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Caption: Book - History of the University (Nevins)
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GRIGGS'S CAMPAIGN 35 groups of them were taken to the theater. At the weekends entertainments of some size were arranged. Besides being agreeable, all this impressed the Legislature with the zeal of Champaign County, and in the end many a member voted for the bill simply "because Griggs and his fellows worked so hard." Meanwhile Griggs, by having himself pushed for the nomination as speaker, and then skillfully offering to withdraw his candidacy under certain conditions, had become chairman of the Committee on Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, which was to pass on all bills for the location of the University. It was his right to nominate a majority of the members of the committee. The House had no sooner organized than a member named Baldwin introduced a bill dealing with the location of the University, and it was referred without debate to Griggs's committee.1 He then introduced his own bill with the eleventh section calling for the location of the University at Urbana, but instead of holding it in committee had it laid upon the table, so that it could be taken up and put upon its passage whenever he deemed that he had sufficient strength. It was by this time plain that Urbana was to have three main rivals— Lincoln, Bloomington, and Jacksonville. The campaigns of each contestant had two different aspects. On the one hand, each had its group of lobbyists laboring energetically, and with only secondary attention to the real merits of the case, to influence the Assemblymen. Prof. Turner was not a member, but he was on the ground, and by his wide influence ably assisted Representative Epler, of Jacksonville; he was especially bitter against *For this and subsequent matter on the Legislature's actions see House Journal, 1865, 670, 807; 1867, vol. I, 240; vol. I I , 44Iff; Senate Journal, 1865, 886; 1867, 1047ff.
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