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Caption: Book - History of the University (Nevins)
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NEIGHBORING STATE UNIVERSITIES 9 War, it received no State aid till 1867. The institution which became Indiana University received no State help till the same year. The lands belonging to the University of Wisconsin were grossly mismanaged, and the people long ignorantly jealous of it as maintained for a few "aristocratic" young men. Three separate reorganizations were attempted, and not until the last one, in 1866, was the University fairly on its feet. The Regents of Minnesota had no sooner erected their first building than they were forced to mortgage it, and under the panic of 1857 and the war their attempts to open the University were futile till 1869. Missouri not only failed to grant a cent to her University till 1867, but wasted for it a magnificent Federal grantH Even Ohio University received no direct appropriation till after the Civil War, while the lands of Miami were so mismanaged that it, after a depressing struggle, closed its doors in 1873*§jThe West before the Civil War took, on the whole, a pride in pretentious, struggling, and sometimes worthless institutions that had better gone to the fostering of interest in the public schools. But a State University would have been of value to Illinois had it trained but a handful of men; and in those early years it might have dissipated enough of the inevitable prejudice and hostility and gained enough general regard to start even with Michigan and Wisconsin in the race they were to run. Had public education been held at as high a level as in Michigan, ha# there been a considerable body of Illinoisans as keenly concerned with intellectual betterment as were the ministers of Ohio who befriended the early State institutions, or the first Regents of the University of Wisconsin, or the Trustees named for Indiana Seminary by Gov. Jennings, the
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