormant until 1868. The situation changed when a Corvallis College (one day to be OSU) English professor, working a summer job for the state legislature to earn extra money, accidentally discovered that not only had the paperwork for the act been sitting in Salem a long time, its fuse was about to run out. Through a series of political maneuverings orchestrated by powerful Benton County Democrats, the act was passed into state law and Corvallis College got the land-grant designation on Oct. 27, 1868 (approval by the college's board of trustees came on Oct. 31).

Nothing in OSU's history has had such a profound impact on its makeup and character as the Morrill Act of 1862, although the Hatch Act of 1887, requiring land-grant colleges to conduct research through departments known as agricultural experiment stations, also deserves both our attention and admiration. The Smith-Lever Act of 1914 added muscle to Hatch by establishing the Cooperative Extension Service and its mission of taking research findings out to fields of farmers.