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Caption: Book - History of the University (Powell)
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100 History University of Illinois secure forever the appropriation made by congress. " I suppose you see by Governor Yates' message that this long deferred endowment to each State in the Union, for an Industrial University has at last come within our reach. It has cost you and friend Murray and myself many a hard struggle and contest, with both professed friends and foes; many long days and nights of painful toil and thought, and care and travel by land and water in past years, first to arouse and concentrate the public mind, break down its opposition, and break up its still more fatal apathy, by agitations in meetings and assemblies all over the State, and out of the State; political contests at the Capitol and in the papers, by manifold letters and pamphlets sent abroad over the Union, North, South, East and West, in order by these agitations, first to get the thing started, and then more direct and quite but not less onerous labor of guiding the thing through so many years to its first successful notice in Congress, and its final passage by that body. All this you well know, and no two men on earth do know it, or ever will, but yourself and friend Murray, and you may each of you well and truly say "Pars magnae fui"; and though no reward on earth awaits you, I know you will meet it in another world, for you have surely been 'faithful in these few things'." 14 Could a clearer or more definite statement of what actually occurred be given? Both Kennicott and Turner connected their work directly with that of Morrill for the land grant act. These statements of theirs square with the facts and events already described in previous pages. They are not deceiving themselves then in asserting that they had a part in a great work. Petitions in behalf of this project came to congress, as has been said, in great numbers immediately following the introduction of the bill in December, 1857. These were not the first bearing directly upon this particular proposition to come to the attention of congress. The first found was presented by John Wentworth on December 23, 1853. It was "The petition of citizens of the State of Illinois, praying for a grant of land and the appropriation of money for the establishment of a University in each State of the Union for the education of the working "Prairie Farmer, February 7, 1883.
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