Editor’s note: Mark Bushnell is a Vermont journalist and historian. He is the author of “Hidden History of Vermont” and “It Happened in Vermont.”
[J]ustin Smith Morrill is often called the father of America’s land grant college and university system, which at first blush can seem a little odd. As a U.S. representative from Vermont, Morrill didn’t come up with the idea or actually write the Land Grant College Act. But like some of his congressional colleagues, Morrill got credit for the achievement. In fact, the act establishing the system was named the Morrill Act.
Morrill never claimed he initiated the idea of creating an alternative to the existing private colleges and universities. His genius was in understanding how Washington worked. He used that knowledge to promote an idea he liked and managed to push through the legislation where other, less-skilled politicians might have failed.
Nothing about his early years suggested Morrill would wind up championing higher education. Morrill was born in 1810, the son of a blacksmith in Strafford, Vermont. His entire formal education consisted of two terms at grammar school. As an adult, Morrill spoke proudly of his humble beginnings and his meager schooling. Perhaps his support of expanding access to higher education grew out of his realization that he had beaten the odds.
Morrill rose to national prominence through a mix of pluck and adherence to the ideals of the Victorian Era, with a little luck thrown in. At the age of 15, his education complete, Morrill took as job in town as a merchant’s clerk. Three years later, he was off to Portland, Maine, where he worked for a merchant who traded with the West Indies. After returning to Strafford at the age of 21, Morrill formed a partnership with Judge Jedediah Harris, the town’s leading merchant.
But Morrill wasn’t interested merely in improving his financial status. Like many Victorians, he also aspired to be educated and cultured. He started an effort to create a town library when he was just 17 and in his early 20s he helped found a lyceum for the education of townspeople. At the same time, he began to amass an impressive personal library.
Morrill’s business also flourished. By the time he was 40, he was wealthy enough to quit his business and focus on other pursuits. He built a fine Victorian home in Strafford and moved into it with his new bride, Ruth Swan, a Massachusetts woman whom he had met through his business partner.
Morrill’s home was of his own design. Rather than simply copy house plans from a book, as was commonly done, he adapted features from various designs to suit his own taste. Morrill studied landscaping and gardening, in addition to architecture, and designed a natural setting for his new home in keeping with the Victorians’ love of the picturesque. The house stood as a monument to his achievements. It marked him as a man of refinement. The house is now a state historic site and is open to the public.
Morrill developed an interest in politics while in his 40s. He began working on various committees for the Whig party, starting at the town level. The jobs were usually thankless, so no one stood in Morrill’s way. He rose quickly to the county and then state level in the party.
In 1854, he stood for his first election when he entered the race for the U.S. House seat representing Vermont’s Second Congressional District. At the time, Vermont had three congressional districts. It had had four districts until 1852.
The state’s loss of a congressional district played to Morrill’s advantage. He lived in Orange County, a reliably Democratic bastion. But when district lines were redrawn to accommodate one fewer congressional seat, areas of Democratic strength were divided between neighboring districts, making it possible for a Whig like Morrill to win, which he promptly did.
Morrill entered national politics during tumultuous times. The Republican Party had just been started as an antislavery party and Morrill realized it was eclipsing the Whigs. When he reached Congress, Morrill voted for the Republican candidate for speaker of the House. Two years later, when he ran for re-election, he did so as a Republican.
Morrill’s early years in Congress were unremarkable. He was probably best known for pushing through higher import tariffs. Not the sort of thing that gets you in history books, or your name on public buildings. But it was an important issue to his constituents, many of whom were farmers who blamed their financial plight on low tariffs rather than on competition from larger western farms.
Though this was Morrill’s first elected office, he was not unequipped for the job. Tom Bassett, the late Vermont historian, argued that being a storekeeper had been perfect training for Morrill. Among other things, a storekeeper was a marketer of someone else’s invention. So it was with Morrill and the idea of creating land grant colleges.
Morrill was a valuable ally. An astute parliamentarian who understood how to get bills passed, Morrill used the advantages of his seat on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee to sponsored a bill in 1857 that called for the creation of land grant colleges.
The idea might not have been his originally, but he wholeheartedly supported it. Though Morrill was largely self-taught, he valued formal education, perhaps all the more because of his lack of it. His bill called for the federal government to grant land to each of the states to establish public colleges that would teach courses in fields like agriculture and engineering as an alternative to the classical curriculum offered by the existing church-affiliated schools. The bill gave states the option of either building the school on the land or selling the land and using the proceeds to finance a new school elsewhere.
The bill faced stiff opposition, largely from Southern congressmen who opposed it on state’s rights grounds. They saw it as a misuse of federal lands, though most of these same politicians supported using public land for railroads.
Morrill shepherded the bill through committee, fought off distracting amendments, kept key supporters in town for important votes and saw it narrowly pass the House. The bill passed the Senate, too, by a similarly slender margin.
But that version of the act died when President James Buchanan vetoed it.
For all the Civil War destroyed, it helped create America’s land grant colleges. When the Southern states announced they were seceding, they removed their representatives and senators from Congress. Morrill seized the opportunity. He pushed the act through Congress again, more easily this time, and a supportive President Lincoln signed the bill the Morrill Act in 1862.
Initially, only white students were allowed admission to land-grant colleges. Congress passed the second Morrill Act in 1890, requiring states either to integrate their land-grant colleges or create separate schools for students of color. (To commemorate this event, the Morrill homestead was included in the Vermont African American Heritage Trail, which was launched in 2013.)
In 1866, Morrill was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he would serve until his death in 1898. Morrill would also serve as a trustee of the University of Vermont and State Agricultural College, where he succeeded at keeping the old college and the new land grant school together in one institution. His efforts to get the State Legislature to fund the school proved less successful.
Morrill may not have conceived the idea of land grant colleges, but he adopted the cause as his own. And he used his considerable parliamentary skills to bring the idea to life. In that sense, Morrill deserves to be remembered as the father of the land grant college system, or perhaps more accurately its adopted father.
(The Justin Morrill Homestead, located in Strafford, Vermont, will be open this year Wednesdays through Sundays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. from May 26 to Oct. 14. Admission is $6 for adults. Children under 15 are free. Groups of 10 or more, with reservations, are $3 per person. For more information on Vermont State Historic Sites, click here or call (802) 828-3051. For more information about the Vermont African American Heritage Trail, click here.)
