Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Powell) [PAGE 152]

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History University of Illinois

forced a vote, which was 32 to 7 in favor of the bill as amended. Wade's great parliamentary ability and the value of his long experience was constantly displayed in the skillful manner in which he guided the bill through and over the snags placed in its way by a number of energetic opponents. I t is a significant fact that Iowa and Ohio, with whom the Illinois men had had frequent correspondence on the subject of petitioning congress, both had instructed their senators to support the land grant bill. Other states, too, instructed their senators to support the bill but it was the powerful influence of the three leading senators mentioned above as favoring the bill that made success assured. Thus Mr. Morrill was given the opportunity to make a final effort for the measure in the house; on June 17 he called up senate bill 298, and, after a contest with Mr. Potter of Wisconsin and Mr. Holman of Indiana on the question of referring it to the committee on public lands, he finally forced it to a vote and it passed 90 to 25. The ballots in the senate and in the house show two things: the reduced membership of congress compared with that of 1859, on account of the civil war, and the greatly reduced proportional vote against the bill. This measure which was essentially from the people and for them was in no danger this time of perishing by means of the veto; it became a law without hesitation or constitutional quibble on July 2, 1862, by the hand of President Abraham Lincoln. This bill as finally passed was practically as it was when first introduced. The important changes were to insert thirty thousand acres of land for each member of congress instead of twenty thousand as first proposed; the exclusion of the benefits to states while in the act of rebellion; and the requirement to teach military tactics. This last clause was a birth-mark, that will serve forever to direct the attention of students to the perils of the republic at the time the law was passed. The very day President Lincoln affixed his signature the army of the Potomac began its retreat from the disastrous and bloody fields of Malvern Hill. Thus after a long hard struggle the land grant bill became a law. Certainly not one of the sixty-nine institutions that have